Why Gnol Will Not be a "Wikipedia Killer"

Perhaps you've heard about the hot new Google product in beta. What happens is you make your own little page about something in which you are the expert in. It's like Wikipedia, but different in that there are authors and they're encouraged to take credit for their work. Additionally, they can add ads to their Knols if they want, effectively monetizing them.

Most people have speculated that Google created Knol to compete with with Wikipedia, but according to Wikipedia, "We welcome the Google Knol initiative. The more good free content, the better for the world."

And that's more like the stance I want to take.

First of all, Knol will end up being much different from Wikipedia. Wikipedia emphasizes anonymous non-paid contribution and professionalism, whereas Knol emphasizes profit-seeking¹ competition and amateurism.

Not that there's anything wrong with profit-seeking competition and amateurism, but it's very different from non-paid cooperation. So I'm predicting their articles will be very different.

Mostly in tone. A Wikipedia article strives for and is endlessly revised to achieve that perfect "Encyclopedia Voice." Conversly, a Knol will be either be in a personal voice or a semi-professional voice. There's nothing inherently bad about either, but they will be different and offer a different feeling to the reader.

Knols would have the liberty to be written about certain things that Wikipedia deems obscure. On Wikipedia, articles have to be on something well known, as arbitrarily defined by the moderators. Articles deemed to be about something relatively unknown would therefore be deleted. While this policy has its merits, it also leaves a handful of unhappy Wikipedia users that want to write about something but can't. Such people would be more than happy to switch to Knol where all content is allowed so long as it isn't ripped off or illegal.

And because a Wikipedia article and a Knol article for a topic will end up being so different, they will probably used to complement each other rather than replace each other.

So I don't see a future where Knol and Wikipedia ruthlessly compete for readers in the future. I see a lax future where both Wikipedia pages and Knol pages are used in concert.

1; I'm sure we can all agree that eventually a large portion of Knol will have ads on them. An Adsense account is not particularly hard to create. Additionally, a quick search around the internet will reveal that most of it has ads. This isn't necessarily a bad, because the ads on a Knol would be on the side and semi-relevant.