Knol vs Wikipedia

[David Blomstrom]

I think all of us would agree that knowledge is important. Most of us might also agree that it's dangerous to entrust all our knowledge to any one authority. So what should we make of Wikipedia, one of the ten most popular websites and the most popular online reference by far?

For me, it's a love-hate relationship. Wikipedia offers a wealth of information, and it's based on collaboration. Anyone can write or edit articles.

Yet Wikipedia is prone to some extraordinary errors and vandalism. Its political content, in particular, is subject to manipulation.

Part of the problem is that its authors and editors are essentially anonymous, at least to the casual visitor. Nor are any credentials required to contribute to Wikipedia.

It appears to me that Wikipedia is heavily infiltrated by what could loosely be called corporate operatives. One of my favorite examples is Wikipedia's article about Bill Gates.

The first sentence introduces Gates as a philanthropist, no questions asked. Consider the second paragraph:

"Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Although he is admired by many, a large number of industry insiders criticize his business tactics, which they consider anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000."

A life-time of corruption is flippantly dismissed as "anti-competitive" business tactics (in the minds of "a large number of industry insiders," at least) before Gates is once again christened a philanthropist.

There's virtually no other criticism of Gates except for an overview of the sensational lawsuit United States v. Microsoft, which branded Gates as a monopolist. Curiously, the account is prefaced by the heading "Management style."

The author(s) apparently never considered that Bill Gates' "philanthropy" might be nothing more than public relations - or worse. A sensational expose published by the Los Angeles Times revealed that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually an investment firm. Since then, a growing number of scandals and conspiracy theories have spawned the term "proprietary philanthropy."

Indeed, the Gates Foundation is beginning to rival the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an incubator for conspiracy theories.

* * * * *

Enter Google. It recently launched a new Wikipedia-like project that allows users to write "knols" (units of knowledge) about various topics. It's very similar to Wikipedia yet very different at the same time.

For starters, authors can sign their names to their articles, which they can also retain control over. Different people can even write about the same topic. Visitors can also rate knols (based on a scale of five stars). In addition, knols can be monetized with Google ads.

For me, it was love at first sight. The possibilities are absolutely exhilarating, and the comparisons are intriguing. Though this is a crude comparison, Wikipedia can kinda sorta be thought of as a socialist model, while Knol is more capitalistic.

At first, that was an awkward realization, as I'm a big fan of socialism. But I like capitalism, too. In fact, I prefer a mixed economy - and that's how I envision Knol. It allows for individual ownership and a profit motive, yet it's apparently designed so that no individual can completely dominate a topic. If someone wants to write about the same topic, they can. Their are various strategies for reviewing, critiquing and contributing to knols.

* * * * *

Partly as an experiment, I wrote a knol titled Bill Gates: A Critical Biographyj. It's obviously biased - extremely so. Yet I don't believe it to be any more biased than Wikipedia's account, which reads like a Microsoft press release. At least my bias isn't hidden.

In terms of accuracy, I think my account is better than Wikipedia's. Its biggest problem is that enormous lie of omission - scarcely mentioning the countless scandals and conspiracy theories that swirl around Billysoft. I'm also actively soliciting feedback in an attempt to find and fix any mistakes I may have made.

I'm especially proud of my "discovery" that Bill Gates "dropped out" of Harvard under pressure and may have even been expelled - for the same type of behavior that got him in trouble when he attended Seattle's exclusive Lakeside School for Boys. Do you see a pattern?

If you type "Bill Gates" into Google, you get about 28 million hits. The top hit is Wikipedia's account, and that's what I'm gunning for. I'm taking on Wikipedia head to head, and my goal is to knock it off its perch.

Of course, it will take time to accumulate enough links to elevate my Bill Gates knol in the search engines. But I think I can make a splash.

[wanna be drummer]

Wikipedias pretty good about vandalism. They generally fix major errors within minutes. Its great for general knowledge

[David Octavius]

I think once you get away from the mainstream topics and get into more obscure, technical subjects, the information from Wiki seems fine. I usually use it for the citations and then visit those sites.

[Sir John]

Has anyone ever gotten ahold of the editors directly about changes in the billysoft
dialog. Maybe they'd change it if they had conflicting info that's public information.
They probably have to CYA with huge corporations like Microsoft, but if you sent the
information that is obviously public knowledge, they might not be affraid to add/change some of their info.

[ricardofuatues]

The danger of Wikipedia is that it is the first and only point of view many people check (including many lazy journalists) especially thanks to the major search engines. It is a great shame that the search engines and big corps who profit from the net don't reinvest that money into the knowledge based community. The "scholar" part of one major search engine reveals resources unavailable to the non-academic community, and many academic insitutions are forced to cut subscriptions to certain resources because of funding issues. "Scholar" search is also a bizarre name in reality, because it suggests a deep knowledge division. Whilst many scholarly based resources are difficult to penetrate because of specialisms, others are not, but these are equally unavailable to the majority.