Google's answer to Wikipedia goes live

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 24 July 2008 12:31

Business IT - Networking

Another difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that authors can choose to include AdSense ads in their knols as a way of receiving financial rather than just psychic rewards for their efforts.

A high proportion of the initial batch of knols cover medical topics, written by professionally qualified contributors including practitioners and professors. Doctors sometimes complain about the quality of information that their patients pick up on the web, so hopefully Knol will live up to its claim of providing authoritative content.

Other knols provide information about subjects as diverse as wine, domestic projects (be warned that good advice in one jurisdiction may not be applicable elsewhere), software and cinema.

It isn't necessary for either Knol or Wikipedia to 'beat' the other - both can play a part. There are some kinds of information - eg, medicine - where you really want to know that you can trust the providers. That means they need to be recognised by their peers.

Other material - such as plot synopses of Star Trek episodes or information about pro sports teams - isn't so serious, and because the knowledge is so widely distributed it isn't so important that any particular entry is 100 percent accurate right from the start.

As Google vice president of engineering Udi Manber put it when Knol was first announced in December 2007, "Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors - but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content."

Fancy yourself as an expert? Then knol what you know, and share your expertise with the world.