Knol: a unit of knowledge
Image via Wikipedia
Google’s answer to Wikipedia is launched. Articles are written by anyone who wants to write one, and the readers may offer edits – but here’s the difference: the author, who will be credited, can take them or leave them.
The selection available for the moment is rather strange, with quite an over-representation of odd medical conditions.
It’ll be interesting to see how it works out. Wikipedia is run by control freaks, but perhaps that’s what’s needed. Google allows authors to control their own articles all the way through the process, but won’t that discourage those who offer edits but are rejected?
It’s led me to one realisation: there’s nothing I know enough about to make up one whole article. And if there were (two main realisations) I don’t think I could be arsed writing a whole Knol article about it. For what?
