Another of the great myths about wikis is that because they can be edited by anybody they will be inaccurate.
Firstly, as we discussed earlier, “anyone” doesn’t really mean “everyone.” You decide who can contribute to the wiki and how they can contribute. So, you can limit access to those you trust. However, be aware that as you tighten access you may end up with just the opinions of a small number of contributors, and you won’t be able to harvest the collective knowledge and experience of the community.
If you are going to lock a wiki down so tightly that only a privileged few can contribute and no one can comment, then you may as well just set up a traditional static website or even produce a printed (or PDF) version of your information. However, if you don’t want anyone to contribute to your content, but you do want a mechanism for encouraging and harvesting feedback, then a tightly controlled wiki may still add value.
It may seem natural to assume that the larger the pool of contributors, the greater the opportunity for inaccuracy. Yet a 2005 study by the academic magazine, Nature, cited by Stewart Mader in Wikipatterns[Mader07], showed that the most open wiki, Wikipedia, is no less accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica, and that when mistakes do occur they are corrected much more quickly. In wikis with larger communities, people with particular areas of interest will tend to monitor and review the pages that match their own areas of expertise and fix mistakes quickly.
A wiki’s roll-back capability also means that if mistakes or inaccuracies are introduced, it is very easy to restore a previous version.