Blog v Wiki

The Merriam-Webster definition of blog is "a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer." Blogs are basically an online space where individuals share their thoughts, ideas, creations, really anything they want, to be shared with others usually in communities of shared interests. There are many blogging websites out there but a great example of one is Walmart's site checkoutblog.com. This is a site that is "written by little­known buyers, largely without editing." for the purpose of reviewing products that Walmart carries. (1) It is the personal opinions of buyers that can help consumers decide whether or not to buy certain products and maybe also gives suppliers some insight on how to improve their products.

The Merriam-Webster defintion of wiki is "a website that allows visitors to make changes, contributions, or corrections." Wikis are more of an informative platform meant to provide a source of information on a specific topic. They are generally managed by a group of users knowledgable or passionate about the topic and is continuously updated and improved. The largest wiki site in the world is Wikipedia, which is essentially a collection of wikis about basically anything and everything that is maintained by many people and is open to be updated or edited by the public. Although, it is generally a great source of information, Wikipedia is having a hard time prioritizing what kind of information they should be focusing on developing next as stated in Noam Cohen's Wikipedia Looks Hard at Its Culture, "Wikipedia was losing sight of its commitment to give everyone in the world a free encyclopedia, particularly people in sub-Saharan Africa. "Is it more important to get to 10 million articles in English, or 10,000 in Wolof?"" (2) Perhaps there should be more diversity in the teams that manage Wikipedia and start having projects dedicated to making every article accessible to as many people as possible in the world.

Blogs and wikis are both great sources of information, it just depends what kind of information you are looking for. Do you want someone's personal thoughts on a subject you are interested in or are you looking for more factual information that can be supported by evidence? Whatever the case, both types of sites provide an amazing way for people to collaborate and discuss areas they are interested in or experts in.