Blog v Wiki

-

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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Next New

-
Image
An idea for a new type of new media is a "contact card". There are some examples of this already with Tap & Go payments and OMNY. However, there are still a lot of other things we still need to carry an actual card or paper form for. Additionally, the things that we do have tap&go for are all in different accounts or different cards. I am suggesting a single card that can replace all and holds our most used information. It can be used to tap and pay at stores or tap and go on the subway. It could also replace school and work ID's. Instead of having to swipe every time we enter the workplace or school we could tap this card and it will serve as us swiping our ID's for access. It could also replace business cards or exchanging contact information if it has the ability to tap to another card to share contact information. Sharing files could be easier with just tapping cards together. With this there would be no need to carry extra cards or have a wallet. While in
Read more

Advice

-
Image
           My first suggestion to improve Ba ruc h with n ew media is to create an account on a widely used platform to quickly and consistently update students on campus events. Baruch has social media accounts, but they are mainly targeted at potential students and not current ones. The first account that comes to mind is a Twitter account because it is quick, simple, and people can view tweets without a Twitter account. The college already has multiple Twitter accounts. The multiple accounts targeting potential students could be streamlined into either one or two accounts to make it easier to manage and for others to find information without having to hop from one account to the next. Then one account could be made for announcements for current students. So, if the college, or a particular building closes due to elevators etc. students would be notified immediately. Often announcements are made through email which students check only once a day.       As mentioned in my post
Read more

Wiki So Far

-
Image
  When signing up for the wiki I looked at the list of topics that were already on the wiki and noticed that a lot of people wrote about their hobbies. Most of my hobbies/interests were already listed on the wiki so I looked at what was written already to see what I could add. Recently, a lot of things have been virtually adapted due to COVID-19 so I thought of adding to pages I liked on how they have been virtually adapted. EDM and Twitch        When first looking at the Wiki I thought about writing about virtual raves and dj’s twitch but there was no section for EDM. However, a classmate recently added that section. Since there is also a Twitch page, I decided that I will write about dj’s twitch channels on the Twitch section and then virtual raves on the EDM section. There are multiple articles available to find information on this that I will use to write the sections. Soccer       It seems the most recent updates to this are from 2018 so I plan to update the stats
Read more