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Google's Knol, Expert Wiki, Goes Live
Brian Jordan and other readers sent in word that Google has taken the wraps off Knol, its expert-written challenger to Wikipedia. (We discussed Knol when it was announced last year.) Wired has an in-depth look. Knol's distinctions from Wikipedia are that authors are identified by their real names (and verified), and that they can share in ad revenue if they choose to. The service initially features a lot of medical articles, which is interesting considering that Medipedia also launched today. This medical wiki is backed by Harvard's and Stanford's medical schools.
Part of contributing to Wikipedia is that you're anonymous... would you really want someone to know that despite being a huge football fan, you also knew about My Little Pony?
I like the "anonymity" on Wikipedia, and I don't think this Knol can measure up, simply because of that reason.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I think it is good that there is competition in this field. Perhaps the two services can even come to complement each other, or at least provide a good database of information based on different principles. At the very least it should force both to do their best to provide a good easy interface and information that is as far as is possible; verified.
The Long Now Foundation
It's like Wikipedia but without the open collaboration which made Wikipedia successful.
Wikipedia definitely suffers from the problem of having a lot of know nothing jackasses writing articles, random defacements, and a lot of useless crap.
But Knol seems to be missing the best part of wikipedia - extensive internal links. Half the fun of wikipedia is looking up something, then wasting a couple hours wandering through topics till you get someplace you might not have gone otherwise.
I've only really looked at this article, which was the most prominently featured on their front page. Reading the first few paragraphs it comes across as one persons view and experiences as opposed to an encyclopaedia. Some work will need to be done on this if it is to be a serious challenger to Wikipedia.
I only looked at it briefly, but they don't provide an easy way to type equations? I suppose that might be a lot to ask for... I guess I'll just have to LaTeXiT.
I'd say that's an indicator of the fact that Wikipedia has a million entries (after years of work), and Knol has maybe a few thousand. Let's see how fast it grows - that'd be a real indication.
As a fellow egotripper with a BA in philosophy, I'll agree that logic and argumentation can trump a degree. But as Wikipedia aptly demonstrates, in order for dialogue to arrive at the best, neutral information, the participants have to be 1) logical, and 2) knowledgeable. Wikipedia fails repeatedly on any contentious topic because participation is a sufficient credential, where expertise really would make a difference.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
With things like the Wikipedia search box in Firefox people can go directly to the Wikipedia page on a subject rather than type it in to Google.
However, I usually search through Google first, even if the first result might be Wikipedia -- because Google is a broader search.
Wikipedia may well have a detailed, informative article, which links to decent external sources -- then again, it might have no article, or a biased, poorly maintained article.
If I search directly on Wikipedia, the lack of a Wikipedia article means I'll have to repeat that search on Google, or elsewhere -- plus, the Wikipedia search is slower. If I search on Google first, if there's a Wikipedia article, great, it's one click away -- and if there isn't, I've still got a page full of useful results.
Hence Knol. Google's competitor to Wikipedia. But it's too late. Good.
Why is that good? If Knol can actually do a better job than Wikipedia, what's the problem?
I'm not entirely sure why I should trust Wikimedia with my personal information any more than Google. The only real advantage here is the possibility of releasing something anonymously -- which I can still do, through Wikipedia, or Wikileaks, or somewhere else.
Creative Commons means that if someone really has something to add, and I won't let them (or co-author with them), they can always re-publish as their own version -- in this sense, Knol is to Wikipedia as Git is to SVN.
And it means my work is still out there to read, for free, but I'll be getting paid, which means I'll have an incentive to spend more time on it. Say what you will -- Wikipedia is great for the kind of reference material which is truly a list of indisputable facts -- but commercial books (technical manuals, etc) often have better quality for things like teaching fundamentals, or, occasionally, simply being more comprehensive even than the official online documentation.
That would be the main reason Knol could work -- capitalism.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm probably showing my "liberal" bias here, no doubt the staunch Republicans will disagree, but I'd agree about the contentious topics getting ruined by low quality contributors.
Typically, I'll find a really high quality insightful article and be really impressed but then a few months later I'll visit the same article again and the article will have become watered down garbage. When I look at the history it becomes apparent that what happened is the article got discovered by one of those people who view Fox news as The Ultimate Source of Truth and that person then went through and deleted out anything that might contradict the Fox News world view.
