In the last days I have seen several posts about the Google Knol project in relationship to wikipedia and its role in the aggregation of knowledge. I will list here all the links that I found concerning Knol, in order to get a spherical view of the subject. I must admit that most posts are severely criticizing Knol. I wonder if the reason is the blogosphere I have created around me - or if the positive views are actually so few (or so silent).

• Google’s official blog announces Knol
• Marshall Kirkpatric takes a short, objective view of Knol. Along with a small comment of Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki.
• Google Knol: Wikipedia with a face, or the new squido? My favourite (and most difficult) question about the Knol Project: Is highlighting the author the real answer? Also my posts Google’s Knol and the role of the author along with Authorship in the blogosphere are a couple of comments on the subject.
• Sizlopedia with the post “Google Knol free wikipedia” poses the question Knol= wikipedia + social networks. Why?
• Googlepedia. The term I love the most.
• Mashable with an interesting poll: Is google Knol a wikipedia killer? Also on mashable, a very thorough article “Google Knol more of the same“. Again talking about authorship and heavily criticizing Knol.
• Google Knol and the long trail. Bloggasm on ‘Google to create its own version of wikipedia‘.
• Nick Carr and ‘Google takes aim at wikipedia‘. Maybe the article that started the avalanche, with a list of very interesting comments.
• Wired about ‘Google’s Knol not being a threat to wikipedia‘
• Also two interesting views on the subject from wiredamp ‘knol and wikipedia begin to dance‘ and ‘Google to destroy wikipedia?‘
• Finally a fresh blog. Its title speaks for itself: savewikipeidia.wordpress.com
  

The entries of the above articles range from neutral to extremely critical to the Google Knol project. I agree with the opinion that Knol is not a threat wikipedia. They are targeting different groups. But, although I too was critical to Knol, I can see a positive side to the project.

• Authorship comes along with trustworthiness. If anyone of you is a student, you’ll understand the importance of this note.
• In some subjects neutrality is not the best solution. Debates and differences of opinion can occassionally bring better results.
• Knol has certainly more features. Comments, questions, rating, reviewing, referencing. These are important stuff. If used correctly can bring very good results. Someone commented on one of the above posts (sorry I don’t remember which post, or who commented), that knol takes the attributes of blog in wiki format. I like this feature.

The question that stands out, is how will people contribute to this community? And how will google handle this community?

If you have any additional posts about Knol and wikipedia, tell the group; leave a comment.

In my previous post about Google’s Knol and the role of the author I posed the question, in what extent do collaborative networks need author(itie)s to aggregate information correctly. And by correctly I mean, objectively - taking note of all sides of the subject.

Condorcet Jury Theorem

First I’ll try to explain why aggregation of knowledge can actually bring better results, than the opinion of a single expert. I’m based on the assumption of the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which supports that the probability of a correct answer by a majority of the group increases toward 100 percent as the size of the group increases. The theorem is based on the hypothesis that people are answering a question with two possible answers (one right and one wrong) and that their answers are not random – on the contrary they have more than a 50 percent probability of being correct.

Naturally, extensive criticism has been leveled at the binary logic of the Condorcet theorem, since a question has usually a wide spectrum of answers. But recent studies have shown, that even when the group is dealing with multiple options (instead of a true and false selection), there is still a high probability that it will actually conclude to the right answer, as long as the individuals tend to choose the right option.

The Catch

But there is a catch to the theorem: Correct aggregation of information does not simply rely on a large group of people. This group should fill a number of preconditions (which can in a way also be identified as an emergent behavior). During my research and study (and partly also during my own personal thinking) I collected these preconditions:

• diversity
• independence
• indirect control
• self-organization

The Concept

I’ll start a series of posts about each specific point. In that way I want to advocate for wikipedia’s system (or any collaborative network, that does not encourage ownership) within the scope of the discussion about google’s Knol. Namely, my assumption is that any participatory system that promotes ownership (authorship) and control, will eventually produce one-sided information.

