Blog V Wiki

Blogs and wikis are generally sources of information in which an individual publishes to the internet. They can both be valuable resources of data and information, however the reliability on these sources of information is questionable. While they are both sources of information, they do not necessarily provide accurate information. According to "How to Use Wikis for Business" which explains what a wiki is, one of the main difference between these two sources of data is who has the ability to publish information. A blog's posts can only be published by the owner of the blog and tends to be similar to a diary or journal that others can view while a wiki can be edited or published by pretty much anyone. While they both have their pros and cons, they both are not reliable sources of information when looking for facts. A blog can be very opinionated while a wiki has multiple editors which can keep information factual. Although wikis have many contributors, they tend to police each other's work, allowing the information to stay fairly accurate.

The use of blogs assist us today in many ways that contribute to the networked society that we live in. The article " Link by Link - An Internal Wiki That's Not Classified" states the use of blogs and electronic storage saves a lot of paper that we would normally consume and it allows us to be a lot more efficient all around because we are all able to access information from our smartphones and our computers. It also allows us to filter out information that we deem irrelevant with functions such as the find function which allows us to find key words instead of skimming through large bodies of text. The use of wikis and blogs enables us to find the information we seek much quicker and therefore allows us to finish our work much more quickly. Convergence is key in today's society because it allows us to be more efficient and it helps to slow down the use of Earth's resources.

One new way wikis can be used is to use it as a public database similar to Facebook that would allow anyone to search you up and gather general information on you. This would allow people to screen each other before meeting in case a person may be suspicious or dangerous. This could also be used for academic purposes to further elaborate on professors. It could be similar to Rate My Professor except it would go more in depth about the professor, and it would allow users to add their own experiences into the page.


"How to Use Wikis for Business," by Ezra Goodnoe, Information Week, August 8, 2005   http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331

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