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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.
Oh, please, like we're supposed to believe them because of all their fancy degrees and significant experience in the field?
Why duplicate the efforts of Citizendium? Are knol's goals substantially different?
Went to Medipedia.com and it says they don't launch until the end of 2008
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
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.
On the topic of Wikipedia-like sites, I recently found Scholarpedia, which I imagine a lot of slashdotters might like. They don't have that much content yet, and they are currently focusing on a few fields (science- and tech-related), but I have found some really high-quality articles by experts in the field, like:
Neural Correlates of Consciousness, by Christof Koch.
Algorithmic Information Theory, my Marcus Hutter.
While I understand the theory behind Knol, it's going to take Google an *awful* long time to catch up to Wikipedia in terms of volume, if at all. While Wiki may have its fair share of "useless crap", it makes the publication process many orders of magnitude faster than Knol can probably ever hope of achieving. Thoughts? Can Knol catch up with Wiki in at least "useful volume"?
From the content policy:
"Pedophilia, Incest and Bestiality:
Users may not publish written, image, audio or video content that promotes pedophilia, incest and bestiality."
They never said we couldn't promote pedophilia, incest, OR bestiality. First person to get an apology from Google for this gets bonus points :) Screenshot or it didn't happen!
Knol on Wikipedia is pretty empty. Whereas
Wikipedia on Knol is very informative.
Is that an indicator?
This seems like a less-crappy version of about.com and not anything at all like Wikipedia. Perhaps that's who Google is really "competing" with?
I've said it before on Slashdot. Wikipedia is a large strategic threat to Google.
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. If they want to read further they will follow the external links at the bottom of the page. Every time they go to Wikipedia directly that is lost revenue for Google.
Search engines are good but they are good for active thinkers. Most people are passive readers and they just want to read a basic overview and have a few selected quality links to take them further if need be.
Hence Knol. Google's competitor to Wikipedia. But it's too late. Good.
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.
I was all set to rant about what license they wanted to publish on, and would Google own everything, etc.
But it looks like they're going with Creative Commons or keep it to yourself. And I don't see any requirement to sign over the copyright, so I could always publish something both on Knol and elsewhere, under entirely different terms. Cool!
I could, however, rant about how it's not a wiki at all.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
All I know is that I was able to read the Hemorrhoids article without seeing a bunch of "action shots" like on Wikipedia. They've won me over.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Google is in it to test their idea of "micro-content for micro-payment", IMHO. The idea that people are supposed to write blogs and run google ads on those blogs worked for a while, until the masses figured out that we don't have that much to say. So, what if people could contribute a 'fraction' of a blog or content, and subsequently get a 'fraction' of the ad revenue? It makes sense from Google's business model, as sort of a lower price entry point for writers/ad buyers.
I don't think it will work, but then again, I have a bias toward robust wikis.
davejenkins.com |
Knol articles are just that: plain articles with very little structure or linking.
They are, however, searchable -- and more easily searchable when you can get the whole thing as one page.
And "very little structure or linking" is entirely up to the author -- but at this early stage, there is at least less to link to within Knol.
And I don't think that one expert can compete with dozens of people collaborating on an article.
It's not so much "one expert" as "one person, who is actually being paid" -- not to mention that having two well-developed, dissenting articles could be more useful than either the homogenized compromise in the Wiki page itself, or the archived flamewars on the Discussion tab.
It's the Mythical Man-Month all over again.
A lot of the stuff on Knol is CC. Perhaps it could legally be incorporated into Wikipedia. But, frankly, I don't see why anybody would bother.
Perhaps if the content is good?
Why does anyone bother adding things to Wikipedia? If you can answer that question, see if it's applicable to migrating Knol articles to Wikipedia.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Doh, I was going to publish an article on "The Sexual Mores of Rednecks".
Well, I guess it's off to Wikipedia I go. Or do you think the Britannica would be willing to buy my text?
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.
Thanks for pointing that out.. Otherwise I would've continued to think he was writing an on-topic poem on his 8-bit terminal.
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.
I don't think that having so-called "experts" contributing to Google Knol is necessarily going to make it a better overall resource that Wikipedia for several reasons.
Firstly, a lot of these early articles are seriously lacking. Let's take for example, the article on Methicillin Resistant Staphlococcus Aureus (MRSA). It's a generally well-written article, and the author looks to be fairly reputable. Nonetheless, there are arguably some significant deficiencies, that with the current format of Knol, cannot be rectified.
In the article's description, the author notes that there will be a discussion on how MRSA can be treated. Yet, when you look at that portion of the article, information on management is seriously lacking, and the description of the medications is ultimately quite useless.
At least with Wikipedia, the article would link to a corresponding article on the specific antibiotic, so you would have the opportunity to easily gain further information, whereas with Knol, this simple linking procedure is currently lacking significantly.
Now, for a simple example. Having a description that Vancomycin "is considered first line treatment" for MRSA is useless for any practicing clinician. What I would want to know are things such as dosing regimens, important things to remember such as having to measure Vancomycin trough levels every several doses (and why), what alternative medications I can use if the MRSA strain is resistant to Vancomycin, etc., all of which are extremely important in the management of MRSA. There is also a significant lack of information about what strains are prevalent, which although not necessarily important for an Internist, is important for Infectious Disease specialists, the people who are consulted on a daily basis for the management of MRSA.
I can continue to criticize the article, but the difference between it, and the Wikipedia entry are night-and-day. And my criticism isn't pointed to this article alone, there are countless very poorly written and uninformative medical articles on there thus far.
A community effort with anonymous editors will (eventually) weed out mistakes, and have the distinct advantage of constant peer review. Knol on the other hand, is unfortunately stuck with the one author knows best paradigm.
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.
You can't be a member unless you're american, or are willing to fake your ID. Yes, it is beta. Poor google can't to global authentication? Heh. Just another 'global' company who thinks of the world after the fact. Hegemonic? Wow!
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.808365
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.