Since, in the wikipedia world, enthusiasm wins over expertise, ultimately it is the Fox News compatible article that wins out.
I LOVE how they use lighting to make the un-"enhanced" women look paler and less healthy. It's good to finally see a place I can go to and know I'm given unbiased, true information.
I think the one-author model is problematic. Citizendium's Wikipedia-like collaberative model keeps bias in check. For example, what if Michael Behe, a biochemist, decided to write the article on "Evolution." He controls the content? It seems that it will be very difficult under any sort of one author model to get an unbiased article on just about any sensitive topic. When any approved "expert" can alter any article, however, there will be concessions to satisfy authors disagreeing on what should go in an article, ending up with a largely unbiased and very information piece. Much like many Wikipedia articles have turned out.
I also have somewhat of a problem with keeping non-experts out altogether. The experts like to write stuff, but they don't necessarily want to punctuate properly, or cite every little detail, or link to new articles as they come up, or format an article just so, etc. There any many non-experts who troll through Wikipedia looking for grammatical errors, places to add better citations, places to add [citation needed], etc. It seems that non-experts should be given some level of control in order to allow them to do what the experts aren't likely to do as much.
People keep talking about Knol as a "competitor" or "challenger" to wikipedia, asking whether it can ever "catch up," etc. I think they are two very different and highly complementary services. Wikipedia in particular stands to benefit greatly from Knol.
Remember, Wikipedia is not for original research; as an encyclopedia, all content in wikipedia is supposed to be based on information published elsewhere by experts. Knol is a repository of exactly that. If Knol takes off, then I think we'll see a lot of Knol articles referenced in wikipedia. The CC licenses mean that significant portions of Knol articles can be taken verbatim and used as a base for stub wikipedia articles. In short, Knol could be the best thing that's happened to Wikipedia since they invented the [citation needed] tag.
They complement each other in other ways, too. All content on Wikipedia must be written with a neutral point of view; Knol accepts multiple articles on any subject, so everybody can present their own personal point of view. Wikipedia is a tightly integrated web of information; while Knol is a collection of independent "units of knowledge."
Each can benefit from the other, but Wikipedia in particular has much to gain if Knol succeeds; by consolidating and cross-referencing information from Knol with dozens of other sources, Wikipedia will add tremendous value to the data, just as it already does with much of the information available on the web today.
Does it? You mean, the way an article about cloning didgeridoos, complete with pictures of little didgeridoos in test tubes, stayed on de.wikipedia.org for more than a year?
Generally that's my "problem" with Wikipedia. It seems that when I don't know anything about a topic, whoa, look at all the new things I find out there. When I do have even the minimum clue on the topic, I start noticing such things as iron being extracted from monkeys or that one of the bridges of ancient Rome was built in 1999 in Japan. (Hell of a time machine, that, not to mention valuable insight into offshoring;) Which kinda makes me wonder about the former category too.
Yes, I could follow the links to blogs and other such reputable first sources, study the edit history, etc. I'm a lazy guy, you know? Of Knoll offers me a tenth of that, but it's from a reputable source (as opposed to some random kid who claim to have a doctorate, like on Wikipedia) and peer reviewed, I'll prefer it every time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Having tried and also evaluated Wikipedia I can attest the process i broken, the edit wars and ego pumping edit counts is getting in the way of getting good, as opposed to mediocre, articles.
I gave it 2 years and comcluded there is no hope with the current culture and lack of process where posses of deletionists rampage through the articles. Rather then improve they consider deletion is the best. I gave up.
Knol offers an alternative: some editors with per article editing control and feedback that people can actually pay attention to. I for one will start contributing to Knol.
No, most of it isn't even a funny hoax, it's just false and one page contradicts the next one. Let me give you just one random example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_legion currently states (scroll down a bit):
But if you actually follow the link fo "Primus pilus" you get to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primus_pilus which says:
I'm not even going to get into a debate over which _I_ think is the correct translation. That's not my point. The point is that they contradict each other and can't both be true. One page say X and links to a page which says !X. It's not even the only such pair of pages contradicting each other, _by_ _far_. It's actually quite common.
It's not something funny like San Serife. It's just someone talking out of the butt, and posting incorrect information.
_That_ is my problem with Wikipedia.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.