As I continue with my collaborative experiment eCube, I am attempting to integrate and popularize the organization Wiki. I am finding working with Wiki much harder than working with a Blog. I find Wikis more complex and less user-friendly, which sort of defeats the purpose I guess. With my blog, I find I have more control over what I want, how I want the content to appear, and linking other content in my blog. Wiki seems to present me complex codes to create a meaningful page. While I guess once I learn the ropes of Wikis I will be able to make the most of it, but for now the learning curve of the Wiki is much steeper. My worry is that my usage of Wiki will be limited to reading and not contributing.
Is it just me or are Wikis actually harder to learn than Blogs?
Blog is more of an editorial post, with more on authors & comments/conversation to convey the message/purpose.
Wiki is more of content management, documentation, set of linked pages. Kind of intranet to share information. It has got tags, categories,labels,RSS. all that what blogs have.
Wiki really shine where you have document orientated model where contributors shares and discuss about the contents.
Yes, you need some skills to understand some technical stuff about Wikis before you want to make use of it.
Thanks for the inputs. This is useful in my Web 2.0 experiment.
It probably depends which software you’re trying to use. Some blog software is easier to use than others, and similarly with wiki software. It tends to be a trade-off between an interface that’s easy to use and one which is extendable. It’s possible that you’re simply more familiar with blog interfaces, and not with wikis./ I can use any word-processor or text editor for example, but image editors have me struggling every time because it’s out of my comfort zone…
Thanks Helen. I found a link to Common Craft’s video on Wikis in Plan English on your site. Was great. I still need to do some more work on understanding how to use wikis and your comments are very helpful.