Blog v Wiki

At first glance, due to their online informational purposes, blogs and wikis may seem incredibly similar but in actuality, they are quite different. A wiki is an online information source developed and edited by multiple users. A blog, while also informational, is more personal, since it is usually developed by a single person, and contains information provided in a more personal manner, similar to a diary.

From this, one can easily tell that wikis are made for information-sharing purposes while blogs are more for sharing personal information. There could be exceptions to this but for the most part, wiki's and blogs follow these guidelines. An article in the New York Times titled, "Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog", provides a detailed explanation on how a blog chronicled the life of a soldier in Afghanistan. The blog, titled Embrace the Suck, provides detailed accounts of a soldiers life at war, from stories of roadside bombs to encounters with major sergeants. This blog is quite personal, as opposed to informational regarding news in Afghanistan.

By contrast, another New York Times article on wikis, titled "Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People"details the importance of editing on wiki articles. Since Wikipedia is basically a free online encyclopedia created through the volunteer contributions of editors world-wide, one of the problems that it faces, similar to all wikis, is that multiple users can contribute and sometimes, false information can be provided. To prevent this, Wikipedia is making efforts to ensure that changes made to wiki's are looked over before users see any changes, to ensure the public isn't provided any false information.

In regards to the importance of both, there are many things that blogs and wiki's provide to users that we take for granted. As the internet is expanding, blogs and wiki's are very concentrated pages that users can look to for solving various purposes. Wiki's might be able to provide those looking for anything they can gather regarding certain topics more information from experts in the field. Whereas blogs can provide more personal information, such as shopping tips through a detailed description of shopping experiences or inspiration by going through someone else's work. Blogs may also inspire collaborative efforts by focusing on individual strengths. A blog with high social influence may partner up with an inspiring photography blog to help each other. The photography blog may gain popularity while the bigger blog might showcase photography as another aspect of it's blog. Wikis also have many uses. For one, companies may use wiki's to compile manuals on the operations that happen throughout different components in a business, to help everyone in different departments understand whats going on elsewhere.