During the wiki session at the Pennsylvania Integrated Learning Conference on Tuesday we became aware of a serious issue with using Wetpaint for any educational wiki. In late August, Wetpaint stopped offering ad-free wikis. In late September (without any notification whatsoever) Wetpaint decided to change its policy on not allowing invitations to new potential members of private wikis. This move created a serious vulnerability that forces a wiki creator to make their sites public in order to facilitate new members or viewers of the site. This move makes students and our sites vulnerable to online predators and anyone with a malicious motivation while the site is public. This decision together with inappropriate ads that were witnessed by many in attendance at our wiki session makes Wetpaint a poor choice for school-related wikis.

We have written to Wetpaint and the company's response has been less than helpful or supportive. We would urge anyone looking to create an educational wiki to look into Wikispaces or PBWorks for their students. We are going to move our content to Google sites.

We apologize for any frustration this causes you. Wetpaint has a good product with real educational applications, but it's obvious that they are not interested in supporting the educational market.

Thanks for your kind understanding,

Tech Boot Camp Team