If you have any additions or thoughts on the subject, improvize - contact me.

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!)

Blogging is a practice, which mainly consists of linking and referencing other blogs or sites. At least, it is a practice that I widely use. After reading Lorelle’s post on copyright and translation, I thought about the role of authorship in the blogosphere and in the web in general. The term of authorship often connotes the individualization of ideas, literature, philosophy and science. The role of the author is namely, very tightly connected with his/her work. By that I mean, that in order to fully comprehend the meanings hidden in the article or book or post we desire to know who, when, why and under which circumstances created the piece. If I were to write a post about free software, copyleft rights and the open source movement, you would like to know my background. Do I use Windows or Linux, what are my studies, am I a programmer or a user? Such information could define the post itself. But in some rare occasions the work follows its own course.

The role of the author

Michel Foucault suggests, that the characteristic of the author, which accompanies the work, is in such cases her absence. But Foucault carries on talking about the role of an author, who goes beyond her work, who also succeeds – always through his/her work - in producing an opportunity for discussion and creation. Such authors produce an unlimited room for development and improvement.

One could think of their works as seeds, which other authors have the chance to take, change them at will and plant them as they wish to create new cognition. In such a case, the author is seen as a collector of information and knowledge. His/Her role is to gather and process data – and eventually add new content to the information pool. (as V. Flusser suggests)

New type of authorship

The World Wide Web and its hyperlinked structure has enabled this type of authorship in a literal way. From the first virtual communities to the blogging practices of today, users serve as information gatherers for others. During the 1980s, users met in Usenet newsgroups and today in weblogs and wikis to aggregate information.The first contemporary example of this new form of authorship that comes to my mind is wikis. Tens of millions of people visit Wikipedia and other wiki sites every day. They read, add and transform data in collectively created articles. On wikis, no person considers herself the author of an entry, since authorship is in a way senseless; wikis are collaboratively written works. It is actually considered ‘unwiki’? to claim authorship- or even primary authorship - of an article. I tried to understand authorship under the blogging perspective. Yes of course authorship in weblogs is important, who writes what makes a big difference and is fundamental of the structure of the blogosphere. But it is still in the hands of the reader to collect all the pieces of information from comments, forums and linked blog articles about a specific topic in order to get the whole view of the subject. What I’m saying is that a subject is objectively covered, only when someone collects all the information about it; and in the end, readers are the ones, who gather the information. We are therefore returning to a thought expressed in the late 1960s by Roland Barthes, that “the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination.” The reader is the one who has the overview of all citations a writing consists of.

Conclusion

We are nowadays witnessing a new form of authorship, which signalizes participation and collective knowledge. The social web gives people the opportunity to share, collaborate, criticize and create a commons of ideas. The role of the individual is important to contribute in this commons but not to lead it. This bottom-up structure that the social web enables, draws the attention of the public, which wants to be a part of the productive process; and hypertext enables interactivity and in a way lifts the boundaries between reader and author.

The notion of the author - of the sole person getting credit for a work - is quite new. In the middle ages someone who copied a text, without adding anything new was considered a scriptor; someone who used works of others was a compilator; author was the one who used other works only to verify his own.

I’m not advocating for copycats or translated versions of a text. On the contrary,

• I believe that copycats, like the farmers of the example above, collect information and in a way or another add something (maybe something very little) to the original source.

• I have complete trust in the users constituting the social web, to expose any dishonest intentions.
• I find the web so intriguing exactly because there is no control of the data running in its streams. I prefer it, when people use my work without giving me any credit, than have a central control, choosing who posts what, when.

For this document I used (and draw inspiration) by the works of: Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Martha Woodmansee, Richard Stallman. I hear Jay David Bolter’s book: Writing Space is thematizing this subject. I will return with a complementary post, after reading it. For more accurate information, questions or whatever feel free to contact me.