Knol and Wikipedia

Wow, looks like Google is taking Wikipedia head on with knol. I haven’t seen much Wikipedia response yet, but here’s my very early opinion.

Putting aside how it may generate revenue for google, I don’t see how this is different from any other web page in terms of value. I think these pages may generate revenue for google, of course, to some extent simply because they exist, and some people will look at them. Google also will be in a position to inflate their search relevance to make more money, which is problematic to say the least.

With all of that in mind though, I am still not convinced it is a real competitor to Wikipedia. People like to complain about Wikipedia a lot, and how the community is mean, and deletionist, and full of arcane rules. The output of those rules, though, are mostly good quality neutral articles. You may think you want an article written by an expert, but I guarantee you that you don’t want an article written solely by anyone who contributed to, say, George W. Bush, or Israel. What makes those articles useful is that many people with different views have come together to work on them, to coalesce what they can agree on, and what is verifiable.

It may seem that this only applies to very controversial topics, but of course on the internet what isn’t controversial? Cookie has a nice discussion about whether “cooky” is an acceptable spelling, with arguments using multiple sources. It’s everywhere. One of the best descriptions I have ever heard of articles is that they are the nexus of arguments online.

This is the service that Wikipedia provides. Somewhat authoritative, neutral accounts about a huge number of topics. We do this through a complex set of rules and policies, but the output is that I can know, without ever having been there that “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron” is a neutral article about Boron. I don’t want 25 versions of a page about boron, which is what knol will provide. I want only one, and I want to trust it to some extent.

My issues can be summed up in one question. If you’re not going to make people agree on a single version, what value does this add that normal web hosting doesn’t already provide? I can make a web page about George W. Bush right now, lots of people have, and later people can make “knols” and they can say whatever they want, but who cares? Without a community, and policy to make one consensus article what value does this add to the web? Other than the fact that Google makes more money from a “knol” about insomnia, than a page on some hospital’s website about insomnia, I don’t see the difference.