(Gallery: Google's Knol takes on Wikipedia)

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The good, the bad, the ugly

While I can appreciate the angle Google is taking with their Knol endeavor, I have already seen a few examples of where this new approach will have some weaknesses. I recently encountered a few articles by the same person on a variety of subjects, all of which were of substandard quality, completely lacked citation, had grammar and spelling mistakes, and were (to use an academic term) absolute crap. Certainly the completely shoddy nature of some articles will be offset by better written and better researched articles over time. However, by then we will be sifting through a plethora of articles on a given subject, some good, some bad.

Essentially, the short-coming I am seeing here is that Knol makes it possible for any hack to write an article with little control over the quality of the content. At least with Wikipedia, the articles are subject to peer review and the content is revised. So far, with some articles, though the content is subject to review and rating, the content could remain unchanged and we are left with crap to mar the image of what is, for all intents and purposes, an online digital library.

The process of publishing an article, then needs some measure of oversight-- an editor of sorts. We do not need another way for some idiot to post his or her ideas on a given subject. There is always MySpace or GeoCities for that. Let's have an excellent online repository where one can find quality articles by informed authors of varying opinions, not another useless blog entry.

Posted by: mkpelletier@...   Posted on: 08/04/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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