Better Late than Never

    I got a really interesting e-mail question from Tadge about three weeks ago.  Then the holidays hit and I got distracted.  (Sorry, Tadge.)  He asked a really good question, one that I’d like to think about some more, but I thought I’d share (with his permission, of course):

I am an Instructional Technology Specialist in Upstate NY and we are
going to be building a Wiki to help our teachers. With the recent
Wikipedia  incident relating to John Seigenthaler and the defaming that
occurred I am wondering about disclaimers and such that should be added
to our prospective wiki. I am curious if you have thought about this at
all. I know I heard a discussion that Bob Sprankle, you, and another
gentleman earlier this week. One comment was about students use of
blogs and conversation that is had within the classroom.

Unfortunately I work for a Board of Cooperative Educational Services,
and we serve over 50,000 students across 10 districts. I am not so
worried about students defacing the wiki, but rather preparing for
others prospective questions about the concern. I know one thing that I
am considering is making the wiki require a password (though I may am
some what against it). I noticed that you don’t have a disclaimer on
your wiki and was wondering if this was purposeful or just not thought
about?
 

I didn’t put one up because I didn’t think to do so.  He further elaborated:

My concern with a wiki, that is completely open like Wikipedia, would
be someone defacing it without my knowledge, or an anonymous IP doing
damage. I know that it comes down to respecting other peoples space and
citizenship, but the Internet has no governing body. Personally the
disclaimer issue has been bouncing around in my head recently. I am
thinking something simple if the wiki has some sort of security
attached to it. Such as requiring a password and login to be created.
The level of security though can inhibit the exchange of ideas, as well
as turn some people away. I am have just been doing some research about
it trying to put a process in place before making it public. I know
that there are skeptics and I want to be able to intrigue the early
adopters and make the fence sitters see the benefits.

At the same time I don’t know everything about technology and I want
others with more knowledge to be able to share it if they would like.
This is why I am thinking of taking some security measures, whether
that is requiring passwords or putting a watch on all pages I haven’t
really figured it out. I appreciate your thoughts and did get another
response about a college who is using wikis and they have actually
locked them down to prevent hacking and defacing. I will let you know
how things are going.

  So — what do y’all think?  I know that I’ve been fighting wiki spam lately — a related issue, but not specifically what Tadge is asking about.  What sorts of disclaimers would you write for a wiki?  Do we need to do so?  Here’s a sandbox — go to work if you’d like.  (Background — Bob Sprankle’s amazing students did a podcast on the John S. story.  It’s a great listen!