No matter what you say about Wikipedia in terms of the accuracy of information or the rules of editing, it created a great appetite and destination for knowledge sharing. But it did not have much of competition. Until now.
Google is after their lunch. "Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it," says the new invitation-only wiki project called "knol."
But it doesn't appear to be after the exact model of Wikipedia. The key differences being:
1. Authorship over anonymity: Knol will give prominence to authors -as opposed to the anonymity of Wikipedia authors who only recently could be tracked down by their IP addresses.
2. Censorship: It won't be in the business of attempting to "bless any content."
3. Financial incentive: Authors could make money if they choose to allow ads alongside content.
I see the first two options as definite Wikipedia killers, apart from the others that Steve Rubel outlines. The third is troubling, because this would invite all matter of content creators who won't have a problem identifying themselves, but could provide infomercial-quality content, and get paid to do it. Tech Crunch's Duncan Riley notes this also means a shift from indexing content to becoming the content provider.
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