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Monday, April 10, 2006

Article: Wikis, Blogs and Other Points of Failure - Is it Misinformation as Well?

I came across this recent column while catching up on my reading on my recent plane trip: Wikis, Blogs and Other Points of Failure. It points out some common concerns around the use of Wikis and Blogs inside corporations, but I feel like there's been too much discussion of this issue to the point where there is almost a negative stigma with these technologies.

In fairness to the article, he points out that these are tools much like email and the spreadsheet. The beauty of these tools is how simple they've made it to create content. And, just like email and spreadsheets, and even paper and pencil, you can create good or bad content. Let's not blame the tools. Let's not focus so much attention on these issues that we lose sight of the opportunity that we need to be evaluating. It's too easy to read this kind of article and think ... "oh, we shouldn't use those tools here in our corporation." And, that's my main issue with the article.

On a related note, I would be very curious how many of the problems that people talk about (such as leaking information) were done on blogs or wikis that were completely unsanctioned by the corporation. In other words, aren't a lot of these cases happening when an individual signs up with Blogger (or similar software) and begins publishing what they are doing to the world? Does that mean there is something bad about blog software in the enterprise?

Keywords: eLearning Trends

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