There is a general perception that wikis, and in particular the well-known online encyclopedia Wikipedia (http://Wikipedia.org), are highly inaccurate. This is a common misconception based on the idea that if “anyone” can contribute, then the quality of data will suffer because there is no editorial control. In fact, the opposite has happened. Posted content is not subject to the whims, preferences, or even prejudices of a single editor or editorial board; it is now subject to the review of the whole community. As a consequence, other subject matter experts can comment, change, and contribute quickly and easily.
People with a passion for a particular subject tend to self-police the areas of a wiki covering that subject. They make changes very quickly, even on a public site like Wikipedia. If some misleading or incorrect information is posted (and that does happen fairly frequently), then it is often very quickly challenged and corrected.
Studies have shown that the number of “mistakes per article” on Wikipedia is actually lower than in the venerated print Encyclopedia Britannica, and that when mistakes are spotted they are corrected much more quickly online than in the printed volumes. We’ll be covering the subject of content contribution and monitoring in more depth later on.