Blog V Wiki

     Blogs and wikis are two very powerful tools for the purpose of collaborative work between corporations, within corporations, and also personal use. Blogs and Wikis are similar due to the fact that they both incorporate the input of multiple users. For blogs the input is made as comments following an initial post by the blogger. A prime example of the blogger and commenter relationship can be seen in the New York Times article by Michael Wilson called "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead Drug Raid." In this article it was said that one blogger made a post about drug deals and loud noises coming from a certain house, and later commenters replied saying that they've also heard loud fighting noises. Another comment that drew attention to the house was the comment about multiple deaths in the vicinity of the house. Eventually police the bloggers and they're comments were enough to get the attention of the police. As Wilson puts it "peering turned to blogging, and blogging turned to action, as neighbors started filing complaints with the 68th Precinct station house and attending Community Board 10 meetings and generally making noise until a narcotics investigation began, leading to the arrests."
      The way users interact on a wiki is a little different than that of a blog. In a wiki users collectively work on one piece of information. Everyone is capable of adding to it, editing it, viewing it, and updating it. Having  a wiki allows all information to be up to date and accessible to everyone. As state by Margaret Locher in her article "More on How to Build Your Own Wiki," "Almost half of those who use wikis said they employ them primarily as a collaboration tool." In her article she talks about companies that took advantage of wikis as a tool for their employees to keep in touch and work on projects together. This system of collaborative work is very efficient in the sense that all the users work and improve on each others work. This makes less room for error and more bang for the buck for the corporation.
     I think that one new way wikis can used is by programmers. Talented programmers can write up to a certain number of lines of code every hour without any mistakes. If you were to have a team of programmers writing lines of code and updating the wiki, the next programmer could possible have already finished the next line and therefore speed up the programing process. Also this allows other programmers to view and edit errors in the lines of code.
     Wikis and blogs can be used by everyone. Through collaboration and teamwork every task at hand should and will become easier, faster and more efficient.