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Google Behind The Grassy Knol

New Google Wiki Mumblings

by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 17 Dec 2007

Sorry about the title folks, couldn't resist. Right, the latest word on the Google grapevine is that they have launched a new Wiki-ish information system focussed on authors, called “Knol”. The principal idea of this is that people with experience on a certain subject have the ability to write an authoritative article on the subject and get personal credit for writing it. Now on Wikipedia, the articles are written and re-written by a community to iron out all the errors, which creates informative and correct (about a quarter of the time) Content that people can browse and use, this is an effective method that is fair all round. Now Google has decided to break down the anonymous nature of a Wiki engine, authors will now have a tagline with a basic profile and picture attached to all articles they write.

Now the word on this new thing is pretty vague even from Google and supposedly won't be clear until it's launched for public browsing. But from what I've gathered, articles will be treated like search results and ranked on how popular and how highly they are rated by other users. Google states that it will not be doing any editing work whatsoever and will just leave it to the community to decide whether an article is right or wrong, but by the same token it allows anyone to write anything they wish whether or not that content is correct, pointless or offensive. The redeeming feature of this method though is that if someone does write a load of hooey no-one will ever see it in the 'article results' just like Google's regular web results. One thing that isn't explained at all is Google says other members will be allowed to write “edits”, I'm guessing this does not mean they’re taking a Wikipedian view on changing an authors article because surely that would make it possible to sully a writers article or give extra credit to someone who does not deserve it. Other users can also write reviews of articles if they wish, or write competing articles and as Google says “competition of ideas is a good thing”. In my opinion it is not; debate is a good thing but competition isn't when it comes to a universal knowledge unit. Surely a huge information reference should be filled with correct not competitive content?

Also a thought, will there now be something that will overtake WikiPedia for everything on search results? If Google's site is going to be doing the whole wiki thing and considering they, out of everyone, would know how to rank highly in their own engine do you think Wikipedia might be bumped off its pedestal finally? I don't have a problem with Wikipedia except that its clogged to breaking point with badly laid out information apart from that it's sometimes quite useful. Everyone's talking about Knol knocking all other wiki's out the pond, I personally don't think it will and don't see Knol being the next big thing any time this century.