What Doesn't Google do? "Knol" opened Wednesday

ZDNet reports, "Google opens Knol website, a wiki with bylines"

In response to the wide-open and "the author who has more time wins" model of current wikis (i.e., Wikipedia), we've seen different models come out trying to address fairness and accuracy. Citizendium is one of them, and Google has just opened Knol to the public as of Wednesday of this week.

Essentially, the topic page has an author who can grant access to other contributors. In a way, I like the idea because it's definitely more "authoritative," but I also dislike it because it's still a gatekeeper and entryway issue. What if it becomes a political issue ... and the gatekeeper doesn't want to allow access (or debate) on the page? Does turning the authority over to an author really any better than turning it over to someone with too much time on their hands?

Although I'm a huge fan of wikis, I think it is safe to say that wikis do not inately mean fairness or balance. It means collaboration, but either by proxy or through force.

Read ZDNet's article at http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-212067.html


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