Wikis and Editing

I was editing the telecommunications page on the itsipedia site today and started thinking, "What if the changes I make in sentence structure, etc. cause the original meaning of the piece to change?" That idea made me really nervous, especially since my partner and I are the last to edit this page. It's the whole trust issue I brought up in one of my first postings. Only now I'm a little overwhelmed because I'm one of the people other people are "trusting" to post valid information. What an awesome responsibility! Having said that, and acknowledging my concerns, I am seriously considering using a wiki in my biology class next year as a sort of ongoing class glossary of terms. I once read that a first year biology class has as many new vocabulary terms as the first year of a foreign language. An ongoing, revisable glossary makes sense. Of course the control freak in me will probably password protect it so that only my students can access it! Ha! I guess I haven't come as far as I thought! I don't want to "undermine the effectiveness of the tool" by retaining too much control as Will Richardson says in his book. I'm going to have to try hard to trust that my students will see this as a viable and useful activity and will use it responsibly. There's that whole trust issue again....