Google debuts Knol, "author-driven knowledge" project
Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.Link to Scott Beale's post, with pointers to some of the many online discussions around this today.The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.
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Well, hallelujah. Let's hope this completely crushes Wikipedia for good!
Sounds like a cross between Wikipedia and epinions. One thing the internet doesn't need is another repository for know-it-alls to spout off.
So the internet is only for porn delivery, then?
And pictures of kittens, Zuzu.
Porn and spam seem to pretty much be it!
The idea that this is going to replace wikipedia is pretty ridiculous. English Wikipedia has 2,000,000+ articles. This will have perhaps a few thousand. Eventually, any knowledge these 'knols' have will be absorbed into wikipedia anyway. However, the knols will be well written and hopefully have some commentary to make them more interesting than a standard encyclopedia article. Both projects are good, but they are very different. There will be no replacement, only complementation.
...Pros and cons:
Cons: It doesn't appear to have any sort of peer review system as Wikipedia does. Ergo, some schmuck can post an authoritative article, but the accuracy will be questionable.
Pros: Articles won't be corrupted, tainted, or otherwise molested by teenage wankers as many articles on Wikipedia are these days. See Will "Sceptre" Noble and his boyfriend Matthew Fenton and their ilk for prime examples of why Wikians tend to waste their time writing real articles these days.
I rather like Richard Dawkins' word "meme" for a unit of knowledge. Sadly, it has been sullied by being applied to myspace bulletin surveys and the like.
Interesting. I want to see how this pans out. Exciting future, actually.
I hope there's some way to integrate this with Wikipedia.
BTW, here's an idea that occurred to me to make Wikipedia more reliable without eliminating populistic input: After a few years, when an entry has stabilized, allow it to be eligible for review by a panel of experts. They could then put their stamp of approval on it or not. Such stamped-OK entries should then be acceptable for citation in school papers, etc. (Some schools currently are forbidding students to cite Wikipedia entries because they lack this sort of authoritative reviewing.)
In addition, future changes to these OK'd article would have to be reviewed and OK'd or backed out by this same panel. This could get labor-intensive.
@OM: I think calling WIkipedia's current half-hearted attempts at collective quality control and referencing "peer review system" unfortunately degrades the idea of peer review. Though I agree with your point that the Google Knol thing is defective if it purely relies on the popularity of content without any review/factchecking system.
@ROGER KNIGHTS: the WIkipedia community as it is now would never allow oversight by experts in this way. The whole point of Wikipedia is anti-expertise. If you want expert-led content, volunteer for Citizendium.
@Boinkboink3000: I disagree that Wikipedia's point is anti-expertise, rather I think the point is more to harness the collective effort of thousands, including experts should they choose to contribute.
@all: In general, what Google seems to be saying (to me) is that authors should get credit for their articles. They should also get blame for bad ones. The Web, in general, is still in the throes of evolving the so-called "reputation economy" where certain author's or creator's content is valued more (not necessarily in an economic sense) because that person or group of persons has a reputation for providing accurate or quality content.
@BB3K: The Google system also allows for something that Wikipedia illogically denounces and derides: original research. By definition, pretty much *any* research that comes to any semblance of a conclusion is "original" no matter how derived it is/isn't from other sources. Of late, canning an article or an update on the grounds of "WP:OR" is used more as a means to kick a Wikian off simply because the admin doesn't like the Wikian in question and/or is just masturbating their own ego. It will be interesting to see whether or not "Knol" will help reverse this disgusting abuse over at Wikipedia.
It's not clear to me yet just what Google is talking about. There doesn't seem to be much problem regarding authorship, there are plenty of repositories of knowledge, many of them very impressive, and all possible systems of review, whether by peers, experts, or editors, devolve into cronyism.
One thing I wish were available is a database on how we know what we think we know. For example, less than twenty years ago archaeologists were forbidden to mention finding anything older than 9,000 years in the Americas, and about forty years ago some scientists still insisted that rocks do not fall from the sky. Astronomers insist to this day that electric charges have no effect on celestial events. Several sites exist to collect reports that contradict such prohibitions. It might be nice to have a database of them.
