SCD IST 110H

Watch out Wikipedia! In a recent article in The New York Times, plans of a new service by Google called Knol has been announced.

Although Knol has not been released to the public, it is currently being tested by Google. Knol will be different than Wikipedia in many ways. Instead of having one article written by many authors, Knol will feature different articles that can only be edited by the respective author. While Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, Google plans to make money by placing ads throughout the articles. Authors can choose whether or not to have ads on their articles but can also reap some of the monetary rewards of advertising.

I found this section of the article very interesting:

While many technology analysts and bloggers noted that Knol appeared to be a direct competitor to Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, that site’s founder, shrugged off the potential challenge.

Mr. Wales said that Google’s service would encourage competing, opinionated articles on any topic, whereas Wikipedia strived for objectivity and had a single article per topic that represented the collective knowledge of its authors.

I completely agree with Mr. Wales. I believe Wikipedia has the right idea, although there are some flaws with the online encyclopedia. Knol seems to be motivated by money, which detracts from its sole purpose of providing information to the masses. I guess I am just confused. In IST 110H for the last project, the consensus amongst the class was that the Pennsylvania State University Library should move into Second Life because it won't make any money. This reasoning is baffling to me as a library's purpose is not to make money. Does the PSU library make any money now? No, they rely on donations, just like Wikipedia. To me, knowledge is best presented in a unobstructed environment which is solely created for the knowledge itself.