How does a blog differ from a wiki?: Difference between revisions
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Blogging is a personal, light-weight, web publishing tool, allowing web content management with minimal technical knowledge and fuss, empowerment to personal publishers. Blogging is about time-ordered commentary, frequency, brevity, & personality. The significance is around the format - content chunks arranged chronologically and not the content. The defining characteristics are commentary and a sequential chronology. In an open space, blogs offer control and a shield against spamming that mar contributions to usenet and slashdot (Denham). | |||
Wiki is more than just social writing, easy and intuitive web publishing and the ability to do hypertext. There is the potential to anneal joint meaning, synthesize something greater than the direct combination of individual parts, there is the potential for building a community ethos around direct collaboration at the (text) or artifact level. Michael Schrage says The best shared spaces are an invitation to innovation..the prototype or models are driving our processes and learning.. if you do not have a shared space you are not collaborating, ...it's creating opportunity for others to add value (Denham)! | |||
( | |||
== | =History= | ||
Interestingly, since both types of website have been in existence approximately the same length of time, the term "blog" is in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary; whereas "wiki" is not. | |||
===Blog=== | |||
Some of the earliest bloggers were Justin Hall and Brad Fitzpatrick who began posting in online journals in 1994. In 1997, Jorn Barger came up with the term "weblog", which was shortened to blog in 1999 by Peter Merhoz. Also, in 1997, there were only around one hundred blogs; by 2005, there were over fifty million. The modern blog evolved from the online diary where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves escribitionists. The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. | |||
Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo. | |||
===Wiki=== | |||
Wiki came about when Ward Cunningham was trying to come up with a way to have public-knowledge bases readily available. The first wiki, WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki), is named after the "Wiki Wiki" line of "Chance RT-52 shuttle buses" in Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii. Cunningham named WikiWikiWeb that way because he remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki Wiki" Chance RT-52 shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web." "Wiki Wiki" is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian-language word for fast. The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie). The word is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for "What I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function. The first major technology site was <i>Wikipedia</i> which began in January of 2001. <i>Wiki</i> and <i>Kwiki</i>, a couple of open source wikis, had over a million downloads by 2004. | |||
=Similarities= | |||
Both blogs and wikis: | |||
*Can be trace back to 1994. | |||
*Are types of content authoring, knowledge sharing, and media-publishing websites. | |||
*Have many tools to enable blogging and the development of wiki. | |||
*Have had separate languages spring up around their uses. | |||
=Differences= | |||
Blogs and wikis, because they are different spaces, manifest/take advantage of/engage different epistemic and rhetorical possibilities and serve different rhetorical and epistemic ends. They engage different rhetorics: one topical, carved from the inside out; the other chronological, staying on top of things (Morgan). | |||
===Blog=== | |||
A [[What is a blog?|blog]] is a publicly posted diary or journal that reflects the personality and point of view of the author. In general, blogs are frequently updated, usually have a way of making comments, and are often hyperlinked. Blogs are structured in reverse chronological order and are a commentary about any and all topics by an individual. Blogs sometimes allow commentary, but not revision. Blogs present a uniform point of view and remain in control of the author. | |||
A blog entry typically consists of the following: | A blog entry typically consists of the following: | ||
* Title - the main title, or headline, of the post. | |||
* Body - main content of the post. | |||
* Permalink - the URL of the full, specific entry. | |||
* Post Date - date and time the post was published. | |||
A blog entry optionally includes the following: | A blog entry optionally includes the following: | ||
* Comments | * Comments | ||
* Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses | * Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses | ||
* Trackback and or pingback - links to other sites that refer to the entry | * Trackback and or pingback - links to other sites that refer to the entry | ||
== | Blogs can be made and maintained with a variety of different systems. Dedicated web applications can eliminate the need for bloggers to manage this software. With web interfaces, these systems allow travelers to blog from anywhere on the Internet, and allow users to create blogs without having to maintain their own server. Such systems allow users to work with tools such as Ecto, Elicit and w.bloggar which allow users to maintain their Web-hosted blog without the need to be online while composing or editing posts. Blog creation tools and blog hosting are also provided by some Web hosting companies (Tripod), Internet service providers (America Online), online publications (Salon.com) and internet portals (Yahoo! 360° or Google). Some advanced users have developed custom blogging systems from scratch using server-side software, and often implement membership management and password protected areas. | ||
===Wiki=== | |||
A [[What is a wiki?|wiki]] enables documents to be written collectively in an extremely simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire body of pages is "the wiki"; in effect, a wiki is actually a very simple, easy-to-use user-maintained database for searching for or even creating information. Title, full-text, and recent changes searches are generally provided. | |||
A wiki page consists of an original article written by one person, then other people make edits or contribute new content to the flow of information. A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Another wiki characteristic is hyperlinks, which are references in hypertext documents to other documents or resources. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature" cookie for autosigning edits. More private wiki servers require user authentication. Anyone within the community may revise already-existing content and many edits can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online. | |||
