Wiki goes to work
November 13th, 2004An interesting perspective on Wikis v. Blogs by Chad Dickerson:
“Because Wikis and blogs are often mentioned in the same breath, it’s important to point out a key distinction: Blogs are an excellent tool for knowledge management in IT, but in practice, blogs have shortcomings. One of the hallmarks of blog structure — a reverse chronological listing of posts — can actually be a drawback for certain types of information. In some contexts, instead of having the newest information at the top of a page, you might want the most important information at the top.”
“Suppose you post to an internal blog to document how to fix a particularly thorny (but commonly occurring) problem with one of your key systems. Right after you, a few of your colleagues add to the blog with some minor issues that are worth noting but are not incredibly important. In a blog, the important post gets bumped down the page by the newer ones. In a Wiki-based knowledge management system, the lack of structure means that information can be arranged in any way that makes sense without restriction. You can leave the most important information at the top or anywhere else.”
He’s right. The chronological aspect of blogs can push the “more important” stuff to the bottom of the blog, never to read again. That said, since we are trying to get people to use RSS, they will nonetheless be reading the content anyway. So, even if the content gets pushed down, it will still be read by everyone who subscribes to the feed.
But Wikis will help in accomplishing the task of putting the important stuff on top (or in a relatively high traffic area). One must remember that Wikis have RSS feeds as well, so the readers of the Wiki are still notified of updates. I guess it all comes down to what the software is used for. For some projects (library news, FARQs, new books added to a collection), blogs are perfect. For others (discussions on new technology, project brainstorming), Wikis might be better.
For now, I’m just trying to get librarians to use weblogs. Not an easy task. I’ll leave Wikis for another time and place.