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Blogs, Wikis, Feeds:  Definitions, etc.

Exploration Guide: 
Educational Uses of Blogs [Etc.]
The TLT Group

Blogs,    Wikis,    Blogs vs. Wikis,    RSS & Other Feeds (& Aggregators)

[Also see:  "Collaborative Software" Overview from Wikipedia - lots of categories]

Blogs vs. Wikis
Blog users can post, modify, or delete their own content on a Website using a browser interface.
Wiki users can modify any entry, even material posted by others, on a collaboratively developed Website.

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Blogs
What is a Weblog/blog?
 [From http://www.blogger.com/about.pyra]
A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly—from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.
Blog posts are like instant messages to the Web.

Observation from Steve Gilbert
At any instant, a blog is no more or less than a special kind of Webpage.  The differences between a blog and a Webpage are:

1.  The purposes and style of the text entries on the blog/Webpage

2.  The minimal level of Web technical expertise required to launch, modify, or add to the blog/Web page

From "Blogs" by Jay Cross
[from "Learning Circuits" Website at  http://www.learningcircuits.org/
2002/apr2002/ttools.htm]

"Blog stands for Web-log, an informal personal Website. Thousands of people blog every day. (Blog is both a noun and a verb.) I’ve blogged for 18 months, and I’m convinced that blogs are destined to become a powerful, dirt-cheap tool for e-learning and knowledge management.

"A blog is defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often accompanied by links to other blogs that the site’s editor visits on a regular basis. Think of a blog as one person’s public diary or suggestion list. Early blogs were started by Web enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on the Internet. They added commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another’s blogs. A community culture took hold.

"In 1999, blogging software arrived on the scene, enabling anyone to post content to a Website. Generally, blog software comes with a personal Website for those who don’t already have one. The software captures your words in dated entries, maintaining a chronological archive of prior entries. In the spirit of sharing inherent to Net culture, the software and the personal Websites are usually free."
 

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 Wikis
"…a Wiki is a collaborative website comprised of the collective work of many authors. …"
[From http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/space/Definition+of+a+Wiki
Created by mphillip. ]

What's a Wiki?
Half of a Hawaiian term for quick. Any other questions?
Ok, a Wiki is a collaborative website comprised of the collective work of many authors.
A Wiki allows users to easily upload, edit, and interlink pages. At their best, Wikis foster vibrant online discussion, proceeding in unpredictable, interactive ways.
The first wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995. They're increasingly popular with scientists, software engineers, knowledge communities, & others collaborating on projects.
...
Notable Wikis
Wikipedia: an open content encyclopedia
Everything2: a community-edited "microsociety"

Why Wiki Works 
[from http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WhyWikiWorks]
* Any information can be changed or deleted by anyone. Wiki pages represent consensus because it's much easier to delete flames and spam than indulge them. What remains is naturally meaningful.
* Anyone can play. This sounds like a recipe for low signal - Wiki gets hit by the great unwashed as often as any other site - but to make an impact on Wiki, you need to generate real content. Anything else will be removed. So anyone can play, but only good players last.
* Wiki is not WysiWyg. It's an intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a Wiki page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal to the Video Addicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't participate, which leaves the rest of us to get on with rational discourse.
* Wiki doesn't work in real time. People take time to think, sometimes days or weeks, before they follow up some edit. So what people write is generally well-considered.
* Wikizens are by nature a pedantic, ornery, and unreasonable bunch. So there's a camaraderie and understanding here we seldom see outside of our professional contacts.
So that's it - insecure, indiscriminate, user-hostile, slow, and stocked with difficult, nit-picking people. Any other online community would count each of these as a terrible flaw. Perhaps Wiki works because the other online communities don't.

Characteristics of a Wiki 
[from http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/space/Characteristics+of+a+Wiki
Created by mphillip.]

What's a Wiki like?
Here are some general features of a Wiki that came into play in RAP. This list is loosely based on some of the design principles laid out by Ward Cunningham.
***
Open
Any user can edit any entry. This includes adding content, turning exiting content into links, or changing content altogether. Involves trust, a sense of collectivity.

Organic
The structure and content of the site evolves as long as it's used. Users continually define extent of site.

Mundane
Easily learned coding conventions, for activities like building inside & outside links, formatting text, uploading images (here are the codes we used)

Incremental
Entries can cite other entries, including pages that have not been written yet. Encourages interconnection.

Precise
Entry titles encourage focus, highlighting of crucial terms & concepts.

Observable
Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any visitor to the site. (Google searches pointing to this site)

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RSS and Other Feeds, and Aggregators

RSS and other “feeds,” together with “feed-readers” and “aggregators,” help connect Web authors and their audience.  Perhaps to over-simplify:

1.  Authors can choose to notify others automatically of new entries or changes to part of a Website or blog by creating a "feed" for that Web element.

2.  Others may choose to be notified automatically of those new entries or changes by subscribing to such "feeds."

Choosing to receive notification is called "subscribing" to the feed for that part of that Website.  Along with notification, the subscriber usually gets some form of direct access to the new or changed material.   

"Subscribers" can choose to use an intermediate service (“aggregator”) to manage their access to feeds from multiple Web sites and blogs more pleasantly and efficiently.  "Aggregators" (and related tools) permit anyone to organize, control, and routinely monitor "feeds" from any selected list of Websites, blogs, etc.  Many aggregators can notify the user about new updates and make the titles, excerpts, or full text of those updates directly available to the user.  Aggregators may permit the user a variety of choices about how and when to be notified.  An aggregator may only work with Websites, etc. that include certain specified kinds of feeds.

RSS and similar standard "feeds" hide almost all of the underlying computer programming complexity from both authors and subscribers in the same way that most blogging tools hide from bloggers what is going on about building and modifying Web pages. 

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