Blogs vs. Wikis

According to the most popular wiki, Wikipedia, "a wiki is an application, typically a web application, which allows collaborative modification, extension, or deletion of its content and structure." According to Wikipedia on wikis, "while a wiki is a type of content management system, it differs from a blog or most other systems in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users." Blogs are similar to wikis, but they do have a defined owner or leader, often in the form of usernames. Instead of editing or removing another person's contribution, in a blog, users will comment and add onto the previous person's work, instead of removing it. Blogs allow for more collaboration towards a finished product that shows everyone's contributions, clearly structured. A wiki, on the other hand, only shows the finished product, with unclear contributions. An example of a blog showing collaboration could be found in a Brooklyn blog being used to take down crack houses, with users updating the neighborhood on what's happening in the next door houses. The comments and the different views helped the cops to piece together what was going on, and together, the neighborhood was able to get rid of the drug-dealers.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/nyregion/26bayridge.html?_r=0