Blogs and Wiki's are two of today's main sources for society to contribute their thoughts and ideas to public media. While these two types of media have the same main goal, they are approached and submitted differently.
When creating a blog, you create your own personal page filled with your contributions. Others of course can comment and "re-blog" your posts, but the only one who can change your original post is you. For example, in Michael Wilson's article about a Brooklyn Blog that led to a drug raid, one blogger posted that he heard, “Fighting and drug deals going down in the driveway of this house.” Someone then replied to his post: “I’ve heard loud fighting for almost a year now
but did not realize until recently that it’s a crack house.” Several comments confirmed the original post, and this collaboration led the detectives to this successful drug raid. This communication is what differs a blog from a wiki, as you can not "reply" to someone on a wiki. Also, someone would have been able to change the witnesses original post, and perhaps detectives would not have discovered the drug house in the area.
When it comes to wikis, anyone who creates an account can change and/or add anything to the page, regardless of it's accuracy. However, the concern for inaccuracies has been taken into account. John D. Sutter wrote about how Wikipedia has collected volunteer editors for the site to try to weed out the false statements. Perhaps wiki should require a credible source to accompany ever edit made to the page.
Hey Erica, I strongly agree with your points. Blogs and Wikis have created a great platform for users to express their thoughts and integrate their ideas together. Blogs are more of an individual contribution of information, but a main source of ideas where someone can read someone else's views and comment on what they think just like I am doing rite now. It is a great way for someone to express their knowledge and their thoughts with the world in their own personalized and safe way. In addition, wikis are also extremely useful in society. It is a collaboration of intelligence and ideas that can be edited and expanded by anyone who wishes to do so. It broadens the information available on the internet and gives its users a lot more of what their looking for. Blogs and wikis are overall great advents and contributions to the world of new media.
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