[WikiEN-l] Why Google's online encyclopedia will never be as good as Wiki...

[Stephen Bain]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:47 AM,  <WJhonson at 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

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com