(2016-02-22) Caulfield Can Blogs And Wiki Be Merged

[Mike Caulfield: Can Blogs and Wiki Be Merged? Wiki and blogs have two different cultures, two different idioms, two different sets of values.

Blogs value a separation of voices, the development of personalities, new posts over revision of old posts

Wiki is perhaps the only web idiom that is not a child of BBS culture. It derives historically from pre-web models of hypertext, with an emphasis on the "pre"."

What wiki brought to these models, which were personal to start with, was collaboration. Wiki values are often polar opposites of blogging values.

Yet, the recent work of Ward Cunningham to create federated wiki communities moves wiki a bit more towards blogging

As I’ve been working on Wikity (my own federated wiki inspired project) I’ve been struggling with this question: to what extent is there value in breaking down the wall between blogging and wiki, and to what extent are these two technologies best left to do what they do best?

I’d say it makes sense for these to remain two conceptually distinct projects, except for the big looming issue which is with the open web shrinking it might helpful for these communities to join common cause and solve some of the problems that have plagued both blogging and wiki in their attempt to compete with proprietary platforms.