VERSIONS AND VANDALISM

Earlier, as we looked at Wikipedia, we saw how easy it is to edit someone else's wiki. Wikis, by their nature, are easy to edit, distort, slant, and so on. Visit a controversial Wikipedia entry (such as the biographies of John Kerry and George W. Bush during the 2004 election!) and you'll see how entries can change daily. Although that element of wikis worries some educators, others see it as their main strength: information is not static, but dynamic, and collaboration can allow us to build content for the common good.

Vandalism -- the malicious change or deletion of text on your wiki -- is a concern to both sides of the debate, however. If you used a wiki in your classroom and someone deleted all your students' hard work and added the entry "Mrs. Jackson has a big nose and smells funny," then you were the victim of a vandal.

So what to do? Most wikis provide a way to revert to earlier versions of a page. Imagine multiple drafts of a term paper, for example. If you saved each draft as a different file, or even just printed out each draft, then when your dog eats the final draft or your cat types nonsense into it, you can retrieve an older version and go from there.

On WikiPlay, accessing an earlier version is simple:

• To the left of the sentence you typed on WikiPlay, you'll see a list of dates and times. Click the phrase, "List all versions." You'll see a list of dates and times when someone added/changed something on the page.
  
• Click the date or time when you typed your sentence. Your sentence should disappear.
• Click the Restore Version button on the left to make that version the main one (for now!).
  

Note: The steps above (or the names of those steps) might vary from wiki to wiki, however the process is very similar across sites.

Next: Learn more.