#1 sayz it all... Down with wikipedia!
WP:UNDUE: "Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all."
and
"If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it is true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not."
and lots of others that i just can't be arsed to dig out. Wikipedia is like the revenge of the nerds and the ultimate propaganda machine rolled into one.
BoinkBoink3000 (#11) told me:
"If you want expert-led content, volunteer for Citizendium."
But I hadn't argued for expert-LED content, but only for expert content-approval, AFTER the fact. Here's what I wrote:
"After a few years, when an entry has stabilized, allow it to be eligible for review by a panel of experts."
Since Wikipedia's credibility has suffered from the criticism that it is unreliable because the lunatics are running the asylum, this feature would refute that criticism, on a piecemeal basis, without inhibiting the current content-creation dynamic.
It's clearly being done with the best of intentions - like Wikipedia itself - but I do have a bad feeling about this.
Knol mebbe bad slang = knol mebbe bad idee?
Interesting approach here. They seem to be taking a sort of Darwinian blog approach to encyclopedia generation. Let everyone make their own "knols" and inevitably people will end up creating multiple knols on the same topics. The system lets people submit comments, edits, and review each other's work. I assume that what will happen is that those knols which develop a community connected/invested will soon be most prominent in the search results (ie, they win).
Contrast this with some of the other approaches to expert, assured knowledge. Other's have already mentioned Citzendium. I'll mention Scholarpedia, a system based on the peer-review process as used in academic journals. However that process is expanded in two ways:
1. Authors of articles are typically picked by election, allowing the community to pick someone most qualified, rather than the first one to squat on the topic.
2. After authors are no longer willing to curate (ie, moderate the corrections & additions submitted by anyone) the baton is automatically passed on to the person who has been most active in editing that particular article
Nice! It's good to see Google considering the authors.
If anyone has a Knol account, please invite me! I really want to be a part of this one.
I think this project is going to be a fantastic and great project as projects usually are from the Google stable. Google always does the biggest, brightest & best. I just want to point out that Wikipedia, even though it has an amazing lead start, will eventually fall to second place to Google's Knol. Google has an amazing and time-tested resource of advertising on its side to fund any project it undertakes.
Healthy funding creates healthy content.
Shabbir Kagalwala
is there a moment when authors will stop self-actualizing or seeing opportunities for celebrity and start to see these sorts of ventures as yet another call for free labour and disposable volunteers?
This actually could be very interesting. Gives the non-celebrity expert the opportunity to share their knowledge.
"Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it."
So they mean an online encyclopedia?
Realitymatching: do you work for Google? You sound like you do.
Hey Nick D,
Thanks for the comment. You know I'd love to work for Google. I know I sound like a walking advertisement for Google, but then if I like something I shout.
Saul Mine (2):
I've seen that said more than once. Thing is, every time I've seen it, it was being said by a know-it-all who was spouting off.Om (7), did you mean "prime examples of why Wikians tend not to waste their time writing real articles these days"?
Bloo (12), I initially misread your comment as "I think the point is more to harass the collective effort of thousands," and thought "Hmmm ... definitely got a point there."
Saul Mine again (14), where are you getting your information? First: sciences don't forbid hypotheses or data, though they can be hard on scientists whose interpretations are significantly off-norm. Second: forty years ago, when I was a kid going to a public school in a conservative area, we were explicitly taught that meteorites are rocks that fall from the sky. Third: the idea that electrical charges can affect celestial events falls under the rule that extraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof.
Nick D. (25), you can love something without being paid for it.
IMO: Wikipedia can't die as long as there are people who are heavily invested in it as an institution. My imagination of its dysfunctional endstate (if it should ever reach one) is that it'll turn inward, have less and less contact with the greater online world, and continue to work on expanding and elaborating its rule set into the administrative equivalent of the Winchester House.