The blog –even my dog has one! Blogs – typically personal, spontaneous, static and chronological. A blogger will post something – an opinion, a journal, a link and others will comment and opine. Blogs serve as a good way to capture what is happening at the moment – like a working memory. Issues are not necessarily updated after they happen, unless the blogger links back to them. They are searchable, if the blogger attaches key words to their posts. All links tend to be outside the blog.

Wikis –It must be true, I saw it on wikipedia Wikis are more like a collective and collaborative space, where groups of people will add information and knowledge in a repository. Wikis can serve as reference places for groups who are trying to capture information and updating it as necessary. They are editable by groups of people, versus a blog where edits may be limited to one person or a selected team. Unlike blogs, Wikis create whole documents and wikiwebs instead of individual posts on subjects, thus creating a web of knowledge. Since wikis are spaces of collaboration, they are mediated or moderated, which is not the case in blogs.

Whose using what at NOAA?- a brief sampling ORR/Hazmat uses Trac, which gives them a common place to put documents, code, summaries of meetings – serves like a wiki, but is more like project management software NOS-CSC uses JIRA/Sharepoint for forums and collaboration. According to their developers blogs are great for things like meetings or large conferences to update information to people at the office. NGDC – used wikis for corporate knowledge and blogs for individual work logs including notes, discoveries and problems. NGDC has a wiki on their public page for metadata resources.