Many physicians express concern over the integrity of content written on a wiki due to the democratic nature of the platform. At WikEM, we take a diligent approach to overseeing edits. This post will describe our Wiki Review Process
The first part of the process involves eliminating anonymous edits. This decreases the risk of vandalism and requires users to register with the wiki so we can track all edits related to each account. The second step in the review process, is called “Edit Patrol”. The wiki software flags all new edits for patrol by our editorial staff. Only long standing wiki editors on the editorial board have the ability to mark an edit as patrolled. Even our editorial board must have their edits patrolled by other members. Below is a screenshot of what our editorial board sees:
Each exclamation mark indicates an unpatrolled edit and the history of the page and differential changes can be compared.
We are more liberal than traditional peer review where the default is to be closed to new publications. All edits are initially published to the wiki but the editorial committee can quickly and easily roll back any incorrect edit to a page and correct wrong information.
The last safeguard is a time delayed publication to our mobile platform. Devices do not immediately receive edits in case new content is incorrect. This provides time for edit patrol, revision and discussion to take place on the individual talk pages attached to each page.