Blog v Wiki

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Blogs are created by individuals on any topic of his/her choice. The bloggers, or authors of the blogs, may be “single-person operations (one to many); [or] have a community of authors (many to many)” (Gill, 2004). Collaboration is fostered through comments on posts from readers or emails. As time passed, blogging took on a participatory journalism concept. Readers and writers interact more and share their collective experiences. Blogs have no editorial oversight and have no cost barriers. Bloggers simply need access to a computer and can host the blog for free.

Although a blog may start with a particular theme or topic, there is nothing stopping a blogger from venturing out to unrelated themes. This is shown in the Walmart blog “Check Out.” The blog is written by normal buyers who post on their experiences with products. It originally started as a review for tech products but has evolved to include blogger’s daily experiences such as their favorite authors or pets.

A wiki is “the simplest online database that could work” (InformationWeek, 2005). They are web pages that anyone who has access can create or edit. Those with access can correct any information that another user may have posted incorrectly. The wiki follows a particular theme and edits could be made to remove irrelevant information. Wikis are common in companies because they are usually open source so there is no cost to implement it, or if a company chooses to pay it is low cost. Content is updated without any major lags or need for distribution. The users and contributors are the same. There is no separation. A user could read and edit the same post.

While wikis are common for workplace collaboration or online encyclopedias I would like to see wikis used among college students for collaboration. In one of my previous classes, we made a huge group chat on WhatsApp that had every person in the class. It was very helpful since we shared notes, helped each other on homework problems, and had immediate peer explanations for tough topics in class. However, since there were a lot of people messages were quickly lost and things had to be asked multiple times. Having something like this on a wiki form just for students could help.

References:

Barbaro, M. (2008, March 3). Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/03walmart.html

Gill, K. E. (2004). How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere? (dissertation). Retrieved from http://www.uvm.edu/pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/gill2004a.pdf

 How To Use Wikis For Business. (2005, August 4). InformationWeek. Retrieved from https://www.informationweek.com/how-to-use-wikis-for-business/d/d-id/1034971

Comments

  1. Viabile subsistenceFebruary 26, 2020 at 12:03 PM

    I have a similar group chat where we also used to share information about homework or any problem and confusion we used face. Sometimes it was really hard to find the previous information but there was always someone who used to help other.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christopher BosompemFebruary 26, 2020 at 8:31 PM

    i believe your ideas for having wikis for school collaboration is brilliant. Google, through use of Google doc, adopts the same idea, being able to share and edit ideas, so to have an actual wiki to serve that purpose would be very helpful

    ReplyDelete

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