Comparison+table

=Comparing socialware= Richard Millwood: I started this after reading the emails in the KIDMM list in July 2009 relating to the contrast between Wikis, Blogs etc. I’d love people to develop it further, and to debate its concepts in the page discussion here... Help by:
 * editing the existing text;
 * adding rows or columns – don't be afraid!
 * adding ideas into the bottom row, 'Critique'

Knowledge Sharing How-To documents || Composed thoughts Explaining things Sharing web links and media Keeping members or customers updated || User-to-user support Open discussions Putting users in control of discussion || Short updates Quick sharing of info Light user interaction Bringing people to your site or community || Opinion pieces Real-time discussion || User-to-user interaction Collaboration on a central item Real-time discussion || Press releases Collaboration on a central item Real-time Q&A || Heavy user interaction Long bits of content Community home || AVForum / Digital Spy || Twitter, Facebook status ||
 * ~  ||~ Wiki ||~ Blog ||~ Forum ||~ Microblog ||
 * ~ Major anticipated purpose || To construct consensual knowledge through editing refinement over time || To share an individual's considered ideas and opinions || To discuss, debate, seek help and offer support || To maintain 'presence', spark ideas informally and maintain personal/professional network ||
 * = **Good For** || User collaboration on a central item
 * = **Not Good For** || User-to-user interaction
 * ~ Analogue analogue || Development of an encyclopaedia by multiple authors || Publication of diary or individual newspaper column || Conference || Informal and impromptu conversation (overheard at a cocktail party?) ||
 * ~ Actors & roles || Multiple contributors editing pages democratically; one or more manager defining visual design and controlling membership || Individual creates 'posts', readers monitor, read and perhaps contibute comments. Sometimes individual can be a small group acting as one, or guest blogger invited. || Multiple contributors of individual posts || Individuals loosely linked by following each other's posts resulting in dynamic overlapping networks ||
 * ~ Mutability || Everything, at every level, from spellings to new pages || Author can edit posts, but usually to add updates or correct spellings rather than to refine or radically change; comments usually immutable once made || Usually can edit for a limited time at best - posts seen as immutable record of what's said || Posts can be deleted but not edited ||
 * ~ Privileges || Democratic for content, organisers control membership || Author is in control and may censor comments || Individuals may have read or contribute privileges, often controlled by mediator who may censor; confidentiality can be used to promote trust and risking ideas || Defined by 'following' by readers and 'blocking' ie preventing followers by authors ||
 * ~ Audience || Usually public || Usually public || Usually a group with common purpose, basis for an online community || Followers defined by public request and acceptance (or not) by author ||
 * ~ Information structure || Hypertext, underlying versioning record of each node/page || Date-stamped sequence of posts || Hierarchy of date-stamped posts and responses in relation to topics in sub-fora || Date-stamped Sequence of posts ||
 * ~ Examples || This KIDMM wiki, Wikipaedia || WordPress, || I&DeA communities of practice
 * ~ Critique || # Flexible in its way, but little in the way of presenting the same information in different 'associations' such as listing a glossary according to different sort functions or categorisations.
 * 1) Can feel slippery underfoot as things change freely. || # Primarily individual in focus.
 * 2) Tuned for journalism rather than communal knowledge. || # Can end up unstructured and voluminous - search becomes essential.
 * 3) Can make the best of dialogic knowledge articulation. || # Fastest mover of knowledge.
 * 4) Sense of ephemeral and patchy knowledge. ||

JL adds 11 August, that this looks really good and useful.

He might want to add the search function?

He might also want to add the concept indexing?

He might also want to add Zoho, Wetpaint, Live Journal,ning, Scribd, and not be sure which class to enter them into, whereas presumably blogger isn't a problem. However as the functionality changes, these categories will collapse into one another.

Then there is the matter of medium which McLuhan said is the message. Video, Youtube, Flickr, and social media more generally, Facebook, are socialware.

There is for example the matter of creating a knew community in practice, where one didn't exist before.

Which of these matters depends on the subject, or organisational form, might need to be put into the action network, making it at least n dimensional and harder to represent in two dimenstions? By this I mean there are organisations, which are corporates, there are governments, there are consultants, contractors, who have a different relation from managers, employees, employers, there are small companies, charities, non governmentals, independent activists, (who might also be consultants) and the self employed. The modes and means of communication map. Then there is transport, education, health, the arts and humanities, science, research, teaching and learning, human resources (frown), development planning, or what ever. My method is now to take the action table above across some of these communities and see whether the table sticks.

JL adds, later that day, that he has noticed the google adds column. The first one is knowledge management which takes this case right back to the KIDMM matter: knowledge, information, data, metadata, documents, methods, matters, management; which is how these are distinguised. (this is a neotermic.)

He also adds that he wouldn't dream of adding a row or a column, having has some experience with this table cloth already.