Wikis present multiple points of view and can sometimes suffer from vandalism or damage to the site; the wiki philosophy is to undo damage versus the rigor of preventing damage and is called "soft security". | |||
Wikis are a true hypertext medium, with non-linear navigational structures. Each page typically contains a large number of links to other pages. Hierarchical navigation pages often exist in larger wikis, often a consequence of the original page creation process, but they do not have to be used. Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern". | |||
Originally, most wikis used CamelCase when naming program identifiers, produced by capitalizing words in a phrase and removing the spaces between them (the word "CamelCase" is itself an example of CamelCase). While CamelCase makes linking very easy, it also leads to links which are written in a form that deviates from the standard spelling. CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as "TableOfContents" and "BeginnerQuestions". Note that it is possible for a wiki to render the visible anchor for such links "pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. However, this reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is limited by the loss of capitalization information caused by CamelCase. For example, "RichardWagner" should be rendered as "Richard Wagner", whereas "PopularMusic" should be rendered as "popular music". There is no easy way to determine which capital letters should remain capitalized. | |||
Simply put, blogs are about writing for a community and wiki is about writing within or in a community. | |||
The main differences are as follows: | |||
*Use of time vs. topic-linking to organize the material | |||
*Ability to directly edit content else created - collaborative vs. individual | |||
*Use of linking to organize within the context of an ongoing discussion | |||
*Nature of content publishing (public or private) | |||
Over time, the differences between blogs and wikis seem to be lessening as more and more bloggers invite input into their blogs and add hyperlinks. Recently a combination of blog and wiki has resulted in a new communication form entitled bliki. | |||
== Links == | |||
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wikipedia Wiki Entry] | |||
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog Wikipedia Blog Entry] | |||
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliki Wikipedia Bliki Entry] | |||
* [http://www.cogdogblog.com/alan/archives/2004/08/21/time.php A Time to Blog, A Time to Wiki, A Time to ...] | |||
* [http://199.17.178.148/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?WhenBlogMeetsWiki WhenBlogMeetsWiki] | |||
* [http://frassle.net/blogsVsWikis frassle: Blogs vs. Wikis] | |||
* [http://netapps.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/darcusb/archives/2004/11/07/blogs-and-wikis-and-content-publishing Blogs and Wikis and Content Publishing] | |||
* [http://www.iawiki.net/IAwikiBlog/Discussion IAwikiBlog] | |||
* [http://www.ottergroup.com/blog/_archives/2005/6/23/968266.html The Otter Group: Blogs vs. Wikis] | |||
"Wiki" | == Works Cited == | ||
<http:// | * Denham, Grey. "Blogs or Wiki." <u>Knowledge-at-work</u>. 3 March 2003. <http://www.webassistant.com/site/Denham/blog_15.html> | ||
* Morgan, M.C. "WikiAndBlog." <u>Blogs And Wiki</u>. 13 July 2006. Bemidji State University. <http://199.17.178.148/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?WikiAndBlog> | |||
Revision as of 00:02, 27 July 2006
Blogging is a personal, light-weight, web publishing tool, allowing web content management with minimal technical knowledge and fuss, empowerment to personal publishers. Blogging is about time-ordered commentary, frequency, brevity, & personality. The significance is around the format - content chunks arranged chronologically and not the content. The defining characteristics are commentary and a sequential chronology. In an open space, blogs offer control and a shield against spamming that mar contributions to usenet and slashdot (Denham).
Wiki is more than just social writing, easy and intuitive web publishing and the ability to do hypertext. There is the potential to anneal joint meaning, synthesize something greater than the direct combination of individual parts, there is the potential for building a community ethos around direct collaboration at the (text) or artifact level. Michael Schrage says The best shared spaces are an invitation to innovation..the prototype or models are driving our processes and learning.. if you do not have a shared space you are not collaborating, ...it's creating opportunity for others to add value (Denham)!
History
Interestingly, since both types of website have been in existence approximately the same length of time, the term "blog" is in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary; whereas "wiki" is not.
Blog
Some of the earliest bloggers were Justin Hall and Brad Fitzpatrick who began posting in online journals in 1994. In 1997, Jorn Barger came up with the term "weblog", which was shortened to blog in 1999 by Peter Merhoz. Also, in 1997, there were only around one hundred blogs; by 2005, there were over fifty million. The modern blog evolved from the online diary where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves escribitionists. The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community.
Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo.
Wiki
Wiki came about when Ward Cunningham was trying to come up with a way to have public-knowledge bases readily available. The first wiki, WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki), is named after the "Wiki Wiki" line of "Chance RT-52 shuttle buses" in Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii. Cunningham named WikiWikiWeb that way because he remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki Wiki" Chance RT-52 shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web." "Wiki Wiki" is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian-language word for fast. The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie). The word is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for "What I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function. The first major technology site was Wikipedia which began in January of 2001. Wiki and Kwiki, a couple of open source wikis, had over a million downloads by 2004.
