At Gilbane San Francisco this week, I was asked what the differences between a blog, a discussion board, and a wiki are. The title pretty much gives away where the discussion went… but here was the thought process:
- Although a blog facilitates a conversation through trackbacks, in many instances a blog serves as a soap box for a monolog. Personally, comments do not to seem to be crucial to many of the blog sites I visit.
- A discussion board facilitates dialog between visitors.
- A wiki facilitates creation of a catalog of information gathered across visitors.
For many of the people that came by, this metaphor seemed to help clarify things. It focuses on the mode of communication and can easily be conceptualized.
Bill– Great to have met you at Gilbane. I like your classification as it has a good mnemonic. Though I think ultimately the best answer is that these are all slices of a single system– which is what motivated me to pull them together under a grand unified model. There is a way for blogs to be constructive and foster dialogues– if only the author responds to the comments. It’s not a universal practice.
Also here’s a crucial difference between wikis and blogs I aired at one of the sessions: normative vs. narrative.