Comments on: What’s in a knol?

By: "Google Sets Its Sights On Hosting Knowledge" in Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:03:06 +0000

[...] Hargittai on the Crooked Timber blog has a well-thought-out post, and the part of it that made me think the most relates to her first point about search engine [...]

By: Eszter

Eszter — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 13:54:39 +0000

MPowell – Regarding monopoly threat in the domain of search engines, I’ve been writing about related issues for almost a decade now.:) While a pure monopoly per se is unlikely, there is definitely the potential for one or a very few having a lot of say in this domain and thereby having a lot of say over what access is realistically within the reach of most users.

Vivian – That paper I link to addresses the issue of relevance, I think. I didn’t do that study so I don’t remember the details. But yes, of course one would have to see whether #10 is as relevant as #1 and if it is then it’s less of an issue to have people relying on it. As for clicking through to several following pages, I think it is a very rare event.

MNPundit – Definitely a lot of people click on those links and in some of my studies I’ve started finding out whether people realize that those are sponsored links, and it turns out that many do not.

Fuzzyface – You may be right that I assumed too much when I didn’t elaborate on the centrality of ads in Google’s business model. I figured the part about being able to display more ads through this service was fairly transparent so I didn’t say more here. My main point in this case was to note that beyond that central and fairly public aspect, there is an additional reason why this may be of benefit to Google.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:52:51 +0000

At Wikipedia, we were mostly enormously pleased that the mockup PNG includes a CC-by licence tag. IF, I say IF, they require knols to be released under a proper free content licence, then that’ll be a big win for everyone. (And we’ll actively tell people what a good idea it is.) Wikipedia’s not actually about running a horribly popular and expensive website, but about writing stuff that can be copied and reused and adapted and spread; if other people are doing that, that fulfils our aims without us having to actually do the work ;-) Same for Citizendium, who I really doubt are going to pack up and go home any time soon. More freely-reusable content is a big win for the world.

By: FuzzyFace

FuzzyFace — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:31:14 +0000

Third, what’s in it for Google beyond the potential to showcase more ads?

That’s sort of the point, actually. People still think that Google is a search-engine company. They’re not. They are the internet equivalent of a television network – their entire business model is about providing content into which ads can be placed. If they can displace Wikipedia, they gain enormous numbers of eyeballs and ad revenue.

By: MNPundit

MNPundit — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:43:57 +0000

Bizarre, sometimes the first link is the pay link even if it’s not highlighted. I still never click on it though….

By: MNPundit

MNPundit — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:42:32 +0000

People really click the highlighted link? My eyes naturally skip over that as an add. I had to do a quick search just now to check to make sure I wasn’t clicking the sponsored link—and I wasn’t. I never do—because it’s always trying to sell me stuff.

To me the first google result is the one in white right under the highlighted link.

Wow.

By: Karen Carr

Karen Carr — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:33:59 +0000

Some points I haven’t seen raised anywhere (yet):

– Wikipedia pages are extensively hyperlinked to other Wikipedia pages. Will people writing knols link to other knols? Will they go back and add more links as their first ones get broken? Or will it be like reading a newspaper article, mostly dead text? – Will there be any way to rate a page child-friendly or not? Much of the research done on the Internet is done by children for school. – Will Christian anti-evolution sites all float to the top of the rankings as thousands of Christian believers vote for them? Democracy has never been known for its ability to promote accurate scientific inquiry. – Will Google encourage knols on any topic, including the ones Wikipedia has decided to discourage, like knols on your irritating next-door neighbor, or knols on your kid’s new rock band? – Won’t most people just take Wikipedia pages and repost them on knols, just like many web encyclopedias do now?

By: Shane

Shane — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:47:43 +0000

Wikipedia is likely to be fine from this; in fact, Google’s action seems a direct response to Wikipedia’s refusal to monetize.

It’s Citizendium that’s just been irrevocably murdered. Not that I think it ever had much of a chance at success, but it seems that Google’s formulation is a far superior way of getting to where Citizendium was aiming for.

If having quality content that’s easy to get to is a good thing, then this is a good thing.

By: vivian

vivian — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:36:45 +0000

Ezster, how many people who click on the first link also go back and click on others? Because, in addition to using Google the way Jacob does, when I’m seriously looking for something, I will click my way through the first few pages (of a hundred links each). Then again, I’m not the average user. It’s a lot more reasonable to check the first link – even the first sponsored link if I’m shopping anyway – than it is to rely on it. How did you check the users’ choices against the adequacy of the content – how bad was the first hit, and how bad would it have to be before they checked another?

By: mpowell

mpowell — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:51:26 +0000

abb1 and SH give good methods for finding data on your own. What’s missing, though, is that this is not what most people will be doing.

The concern is: what happens when the search engine is also providing content?

Normally, if a search engine compromises it system by linking too much to its own stuff (or equivalently, to those who pay it money) people will use different search engines. But Google is pretty big at this point. Can there be a monopoly threat with regards to search engines?

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:35:41 +0000

I use the same technique as abb1. Google is actually much faster at searching for the wiki entry than wikipedia proper, and if it gets to the relevant entry more often. Also if there is a popular wiki that isn’t wikipedia, it will find that without me having to know about its existence beforehand.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:02:21 +0000

I almost always use google to get to wikipedia, typing the word “wiki” in addition to the search words (e.g. bittorrent wiki). Wikipedia doesn’t have spelling suggestions.

By: Tim McG

Tim McG — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:24:37 +0000

One further thought: if this spurs improvement on the part of Wikipedia, that would, I think, be the best outcome. Perhaps a way to take credit for one’s contributions (optional) and verify one’s identity (again, optional) and a link on each article to a ‘credit map’ showing who created what, and who edited it, and perhaps even a way for knowledgeable readers to vouch for the content of the page.

By: Tim McG

Tim McG — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:13:53 +0000

I’m still rather mystified by how they’ll combine editing (particularly as a “strong community element”) with emphatic authorship. Will edits have to be approved by authors? what about authors that aren’t interested in upkeep of their knols—they’re no longer mowing the grass, as it were? If there’s a good article that needs to be updated, there’s not a quick and easy way to make a correction: one would have to create a whol knew knol—and not a derivative work from the original—in order to make a small but important correction.

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:07:38 +0000

I don’t have stats on this, but would be curious to know what percentage of Wikipedia’s traffic comes from search engines (and, in particular, Google referrals) vs searches on the site itself. I suspect a lot is from the former.

I suppose most of my wikipedia searches go through google—but that’s in part because I already know the wikipedia entry will be in the first few links on google. So if I’m aiming at wikipedia (or amazon or imdb) I just type the search into the google box in my toolbar and know that I’m one click away.

If the first page of google results started getting taken up with ads, sponsored links, etc, I’d just go directly to the site I was looking for.