Anastasia, the way Dr. Goodacre talks about it makes sense to me–the blog is for talking out nascent research ideas; the gateway is for directing people to credible resources. I’d thing a healthy blog-wiki combo might function the same way.

By the way, when I said `hurt or hindered’ above, I meant `helped or hindered’; I’m pretty sure no high-level academics are aware of my blog to be affected one way or the other.

If all we’re looking for is a google accessible source of general information, you’ve got a much better argument for wikis than for blogs.

My university did set up 4-6 blogs on student life by students as a recruiting tool for future students. I bet schools with biggers sports programs also have offical blogs (formerly known as columnists) on their sports program. For that matter, how long before this is another duty for coaches. So why should actual academic pursuits not be part of the trend?

As for blogging, I too have heard the warnings. I took up the blogosphere mainly because I wasn’t meeting with any success in conventional fields at the time and I was becoming aware of a growing tendency not just in the professional world at large, but in `auxiliary’ parts of the humanities, especially in heritage and conservation, to take blogs as serious evidence of intent to outreach. I was hoping vaguely to demonstrate to enquirers that I was a viable academic despite lack of conventional evidence as yet: I put up my first webpages at the same time for the same reason. Blogs seem to have become professionally acceptable outside academia, though, and I guess I’m hoping, as Derek and Michelle also suggest, that they will break their way inside. By that token, I keep mine very academic, and leave my life out of it. So far I’ve had no reason to suppose that it’s hurt me or hindered me; academics at the hiring level in the UK don’t really use the Internet that way.

My students, on the other hand, have found me very quickly and been highly impressed that I’ve even heard of Web 2.0… Clearly I look older than I feel

I would think that blogging would fit in with the study of popular medievalism.

I seen the articles. And I’m on the job market. Blogging and wiki-work and collaborative sites don’t count for hiring or tenure. Yet.

Peer-reviewed materials are essential for scholarship to move forward, but but there’s no reason why we can expand where that happens.

Consider this — if someone goes on the academic job market, or up for tenure or promotion at their current job, how much will blogging help them? Not at all, though that rather-boring-yet-well-placed-article-that-no-one-will-ever-read WILL help them. On the other hand, anecdotal evidence suggests that blogging can hurt a job search, by offering the impression that the academic has a frivolous approach to his material, or that he’s wasting time better spent doing other kinds of scholarship, etc.

If you look through the archives of the Chronicle of Higher Ed, you’ll find many articles about the dangers of blogging (ANY kind of blogging, even about your hobbies) for the academic, but no articles I can think of about the benefits of blogging.

The upshot is this: The system and culture in place for evaluating academic performace treats blogging as at best irrelevant, and at worst a sign of lack of scholarly gravitas. I do my own work DESPITE these pressures, but I’m not sure I would have done so if I didn’t have a few books and articles already on my CV.

I’m not defending the academic culture that has created this atmosphere, but individual academics sometimes are not in a position to take such risks. After all, when’s the last time the US News college rankings cited a school’s blogging or wiki-editing professors as a reason for high rank?

You’ll be doing the same on yours, right?