Farhad has a fatal flaw in his argument (I assume it is a *he*). His flaw is believing that Knol is an encyclopedia and that it is "the next Wikipedia". Neither situation represents what Knol actually is.
Knol is an online magazine -- multiple authors with bylines (credit), writing mostly individual articles *with some small input* and doing so to promote their business or themselves. That's not the reason d'etre of an encyclopedia.
The next step for Knol is probably going to be the creation of sub-communities and cities built *on top of* the content. Some of us have already made baby-steps in that direction with indexes, but what we really need is categories and better userfication with projects and portals.
Knol is only a few months old, but already it seems like a much more Randian approach to the underlying issue than Wikipedia. That is, each artist is allowed to fully express their art-form in their own way, and the best art rises to the top of the heap. That's the intent, it may not yet be the fact. It may never be. We'll see.
Will Johnson
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On Sep 22, 2008, at 9:47 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Knol is only a few months old, but already it seems like a much more Randian approach to the underlying issue than Wikipedia. That is, each artist is allowed to fully express their art-form in their own way, and the best art rises to the top of the heap. That's the intent, it may not yet be the fact. It may never be. We'll see.
This does not seem any more Randian than blogging does.
I mean, not that I disagree with your basic conclusion, but there's no real reason to tie the observation that Knol is personality-driven while Wikipedia attempts to meld personalities into a consistent amalgamation to controversial schools of political thought.
-Phil
On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:47 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Farhad has a fatal flaw in his argument (I assume it is a *he*). His flaw is believing that Knol is an encyclopedia and that it is "the next Wikipedia". Neither situation represents what Knol actually is.
Knol is an online magazine -- multiple authors with bylines (credit), writing mostly individual articles *with some small input* and doing so to promote their business or themselves. That's not the reason d'etre of an encyclopedia.
This was what was wrong with much of the media discussion of Knol at its launch.
Google's own message at the time was that Knol is a publishing platform that's something of a complement to another of its properties, Blogger, but unfortunately the media found Wikipedia to be a more headline grabbing comparison.
http://thoughtsfordeletion.blogspot.com/2008/07/kno-contest.html
2008/9/23 WJhonson@aol.com:
Knol is an online magazine -- multiple authors with bylines (credit), writing mostly individual articles *with some small input* and doing so to promote their business or themselves. That's not the reason d'etre of an encyclopedia. The next step for Knol is probably going to be the creation of sub-communities and cities built *on top of* the content. Some of us have already made baby-steps in that direction with indexes, but what we really need is categories and better userfication with projects and portals. Knol is only a few months old, but already it seems like a much more Randian approach to the underlying issue than Wikipedia. That is, each artist is allowed to fully express their art-form in their own way, and the best art rises to the top of the heap. That's the intent, it may not yet be the fact. It may never be. We'll see.
I'm really not convinced it's a good approach at all to the question: "what is useful to the reader?"
More pontifications: http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2008/08/27/forget-the-writers/
- d.