Of Weblogs and Wikis
In the never ending quest to find better tools, I’m torn between two approaches to publishing online: weblogs and wikis. Both tools stroke my ego by making it possible to print my pithy perspective. And both tools appease my laziness, by making it simple to organize my stuff.
Weblogs are good at showing what’s been happening, like what I’ve been thinking and reading. They’re also good at getting the word out about what I write, and letting people know when new articles are available. As an afterthought, weblogs track categories too, which allows my readers to explore veins of stuff I’ve done in the past.
Categories in my weblog, though, don’t seem to be particularly effective. My site statistics show that only a few percent of people ever touch the category-based archives. Most of my traffic is split between people reading what’s new (front page and RSS feeds) and people following links from other sites.
Wikis solve the opposite problem, they organize mountains of information. They’re great for things like software projects and personal notebooks, but not so hot for seeing a snapshot of topics over time.
Both wikis and weblogs solve their own organizational problems well, and both fail at what the other excels at. Weblogs are mini newspapers. Great for short, pointless bits, but a shitpile when it comes to managing large mounds of information. Wikis are books, great for piles of information can be broken into pages, chapters, and topics. The problem is that warped needs both problems solved, without the drawbacks of either tool.
Of the two tools, I’m finding that wikis are the better breed. The name threw me off the first time I heard it, but the approach is incredible: they make it trivial to write about stuff that references other stuff. Good wikis, like MediaWiki, provide a simple markup format, quick ways to reference other material in the wiki, and simple tools to categorize, index, and cross-index it all. It’s like a blank note book waiting to be filled.
But I still like the snapshot effect of the weblog, so I’m dreaming of a way to provide a useful weblog view from my wiki. Or maybe I’ll find a way to include wiki pages from my weblog posts. Or maybe I’ll make my weblogging tool more like a wiki. Now I just have to decide where to put this article …