Similarities
Both blogs and wikis:
- Can be trace back to 1994.
- Are types of content authoring, knowledge sharing, and media-publishing websites.
- Have many tools to enable blogging and the development of wiki.
- Have had separate languages spring up around their uses.
Differences
Blogs and wikis, because they are different spaces, manifest/take advantage of/engage different epistemic and rhetorical possibilities and serve different rhetorical and epistemic ends. They engage different rhetorics: one topical, carved from the inside out; the other chronological, staying on top of things (Morgan).
Blog
A blog is a publicly posted diary or journal that reflects the personality and point of view of the author. In general, blogs are frequently updated, usually have a way of making comments, and are often hyperlinked. Blogs are structured in reverse chronological order and are a commentary about any and all topics by an individual. Blogs sometimes allow commentary, but not revision. Blogs present a uniform point of view and remain in control of the author.
A blog entry typically consists of the following:
- Title - the main title, or headline, of the post.
- Body - main content of the post.
- Permalink - the URL of the full, specific entry.
- Post Date - date and time the post was published.
A blog entry optionally includes the following:
- Comments
- Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses
- Trackback and or pingback - links to other sites that refer to the entry
Blogs can be made and maintained with a variety of different systems. Dedicated web applications can eliminate the need for bloggers to manage this software. With web interfaces, these systems allow travelers to blog from anywhere on the Internet, and allow users to create blogs without having to maintain their own server. Such systems allow users to work with tools such as Ecto, Elicit and w.bloggar which allow users to maintain their Web-hosted blog without the need to be online while composing or editing posts. Blog creation tools and blog hosting are also provided by some Web hosting companies (Tripod), Internet service providers (America Online), online publications (Salon.com) and internet portals (Yahoo! 360° or Google). Some advanced users have developed custom blogging systems from scratch using server-side software, and often implement membership management and password protected areas.
Wiki
A wiki enables documents to be written collectively in an extremely simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire body of pages is "the wiki"; in effect, a wiki is actually a very simple, easy-to-use user-maintained database for searching for or even creating information. Title, full-text, and recent changes searches are generally provided.
A wiki page consists of an original article written by one person, then other people make edits or contribute new content to the flow of information. A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Another wiki characteristic is hyperlinks, which are references in hypertext documents to other documents or resources. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature" cookie for autosigning edits. More private wiki servers require user authentication. Anyone within the community may revise already-existing content and many edits can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online.
Wikis present multiple points of view and can sometimes suffer from vandalism or damage to the site; the wiki philosophy is to undo damage versus the rigor of preventing damage and is called "soft security".
Wikis are a true hypertext medium, with non-linear navigational structures. Each page typically contains a large number of links to other pages. Hierarchical navigation pages often exist in larger wikis, often a consequence of the original page creation process, but they do not have to be used. Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern".
Originally, most wikis used CamelCase when naming program identifiers, produced by capitalizing words in a phrase and removing the spaces between them (the word "CamelCase" is itself an example of CamelCase). While CamelCase makes linking very easy, it also leads to links which are written in a form that deviates from the standard spelling. CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as "TableOfContents" and "BeginnerQuestions". Note that it is possible for a wiki to render the visible anchor for such links "pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. However, this reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is limited by the loss of capitalization information caused by CamelCase. For example, "RichardWagner" should be rendered as "Richard Wagner", whereas "PopularMusic" should be rendered as "popular music". There is no easy way to determine which capital letters should remain capitalized.
Simply put, blogs are about writing for a community and wiki is about writing within or in a community.
The main differences are as follows:
- Use of time vs. topic-linking to organize the material
- Ability to directly edit content else created - collaborative vs. individual
- Use of linking to organize within the context of an ongoing discussion
- Nature of content publishing (public or private)
Over time, the differences between blogs and wikis seem to be lessening as more and more bloggers invite input into their blogs and add hyperlinks. Recently a combination of blog and wiki has resulted in a new communication form entitled bliki.
Links
- Wikipedia Wiki Entry
- Wikipedia Blog Entry
- Wikipedia Bliki Entry
- A Time to Blog, A Time to Wiki, A Time to ...
- WhenBlogMeetsWiki
- frassle: Blogs vs. Wikis
- Blogs and Wikis and Content Publishing
- IAwikiBlog
- The Otter Group: Blogs vs. Wikis
Works Cited
- Denham, Grey. "Blogs or Wiki." Knowledge-at-work. 3 March 2003. <http://www.webassistant.com/site/Denham/blog_15.html>
- Morgan, M.C. "WikiAndBlog." Blogs And Wiki. 13 July 2006. Bemidji State University. <http://199.17.178.148/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl?WikiAndBlog>