A big fuss today about the role and contribution of Google’s Knol in the social web and actually in knowledge itself (Knol as a short for knowledge). The read/write web and the official google blog are some sources which explain how it is supposed to work. [writing authoritative articles, highlighting authors, socializing (comments, ratings, reviews, references, etc)]
The controversial position of the author
One very interesting point I read from Nick Carr (a comment on a comment) is that “it will (apparently) be up to the authors to decide whether to accept them [the articles] or not”.
If the project actually succeeds (and by succeed, I mean big; moving wikipedia [probably its biggest competitor] aside) we might be seeing a turn in the purpose and structure of the web itself.
The role of the author will suddenly increase online. Copyright issues will come forward; authority issues too. Under that perspective I completely agree with Stan Schroeder, who puts the subject under that lense. He (and so do I) don’t really care who wrote which sentence.
The 80/20 Rule
Although there has been a big discussion lately about the long tail of the web, I’m afraid in wikipedia we are still facing the 80/20 rule (80% of the contributions are made from 20% of the users). But it is a rule that speaks against the community-driven structure of wikipedia; it puts wikipedia (and wikis in general) under severe criticism.
It seems that Google Knols wants to continue this tradition of the 80/20 rule. As Simon Owens noted “only the hard-core editors will contribute, while people like me, who don’t really have any interest in putting a lot of work into the entry, won’t be able to contribute at all”.
The question
Maybe in blogs and online documents, the author should be present, raising restrictions and copyrighting his/her work (I’m still against it).
- But in collaborative works, where we are dealing with the aggregation of information, what positive outcomes can authorship bring?
- Will the collective intelligence function better when the individuals constituting the community are all potential experts?
The social side
On the other side Knols will encourage commenting, editing, posing questions, rating and so forth. Communication, can surely promote aggregation and knowledge. It is in the hands of the google team and the user, how this project will actually work. Will it bring only authoritative articles on the community or will it promote a trustworthy aggregation of information? (one that students can finally reference in their assignments!)
