[WikiEN-l] Google Knol: Move over Wikipedia?

[Utkarshraj Atmaram]

On Dec 14, 2007 2:47 PM, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 14, 2007 8:54 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 14/12/2007, Utkarshraj Atmaram <utcursch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Sounds like about.com II, or Scholarpedia.
>
> With the difference of Knol being licensed under CC-BY 3.0
>

The license is not the only difference -- in fact, I doubt that
they'll force people to use CC-BY 3.0; the authors will probably have
a choice.

The major difference is the word "Google".

One may ask: if I had to write on insomnia, I could create a page at
Google Pages. How is Knol any different?

* The knol on insomnia will appear on the first page when you Google
for "insomnia"
* The knol is written by a Stanford  University faculty member (which
means the schools might accept such a knol as a reference for term
papers).
* The author gets paid for writing the knol

As Udi Manber mentions, Knol is meant to be "the first thing someone
who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."
Remember what we tell people when they question reliability and
accuracy of our articles? "Wikipedia is a starting point for
research". That's what Knol is meant to be. If successful, it might
rob Wikipedia of Google juice.

Moreover, Knol will have a focus on authorship. From the blog, "The
key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors [...] We
believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make
better use of web content." In all probability, Manber was trying to
highlight the difference between Wikipedia and knol. Google will hope
that the best Knol articles will come from expert academics (the
screenshot shows an article written by Rachel Manber of Stanford
University).

In most cases, the structure and content outline of a great Wikipedia
article are decided by a single user or a very small group of users --
the others just fill in the gaps, correct typos, wikify the article,
or crib about the article being biased. The Knol users will be "able
to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on".
By, "submit edits and additional content", they probably mean that an
article can be written by a group of users, which is what happens at
Wikipedia. And of course, the users can submit feedback in forms of
comments and question, which will lead to a better, revised article
(see the "revisions" tab in the screenshot).

The temptation of getting paid and getting recognition through sole
authorship might attract best contributors to Knol. At Knol, they
won't have to bother about protecting their articles against trolls,
cranks, vandals, and consensus of anonymous users.

Also, Knol can be updated frequently, just like Wikipedia. Errors can
be pointed out and corrected in a short time, just like Wikipedia. And
when Google "opens" it up, it can grow very fast, just like Wikipedia.

One might argue that Knol won't have unbiased articles on
controversial topics like "Palestine" or "Kashmir", since the articles
will be controlled by a single authors (or a set of authors). But
then, the Wikipedia articles on such topics are hardly ever considered
unbiased by everybody. Most of such articles are often tagged with
{{pov}} or other ugly tags. A pro-Sri Lanka person will always crib
about the existence of the article "Allegations of state terrorism in
Sri Lanka", and an LTTE supporter will always complain about the
article not being renamed to "State terrorism in Sri Lanka". Such
articles on Wikipedia are mostly an "argument nexus"
<http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/commentary/alttext/2006/04/70670>
-- Knol will users to create an argument nexus by allowing writing
reviews on articles, rating the articles, and posting comments on why
the article is good or bad.

Just like we highlight our best articles on the front page, Google
will try their best to make sure that the best articles appear on top
in the search results: "Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the
knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results."
There'll be bad knols, but then, there are bad articles on Wikipedia
tool.

It'll be interesting to see how Google deals with attack pages,
notability issues and spam (blatant spam, "conflict of interest" or
otherwise). Udi Manber says "the participation in knols will be
completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high
quality." So, I assume that they'll they won't bother, as long as
they're earning good revenues (as with Blogger). Therefore, there'll
be no complaints about cruel deletionist admins like me :) And unlike
us Wikipedians, Google doesn't bother about criticism from Daniel
Brandt and his ilk.

I'm not trying to predict death of Wikipedia. I'm just trying to
discuss a worst-case scenario: what happens if we stop getting Google
juice, if our best contributors move on to Knol for money and
recognition, if our readers (who are also our donors) leave Wikipedia
and start patronizing knol.

--
Utkarshraj Atmaram
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch