To blog (or wiki) or not to blog.... that is the question

Can information on blogs and wikis replace officially-sanctioned information sources, such as docs.sun.com and support web sites? If so, how do customers know where to find the most accurate and most current information? We've been having an interesting discussion on one of the Sun internal aliases about these questions. Rather than continuing to have Sun employees talk about this issue, it seems obvious that we really need to find out from our customers. I'll give you a few of my thoughts, but really I want to know what y'all think about this issue.

From my personal experience, it seems as though one of the main issues is how to let people know that information on a given site (whether a regular web site, a wiki, or a blog) is "valid." We've talked about this issue off-and-on for years (at Sun and elsewhere). If a given site is part of an official domain (blogs.sun.com, wikis.sun.com), does that automatically mean that all information on that site is guaranteed by the company to be valid? There is undoubtably a legal answer to that question, but I'm not looking at the legal question right now. From a customer (reader, user) perspective, do you assume that all information within a given company domain is always correct? I would think that the realistic answer is "no, , but it's more likely to be correct than information that comes from a location outside of that domain."

Okay, so if information from a given domain (sun.com, in this case) is more likely to be valid than information from outside the domain, are there certain kinds of sites that you trust more than others? Again, looking at the sun.com domain, we have docs.sun.com, Sun's documentation web site. That site is where we publish our official, branded Sun documentation. Information that is provided on that site has been through technical review, editorial review, and quality review. Our customers have learned that this site is a great place to go to find accurate information. However, that is not the only site that Sun has on which you can find answers to your problems. Sometimes, answers are on technical supports sites or contained in blogs or on wikis. Does the fact that information is not on docs.sun.com make it less valid? Are there certain key indicators that a given piece of information is more likely to be correct and current? How do you decide whom to trust?

We (Sun) are trying to find the most efficient and effective ways to get you information. If you like the flexibility of wikis and blogs, let us know that. If you prefer that all information be "official and branded," let us know that too. If you have ideas as to how we can better identify information that is "Sun-approved," those ideas would be nice to hear too. Thanks for your thoughts.

Posted at 10:04AM Oct 11, 2007 by jcinfoblog in General  |  Comments[6]