WikiPermanence+and+referencing


 * Topics arising / assuring permanence of wiki content; issues of citation/reference**

=Assuring the permanence of wiki content, and issues of citation/reference= If a wiki is being used to accumulate a knowledge-base, how can one make sure that the knowledge-base will not evaporate at some point in the future? How does one archive wiki content? If a wiki is changing all of the time, how can one make a reference to a particular page, and to the state that a page was in when it was referred to?

//(This is a stub, awaiting a proper seeing to)//

Some of the issues we could address on this page:
 * It may be worth reviewing Wikipedia’s reputation in the academic community. Many teachers in higher education will not accept references in student essays to Wikipedia articles and it might be worth unpicking just why that is. There are likely to be multiple issues here — uneven quality, lack of peer editorial oversight, uncertainty about who authored what, and the difficulty of citing pages the content of which is liable to be changed constantly and in uncertain ways.
 * What mechanisms exist for ‘snapshotting’ wiki sites and archiving them in frozen form? If not on a sitewide basis, what about for a page view on a particular date? And is there any way of authenticating that the snapshot is a true record?
 * Who can be pointed to as the ‘authority’ for the content on a wiki page? If it is impossible to determine who among multiple authors contributed what, can one cite some responsible person whose guarantees the quality of the work (similar to the concept of the //ansvarig utgivare// in Swedish publishing law)?

Another question is, who has been addressing these topics already? There is a team within the British Library responsible for the extension of mandatory deposit of publications in the direction of electronic publications; surely they must have had to consider sites with continuously changing content. Do the topics come up in university departments of librarianship and information studies?