Have you heard about Knol yet? This is the name for Google's new online encyclopedia, which was announced last week. In case you're curious about the name, Knol stands for 'unit of knowledge.' One Google OS commenter called Knol "a collection of creditable blogs on interested knowledge." That's a nice way to explain it. Another commenter called it an update on "old-school About.com." Yep. To help us visualize Knol, Google put up an example Knol on insomnia.
There are several ideas at play in Knol:
Knols will be solo-authored pieces (unlike Wikipedia). Readers will not be able to edit entries, but can write reviews, submit comments and suggest edits. Anyone will be able to contribute a Knol--Google's hope is that the online community will identify and suggest improvements for weak Knols, similarly elevating strong Knols.
Each Knol entry will feature peer-reviews. This is an interesting idea. Could this be a first step towards a large-scale effort in evaluating freely available Web content? It is very similar to the process at play in Scholarpedia. Scholarpedia (which focuses on a few very specific areas in the sciences) is authored by 'curators' (who are elected, invited by the Editor-in-Chief or other curators, or have a 'high Scholar index'). Each entry is peer-reviewed by a fellow expert in the field prior to the entry being accepted and published.
--Knol is a whole other level: Google becomes the producer of information. (this from a Huffington Post article on Knol). Somewhere (although I can't find it now) I read that this is Google's strategy for involvement in the third level of search. The first level is the main search interface. (i.e., the top-level Google page). The second level is the Google search results pages (on which you can bet Knol results would be highly placed). And the third level is the content itself, which is Knol. If Knol results are emphasized at the top of a Google search results page, what will this do to Wikipedia?
And finally, a thought-provoking quote from the Disruptive Library Technology Jester:
Evaluating the trustworthiness of a Wikipedia article involves looking at the cited references for the information contained in the article. (This is why another one of the standards for articles is verifiability through citations.) By contrast, the trustworthiness of a Knol will likely be based in part on the perception of the individual author and the commentary/ratings/etc. from the surrounding social networking community.
This should be an interesting experiment in authoring and evaluating information. If you'd like to read more, take a look at my del.icio.us list of Knol articles.
P.S. Thanks to Amy D. for the recommended reading and the inspiration for this post's title! :)
