neticulum

This just in: Google has released its own version of Wikipedia, but with a few twists. Knol, a so-called “wiki with bylines,” is, like Wikipedia an attempt to survey human knowledge via written articles on a variety of subjects. But unlike Wikipedia, the authors of articles cannot remain anonymous – and edits are made via suggestion box,  not chronologically and in real time. Authors who are experts in various fields write articles on their subjects of expertise, and readers vote for which articles they think are the best. Revisions to articles are not made in real time, but rather are sent to the author, who makes the  final decision on what gets published.  Authors can also grant certain readers the rights to edit or otherwise revise their articles.

I’m really interested to see how this pans out. Knol’s creators hope that the emphasis on reliable authorship will forge a more trusting relationship with its readers than, say, Wikipedia has with its own. They also hope that the suggestion-box model will yield more balanced articles, instead of immediate edits on controversial topics which can lead to a last-voice-wins scenario. The ability for readers to vote on their favorite articles gives Knol points for democracy, and should encourage a healthy competition among authors to have the most reliable and accessible information. Knol calls its model ”moderated collaboration,” meaning that any reader of a specific topic page can make suggested edits to the author or authors, who retain control over whether to accept, reject or modify changes before they are published. So what kind of collaboration would Wikipedia be? Unmoderated collaboration? Ivory-tower moderation? 

Though Knol is being hyped as a competitor to Wikipedia, its creators insist that the two sites are not mutually exclusive; rather, they each fill different roles in the great opera of the internet. Wikipedia is useful for determining competing viewpoints on certain topics and is more comprehensive in general, but Knol may be more of a go-to site for authoritative information. As Knol expands its information base, I’ll be interested to see how the public responds to it, and how it will compare to Wikipedia.