Question

I'm currently developing a knowledge base for my company and we have already built a blog using a third party solution.

However, going through it, the functionality is a lot like the blog. We have an inline wyiswyg editing experience on both. Both systems store their data the same way. Both systems have categories. Both systems allow users to create new entries... etc..

Both systems support tagging, commenting, and searching...

So what I'm wondering is, what high level difference (functionality wise) is there between a blog and a knowledge base.

I feel like I could just reskin the knowledge base to be bloggy and call it a blog platform..

Are there any hard differences between what a knowledge base should be and a blog platform should be? If I can isolate where they differ I think I can re-engineer the system to function as both under separate configurations.

Was it helpful?

Solution

You might look on Wikipedia:

a blog ...

is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first).

a knowledge base (or KB) ...

is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems

So I think the distinction is that a blog is a set of posts written by and for human beings, while a KB is structured, and supposed to somehow be processable and processed by software. Read also about knowledge-based systems, inference engines (e.g. CLIPS ...) & business rules engines

However, for some technology providers, a KB is mostly a buzzword or a marketing term, and may just refer to some hypertext tool (with some limited indexing and searching abilities)

OTHER TIPS

Here are some of the key differences between a blog and knowledge base -

  • A blog supports editorial text modification while a knowledge base supports collaborative text modification.
  • A blog is most suitable for opinion sharing
  • On a blog, navigation occurs mainly with the help of categories and tags while in a knowledge base, the navigation happens mainly via search and in-text hyperlinks.
  • For using a blog, the users should know HTML whereas, in a knowledge base, the contributors are advised to know wiki syntax. Easy visual editors are present too.
  • A blog is a perfect platform for implementing individual projects while a knowledge base is most suitable where strengthening team collaboration is the end target.
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