An increasing number of businesses are finding a need
for
wiki management. This role requires an awareness of the various
problems that wikis can generate, some of which may not be
immediately obvious.
There is a danger of "trashing" or "trolling", meaning malicious
posting of obscene or defamatory text or images, or posting of
irrelevant material.
Ideally, each sector of a wiki should be checked daily.
Gatekeepers must be on the look out for erroneous, irrelevant or
inferior material, and they should also be aware of positively
undesirable material, which must then be removed.
In the case of obscene and other malicious material, the
perpetrator should be banned from further access. Software to
identify obscene material exists, though this is usually a simple
task to administrate manually if the site is being monitored
properly.
Copyright infringement
There is also a subtler danger: infringement of copyrighted
material. This is rarely malicious, but could land a wiki
administrator in real trouble. Copyright material, unlike the other
kinds of undesirable material, is hard to spot.
Most people have only the haziest idea of what copyright is and
how it works. The music industry's aggressive pursuit of copyright
infringers has aroused a good deal of opposition to the concept,
and some may even relish the idea of striking a blow for
freedom.
Yet the penalties for infringing copyright can be severe. The
usual consequences include an action for damages with a requirement
to account for any sales, an injunction, or even a criminal
conviction.
Public-domain material
I have heard it said that "public domain" means something that
has already been published. In fact, text or graphic material is
usually copyrighted for 70 years from the death of the originator
or copyright owner.
For example, a postcard from 1910 will be out of copyright 70
years after the photographer or copyright owner dies. If the
photographer was 30 in 1910 and lived until 1960, the image will be
in copyright until 2030. This means that even media more than 100
years old may well still be in copyright.
A way of dealing with this is to suspend postings until a
gatekeeper has checked provenance by determining the source of
material and identifying the copyright owner. This is done by
deciding whether the poster is the copyright owner. If not, the
poster must have the written consent of the copyright owner.
The danger with this is that many would-be contributors will not
know who the copyright owner is, and there is a risk that good
contributions will never be posted.
An alternative for text contributions is to suggest that those
wishing to contribute something they suspect may be within
copyright should paraphrase material, since it is the actual words
that constitute the copyright, not the thoughts behind the
words.