You're right it isn't. I was comparing Knol to Wikipedia though. The only reason I brought up Ayn was because Jimmy is a Rand (or was a Rand) enthusiast, and the more I thought about it, the less I perceived WP as the sort of product she'd endorse. I don't recall clearly how at the end of Atlas Shrugged, they decided on the rules for their new society. It's entirely possible that Ayn would encourage the meta-Wiki while at the same time discouraging the article-space.
My take on her view, is that she was very anti-committee, anything created by committee was almost always fatally flawed vis a vis items created by an individual. Instead of the final result being "here is AN item which is the ultimate expression of X", you would have "here are several items, each individually created, which each are AN expression of X, you the consumer decides which is the best"
I'm not quite sure is the Knolian approach to how the consumer decides is really going to work or not. But then every system has flaws. I'm willing to give it a shot and see. I don't even think the Knol architects really know what's going to happen or what they want to happen until a situation appears directly in front of them. The Knolian approach *does* however almost entirely remove the aspect of edit-warring doesn't it? And edit-wars are really at the heart of 85% of WP problems.
Will Johnson
In a message dated 9/22/2008 6:55:01 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
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.
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