Dean Giustini posted a good summary of why maintaining a wiki is hard work. The top 5 reasons are listed below along with my comments on how this relates to maintaining a blog. The comments come from my personal experience of keeping up with 3 blogs since 2005.Five reasons why wiki'ing is hard work:
1. Content creation
I use 2 approaches:
- comment on medical news stories, journal articles, blog posts and Twitter (this post is an example)
- write original posts
Writing blog posts takes time but is an excellent way to keep up with the new developments and to create a personal archive available from any Internet-connected device.
2. Wiki spam
Deleting spam comments is part of the blog maintenance. I use Blogger.com word verification and all comments are emailed to me the moment they are posted. In general, spam comments are deleted within a few minutes.
3. Updating entries
I often update old posts whenever new information is available. The new links are added at the bottom of the post in the "related reading" section and the date of the update is recorded. Often, I prefer to update an old post rather than write a new one.
4. Authority
My blogs clearly list who is responsible for the content and what their credentials are. The readers may decide for themselves whether a particular author is authoritative or not.
5. Minimal use
Most visitors to my blogs come from Google, read 1-2 pages and stay only a few seconds. This pattern is the same across most medical blogs that allow open access to their SiteMeter statistics. However, there are quite a few visitors (mostly from .edu domains) who read more than 30-50 pages and stay up to one hour on the site. I work for the second group.
Wikis Explained in Plain English
References:
Five Reasons Why Wiki'ing is Hard Work. UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog.
Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.
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