[OWW-Discuss] Googlepedia?

[Ilya Sytchev]

The most important difference is that this new software is a knowledge 
representation (not a collaboration) tool.  A Knol is owned and can be 
edited only by its author (easy attribution and peer review, better 
access/license controls, etc) - which is completely different from a 
wiki article.  So, I think it may be more useful to scientists (as a 
platform for electronic lab notebook, for example) than a wiki.

Ilya

Bill F wrote:
> 
> In the Wikipedia world, people get compensated by having their words 
> represent topics they want to be known for understanding or being 
> associated with.  Or they may want to be more involved in a community 
> that permits them to edit the words of others or provide/limit access to 
> those topics. Money or external reputation, to date, have not been 
> relevant. The recent illustration compensation was the first direct 
> attempt to attract contributors with cash awards. The real money being 
> made in the Wikipedia world may be to consultants paid to adjust content 
> in articles to favor their client's specific agendas.
> 
> Google's pushing a model in which people's content is paid for. This is 
> a more Wikia-like approach. Google is simply cutting out the middle-man. 
> If Google can charge less and provide access to more searchers than 
> Wikia, Google will take business from Wikia.
> 
> I don't see Wikipedia impacted greatly by this. Google clearly wants to 
> find ways to starve the for-profit side of the Wikimedia Foundation of 
> revenue . This keeps Wikimedia from developing a search engine better 
> than the present one. A side benefit is that Google will deprive part of 
> Wikipedia from referrals based upon the quality of the content. Since 
> Google alone knows what they consider to be the best quality content, 
> there will be some weighting of referrals to their own wiki site. This 
> maximizes Google's revenue potential on the referral since Google knows 
> that a Wikipedia referral will never directly be monetized but one to a 
> Google wiki may.
> 
> We'll never know whether this is happening since Google is 100% closed 
> when it comes to the "how" of their page ratings system or of its 
> history. Would Google ever choose to weight selections in favor of 
> Google wiki pages that have ads on them versus those which do not? It's 
> hard to say. I would suspect that their system will use internal 
> semantic infrastructure that will allow them to more precisely choose a 
> page based upon pure relevance than it does now on arbitrary web pages. 
> If this is the case, Google will always be able to show that selection 
> is made on a knowledge content basis, first and foremost. Will they 
> surface how that knowledge is mapped? From their perspective, this would 
> only lead to more information for unscrupulous advertisers use in gaming 
> the system and ripping off Google and their customers.
> 
> If Wikimedia, both Wikia and Wikipedia,  succeeds in keeping viewers 
> from navigating back to Google for searching, it will mean a lot of 
> money and increased relevance for Wikia. Alexa ranks Wikia at 580 now. 
> But they grew 51% in reach and over 250% in traffic in the last 3 
> months. Wikipedia hovers around thr 8th highest ranked site. These are 
> daunting figures.
> 
> Google still wants part of that growth for itself, despite the fact that 
> Wikia's ad referrals also directly fueling Google's profits. All paid 
> ads on Wikia are from Google. Google is throwing relatively cheap 
> R&D/operation dollars at the issue. It's good business.
> 
> 
> On Dec 14, 2007 9:59 AM, Ricardo Vidal <rvidal at gmail.com 
> <mailto:rvidal at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     This could actually be a product of their acquisition of JotSpot
>     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JotSpot> - a structured wiki for
>     small/medium sized businesses.
> 
>     On Dec 14, 2007 1:46 PM, Barry Canton < bcanton at mit.edu
>     <mailto:bcanton at mit.edu>> wrote:
> 
>         Google is testing a new project that sounds like an attempt to
>         compete with Wikipedia.
> 
>         http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
> 
>         An interesting sentence - " At the discretion of the author, a
>         knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads,
>         Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share
>         from the proceeds of those ads."
> 
>         -- 
>         Barry Canton
>         Endy Lab
>         Biological Engineering Division
>         Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> 
>         Tel.:(617) 401-7320 (Grand Central)
>         Email1: bcanton at mit.edu <mailto:bcanton at mit.edu>
>         Email2: bcanton at gmail.com <mailto:bcanton at gmail.com>
> 
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> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
>     Ricardo Vidal
>     e: rvidal at gmail.com <mailto:rvidal at gmail.com>
>     w: http://my.biotechlife.net
>     skype: icky_bu
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