Blogs in comparison to wikis are more personal and reflects the personality and writing style of the blog's author. Wikis on the other hand can have millions of authors and publishers. It's basically a one stop shop for information on everything and anything. In wikis, you can basically find articles on different topics in just one webpage whereas blogs may be specifically dedicated to one topic. According to Ms. Hankins who was interviewed on the New York Times article by Noam Cohen, An Internal Wiki That is Not Classified and a user of Diplopedia, "The advantage of Diplopedia, she said, isn’t necessarily the ease of creating new material, but the ease in finding information." Wikis allow users to stay on one webpage and have access to different articles and information they need. Wikis allow users to collaborate and create their own articles to add more information or support a certain topic.
Although blogs are more personal and specific, it doesn't mean that they can't be collaborative. Tumblr for example was once one of the most popular social networking/blogging platform because it allowed users to explore and "reblog" other user's contents. By "reblogging" a certain post, users are using each other's posts to curate their own blogs. Every Tumblr user has an unique blog of their own but majority of them uses posts from other Tumblr users. I think wikis can definitely try to implement this so that users can keep track of what they want to know and what they need to know. One thing they should beware though, is the content of their wikis. Since 2014, Tumblr's traffic hasn't been increasing or decreasing. Many speculated that it may be because a bigger company bought out the site, but according to Forbes' staff, Jeff Bercovici's article, Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr's Traffic Isn't Growing, "Tumblr’s traffic flattening corresponds
with a period of torrid growth for viral content sites, particularly
Buzzfeed and Upworthy. Those sites deal in the same sorts of
content — funny gifs and memes, inspirational photos and
videos — that’s popular on Tumblr." This means that, if the content of the wikis can easily be accessible through other methods, the collaborative "reblogging" method may not be the best for that particular wiki.
Hi Sophia,
ReplyDeleteYour comparison between wikis and blogs are on point. They are both beneficial in their respective ways. I also believe that blogs can be collaborative to an extent as well. Personally, I've never done a blog until this class. That is why my research topic will be on the similarities and differences between the two. I will try to pin down the key components of each and your insight will definitely help me.
Best,
Kevin