What CMS would you use for a site that you want to do everything?
 

Say I want to make a mainstream site with diverse niches; I want each article to be on a page and SE friendly.

I also want to offer, in one section, real estate listings; maybe personal ads in another, maybe a blog or five in another area, all on a single domain.

Should I go with a CMS like Joomla or a Wiki?

Do I need multiple scripts? ... The bulk of the site will be informational pages.

I'd go with Joomla. I'm having someone designing and installing joomla for one of my mainstream sites now. It has a lot of the things you are wanting.

If you want to spend money on a CMS, this one looks cool http://www.phpcow.com/ . The only draw back with that one I hear is the support (rude) and its encoded.

I'll have to give it a shot. All roads lead to Joomla lately.

Argh, Joomla is already making me pull my hair out... some crazy permissions thing.

Drupal.. www.theonion.com is running it.

I have the same problem. Gave up after multiple tries.

Recently read an IBM devworks article about how they implemented Drupal for an internal project. Sounded pretty good for an article-based project.

Have you looked at community server?