Ad verba per numeros


Friday, July 25, 2008, 08:19 AM
In a previous post I briefly mentioned Knol, a new initiative by Google which to many of us seemed no more than a Wikipedia clone.

I've just read that it was recently opened to everybody. Needless to say, I've hurried to check it and I must say that I feel a bit disapointed.

To me it seems that Knol is well behind Wikipedia. Just a few examples: As of 25th july, there is not even a "knol" (a unit of knowledge) about Knol itself, neither about Google, the Web or the Internet. Instead, if you search for "google" you find two "knols" written by googlers about themselves (!?)

Interestingly enough, a "knol" entitled "Charles Mingus's Overview of Google.com" is no longer available...

Hopefully, the quantity and quality of information in Knol (I refuse to refer that stuff as Knowledge) will improve but, anyway, I cannot really see the point of this new tool. Yeah, I know, many of you consider that Wikipedia is not really trustful; if this is your case I recommend you two interesting readings:

Zeng, H., M. Alhossaini, L. Ding, R. Fikes, and D. L. McGuinness. 2006. Computing trust from revision history. Intl. Conf. on Privacy, Security and Trust.

Joshua E. Blumenstock, "Automatically Assessing the Quality of Wikipedia Articles" (April 1, 2008). School of Information. Paper 2008-021.


Back Next