Blogs vs Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are both platforms where people can freely express and spread their ideas. Because both platforms have limited learning curves, they are both simple to use. Their platforms are also great ways for people to collaborate in updating readers on the latest news.

However, they are both different in nature. Blogs are platforms where only the owner will be able to update posts. However, wikis are pages that allow multiple users to update. Blogsposts are also tagged with dates whereas wiki updates are not tagged with dates. Bloggers are able to tailor their page to include the content that they want and how this content is portrayed. On the other hand, wiki pages are simple in formatting, and is difficult for one single user to format because anyone can change its display and content. Finally, blogs are different from wikis because blogs usually include a signature indicating the owner of the post, whereas wiki users are normally anonymous. Wiki pages are more useful in collaborative efforts because they provide a platform that permits many-to-many communication.

Unfortunately, there are also downsides to the nature of wiki pages. Because of users' ability to posts anonymously, some users may be able to post sensitive information at no cost. According to Noam Cohen, who wrote A Rorschach Cheat Sheet on Wikipedia?, psychologists were enraged with the idea of having ink blots posted on the platform to review. Many people say that this compromises the effective of the Rorschach Test and limits psychologists to other diagnostic tests that are not as well-established.

Another downside of Wikipedia is its lack of reliability. The artical Wikipedia Looks Hard at Its Culture suggests that errors in wiki pages resonates around the world. Because many people rely on Wikipedia for information about certain topics, few people choose to fact check what's written. This causes an issue because ideas are spread instantaneously. Many people would be misled if erroneous ideas are spread.

Convergence is important in today's world because of tie vast amount of information that is available to us. While it is advantageous to have so much informations available, it may also be burdensome to extract information that we want from this database. Therefore, collaboration and convergence of knowledge will allow us to better tailor the information that we need. By working together, we are able to combine ideas from people of different backgrounds and expertise. We are able to collaborate on blogs by establishing a blog list that includes posts that are relevant to our topics of choice. Finally, a new use for wiki pages would be for students in a class to collaborate on one research topic. Research may be added to the wiki page along the course of the class. Ultimately, the wiki page would have detailed analysis of the topic at the end of the course.