Why Wikis are Better than Blogs

The problem with blogs is that they are organized (primarily) by time instead of thought structure.

A typical blog a stream of postings, presented most-recent-first. A convenient navigation bar lets the visitor find historical postings, by date, week or month. This format works well for regularly published information organized by date, such as a morning analysis of the stock market.

The problem is obvious: most "stuff" doesn't fit this format. Time-based postings quickly become disorganized and stale. The worst offenders are the "what I had for breakfast" bloggers, which are barely useful on the day they are posted. How many times have you Google'd a problem, to find a great blog entry on August 26th, only to later find an October 25th entry that supersedes it? Worse, how many times have you Google'd something only to find the "hit" you're reading is dated 1999?

The problem of historical flotsam and jetsam is only going to get worse as the Internet gets older. Blogging, as typically practiced, only makes it worse.

What really should happen: the new information should replace the dated information. Wikis don't enforce that model, but they certainly make it easier. They also make it easier to organize things by topic, instead of time.

Are you spending a lot of time publishing a blog? Try spending some time publishing a personal wiki instead (like this one). One day you might write a new article, on another day you might update and revise an old one. If your readers still crave the blog-style, have them check out recent changes.

-andy, 02/06/2006

Update

4/12/2006 -- Since I wrote this note, I've updated some of other content: I changed my Digital Photography page to mention the new Canon 30D, and I updated my Verizon FiOS page to reflect success in getting reverse DNS lookups deployed.

These edits are great examples of the point I'm trying to make: what's most useful; a blog entry A with an updated entry B posted sometime later, or a single article X reflecting the best, current information?

07/27/2007 -- I finally joined the masses and started a blog. I still think Wikis are better for certain kinds of content (e.g. reference content).