Blog v Wiki

The first word that comes to mind when thinking about blogs is “opinion” while for wikis is “unreliable.” We are told at a young age to place distrust in websites like Wikipedia and to switch our focus to more reliable websites that cannot be easily changed.

Thinking more about the similarities and differences between blogs and wikis, I would say a large factor is that they are both semi anonymous. Theoretically, I can go on Wikipedia right now and change what any of the pages say and, I can create a blog under a false identity and post anything I want. Both blogs and wikis, I would say, does not restrict what people want to express and can help in transferring information from one person to another. The biggest difference I find is that while blogs are more for socializing or letting your voice be heard, wikis are more of a place where you can find anything and everything. I am often surprised by the topics I can find a Wikipedia page on because of how unusual or irrelevant the topic might be to everyday life.

Everyone wants to stay connected and the internet holds this connection. The internet makes it possible for me in New York to talk to someone in California or even in Asia. It allows a vast number of people to be able to shed different viewpoints on topics, so that the information you are getting is not just from the likeminded people around you. Converging in today’s networked world allows you to not be pigeonholed.

Whenever I come across an interesting post, I usually spend quite some time reading the comments and the replies to comments. I would say that the comments on these posts are like the content in blogs, your view on a subject matter. In “Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog” by Michael Barbaro, they conclude that, “The result is an intensely personal window into the lives, preferences and quirks of the powerful tastemakers at Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, who have spent years shielded from public view.” Even in these seemingly unrelated reviews there is collaboration happening. On the smaller scale, it helps paint a picture of how good an individual product is but on a much larger scale, reading multiple blogs also help the reader form a view of Wal-Mart and the products they have. I think that once something is posted on a blog, and allows room for comments and critiques, there will be collaboration happening. It could be someone responding to you, forming a direct exchange, or someone reading your post and taking away ideas that they may one day share and transfer to others.

While with blogs, you can see who’s responding to you, even if under a false identity, for wikis you kind of have to trust that the next person wants the best for everyone and not change the facts. “An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified” by Noam Cohen sums this idea pretty well by saying, “Wikis, by contrast, are collaborative only in retrospect – someone has to be prepared to be the first to write something, and deal with having those words changed by a complete stranger.” Wikis force the editors to place a lot of trust in the editors that come after them to do what is right and show what is accurate. Based on this, I think a new use for a wiki that has not been done yet can be like a game of telephone, except you aren’t repeating what someone else said again and again but adding to it. The difference being that you wouldn’t erase the previous editor’s work and it always look like a work in progress waiting for its next editor to add their touch to it. That way when a new editor comes on and sees the latest version, they can also appreciate the works that strangers before them had done.

Work Cited:

1. Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog, NY Times, march 3, 2008, p. C1, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/03walmart.html Wal-Mart Tastemakers.pdf

2. An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified by Noam Cohen. The New York Times, August 4, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/business/media/04link.html  An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified - The New York Times.pdf