However, even though the organization they bought to bring Knol into existence will carry the Knol workload, there is a read serious drawback for Google, and that is its dilution form its much more important and serious services whick only Google can perform. The marginal societal — or even Google — benefits of Knols over near and far competators to Wikipedia are not sufficient to warrant the diversion of resourcesd for areas of MUCH greater benefit: Google base, which need MUCH more marketing and development!

Knol will offer this author status and undoubtidly help students all over the world, the academic world is becoming more and more iternet lead for students and this could possibly be another step forward in the right direction.

Anywho, I do think the author thing is a somewhat good idea, except how do they determine who can write a knol and who cant? Anybody can get a degree in something nowadays…If the solution to this problem is to have as many knols for each subject as there are people who want to write them, that is just awful. There would be millions of articles on well-known subjects! Just think, how many articles do you think would be posted for “Auto parts” or “How to Build a Computer”! Everybody and their grandmother knows this kind of stuff! Hmm…

Sure, there are lots of valid, or mostly valid, pieces there and many of us use it as a quick reference, hopefully among others. But then there are the many entries that are manipulated by the gov’t, corporations, or others with an axe to grind, some of them not particularly knowledgeable on the subject. Then there is the just plain false information provided as a joke or in retribution for a real or imagined grief. Entries that are hard to correct. Sometimes, those contributions provide the kind of false information or rumor that get people in trouble with the gov’t, police and employers, get people falsely accused of terrorism, etc. And all of it with unnamed sources. All of these sorts of things really have happened and can be checked out by anyone interested.

Knowledge is not democratic. Some people have expertise in certain areas, some don’t. Everyone has biases, with some having them more in check than others. Knowing who’s doing the writing allows readers to check out the source and evaluate accordingly.

With opinions from Wales and Sanger.