A blog or weblog is a diary of sorts. It's created through a single author and it's purpose can be to maintain an ongoing chronicle or memoir of information/events/thoughts. It's layout is contemporary where previous posts become stale and are not meant to be updated or kept up with time. A previous post only lives on through it's comments and replies. A wiki on the other hand is created through multiple authors.
A wikis upkeeping and contribution is a collaboration of multiple authors. Unlike a blogs chronicle posting, a wiki can contain multiple pages of information. These pages can be edited, changed, added as the wiki life progresses. This keeps it from being irrelevant over time as it is constantly updated. For the most part the information a wiki contains is "knowledge" where as a blog is opinion driven. A wiki can rapidly grow exponentially due to its ability of contributing authors while a blog grows only at the ability of its author creating single posts.
Wikis are a powerhouse of information put forth through collaboration. This collaboration is limited in a blog due it only being able to collect comments from multiple users on a post by one. Similarly to forum, a blog can be used for collaboration if author is looking to get comments on a certain build or idea. Ultimately, both have their purpose and have impacted the way people communicate and collaborate.
A good use of a blog and wiki which I'm looking forward to do is as a project management tool. I'll be looking into seeing how Microsoft Project can tie into a wiki and use it to document an entire project from start to finish. The blog will include daily updates for the entire team while and the wiki will document all its technical details like submittals and spec sheets. I will post a link to a good read I found on using a wiki to run your business more efficiently.
There seems to be conflict with the information on wiki being reliable. Students are restricted in certain classes to use wiki for information towards research papers as its information is not from a credible source or it contains bias information. I have posted a link to information on this below as well. Perhaps there can be a credential given to approved wiki pages whose authors are certified and the information they provide is approved by an over all committee. This would call for a approval stamp on all certified pages. I believe if something of this is sorted out wiki will become the ultimate information monopoly online.
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