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

[David Gerard]

2008/9/23  <WJhonson at 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.