Google's Knol, Expert Wiki, Goes Live 263
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.
Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Online Resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia ^ ~Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other thing I think will become a problem is when Expert A writes an article on Subject X, then Expert B says, hey, Subject X is missing information Z, and Export A says no way, and Expert B can't write Subject X, but will write Subject AlmostX, and then you end up with two articles on Subject X. In wikipedia, the two articles would be merged. Knol is gonna have a big synthesis problem.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
By contrast, on Wikipedia, Author X's content will dominate the article while Author Y gets into a massive edit war, is banned, and runs off to spin some yarn to The Register about how he's persecuted by The Cabal. Then Wikipedia's image is tarnished.
(TINC)
Not bad, but it's missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
More of a blog than an encyclopedia (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
By contrast, on Wikipedia, Author X's content will dominate the article while Author Y gets into a massive edit war, is banned, and runs off to spin some yarn to The Register about how he's persecuted by The Cabal. Then Wikipedia's image is tarnished.
At least Wikipedia has good information then. I don't see the problem.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, and in addition there is currently
no context when creating a new article.
It's maybe just too soon, but the process seems
to make it more difficult to reach critical mass.
I wanted to start writing something, but
desisted, because I found no contextual information.
On wikipedia I would read some article, see a
dangling link with no page associated, and create
one from there. Or read an existing one, and
just add additional information, or correct
some detail.
Otherwise it is hard to just start writing
general, context-free articles about
"what I know". Maybe they should have started
with wikipedia content, applying the new process
for further edits and new articles, in order
to already have a lot of context already.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Typing Equations? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
would you really want someone to know that despite being a huge football fan, you also knew about My Little Pony?
I don't see why would I mind. I am a complex person, with very disparate interests and abilities, and I don't mind at all if people know it.
Re:Not bad, but it's missing something (Score:3, Insightful)
And that, of course, is also the fun of looking up something in a dead-tree encyclopedia. As you look up the article you need, you run across other interesting articles and end up learning all sorts of unexpected things.
Re:Wikipedia ^ ~Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also a Wikipedia without database dumps.
Even if much of the material will be under a creative-commons, no one but Google can control Knol in the future.
So no forks.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
I like the "anonymity" on Wikipedia, and I don't think this Knol can measure up, simply because of that reason.
With Wiki you don't know if the author knows anything about the subject whereas with Knol you can see the author's qualifications.
Falcon
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent point - the reason that Google has Knol out is the reason they have Image Labeler out. Create content (for Google) / test Google's software for free while enjoying Google's "free" offerings.
I can see Knol as being beneficial from the perspective of selling my own goods (free advertising) but it's not really a replacement for Wikipedia and I don't think Google wants/intends Knol to replace Wikipedia. Knol is about sharing expertise and I don't see a reason why Wikipedia and Knol can co-exist in harmony.
Re:Not bad, but it's missing something (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but Knol is going to end up with the know nothing jackasses writing articles. They're already there. I've seen several articles written by professional writers and not by someone who is actually a professional in the field.
Reading what Knol is all about, it's nothing more than a glorified blogging platform.
"So what subjects can I write on?
(Almost) anything you like. You pick the subject and write it the way you see fit. We don't edit knols nor do we try to enforce any particular viewpoint â" your knol should be written as you want it to be written."
How is that any different than any random jackass having their own pointless blog?
Well I'm off to Knol to write about Quantum Oil Lubricators then I'm going to write an article about George Washington and his relation to the KKK, because any random jackass can write about anything.
Seriously, how fucking stupid.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the "anonymity" on Wikipedia, and I don't think this Knol can measure up, simply because of that reason.
With Wiki you don't know if the author knows anything about the subject whereas with Knol you can see the author's qualifications.
Right, but why rely upon ethos for evaluating the correctness of an article? Are we really going to jump into the fallacy of appeal to authority so quickly?
Re:Knol on Wikipedia, Wikipedia on Knol (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not bad, but it's missing something (Score:4, Insightful)
And that, of course, is also the fun of looking up something in a dead-tree encyclopedia. As you look up the article you need, you run across other interesting articles and end up learning all sorts of unexpected things.
In a dead-tree encyclopedia, sure, I might look up information about the Serengeti, and then learn all kinds of interesting things about spiders, shoelaces, and salmonella, but with Wikipedia I can learn about things that start with other letters.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why can't Expert B write Subject X? There is explicitly no prohibition on topic duplication, and no (that I can find) prohibition on title duplication.
Knol is not a work. Knol is place for people to put works (and to collaborate on them if they chose). Wikipedia is a collaborative work.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right... that's why Conservapedia got started, because all those people with the religious right-wing nutso axes to grind found Wikipedia such a hospitable environment...
Re:Dumb, dumb, dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
having inserted a completely fake article into wikipedia and having had it edited multiple times with even more crap and having it last for over 4 years before some uber admin figured out the article was a steaming heap of garbage from the beginning, its a lot easier to get a biased piece of crap into wikipedia than you think.
subtle errors can be put into wikipedia more easily than you think. and are extremely hard to catch after 50-60 people have edited it.
The same can be said for any encyclopedia, or "trusted" source of information. See: "Steinlaus" :)
Re:Wikipedia is a large stategic threat to Google (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Dumb, dumb, dumb (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:pr0n (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:2, Insightful)
thats not the point. the point is blatant misinformation can make it into wikipedia while not into a real encyclopedia and get added to as people figure its crap and add more to it. e.g. see liberettia ..still on wikibin. its a variant of liberty city from GTA and lasted quite a while on wikipedia before a geography expert from the usgs caught it. chances are that guy will eventually get sick of taking out the garbage and move to knol. which is why wiki is fucked in the long run. experts dont like taking out the trash.
Re:Citizendium? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the one-author model is problematic. Citizendium's Wikipedia-like collaberative model keeps bias in check. For example, what if Michael Behe [wikipedia.org], 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.
Competitor? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wikipedia ^ ~Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like Wikipedia but without the open collaboration which made Wikipedia successful.
It's also a Wikipedia without editors. And I mean real editors, the kind of people who turn the gibberish that some brilliant professors reduce their prose to after they get tenure and stop giving a shit into something resembling standard formal English. It's a Wikipedia that's oblivious to the fact that many "experts" can't (to give a totally contrived example that is obviously not drawn from my work experience) be trusted to write an obituary for someone they've known for 40 years without flagrant spelling errors and grammar so fast and loose you'd swear it was some blonde Hollywood starlet going commando to a discoteca.
Re:More of a blog than an encyclopedia (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm torn, on the one hand I see this as a great way to categorize knowledge, having wikipedia as a wide but non-authoritative source of knowledge and knol as an authoritative one would have them complement each other rather than compete with each other.
Why be torn at all? These projects only compete in the mind of the press and on blogs. Google hasn't let out a peep calling this any sort of competitor to Wikipedia, because it isn't. Knol is another about.com, and I hope they wipe the floor with them, because about.com could definitely be done better. Single-author "expert" articles going deeply into specific subjects are a great compliment to collectively edited shallow[1] articles with good cross links and broad coverage.
[1] Shallow insofar as they try to keep very close to the references, which is fine because it's the only way you can keep order on collectively edited works.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of contributing to Wikipedia is that you're anonymous...
This is also the biggest problem with wikipedia, and a good reason never to trust anything you find there. There have been several scandals on wikipedia of information being modified by interested parties - I would link to wikipedia, but I don't think they have a page about that.
In future most knowledge databases will be attributed, like Knol, because that leads to accountability, which leads to accuracy.
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Losing Anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Process and the alternatives (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
A lot isn't even funny, just false (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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.