Wiki's rival

[Panda Man]

Wikipedia has just picked up a rival. And no, not uncyclopedia :P

Google is preparing to launch its own rival to Wikipedia.

Knol - which stands for unit for knowledge - bears an uncanny resemblance to the web's most popular encyclopaedia. All of the entries are user-generated and edited, with Google providing "easy editing tools" and hosting the service.

Unlike Wikipedia, however, Google plans to make article authors accountable by publishing their real profile alongside each entry.

"The key idea behind the Knol project is to highlight authors," says Udi Manber, vice president of engineering at Google on the company's official blog.

"Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors - but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content."

In a thinly-veiled strike at Wikipedia, Google says it wants Knol to become the premier source of online knowledge. "A Knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read," says Manber. "The goal is for Knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions."

PC Pro: News: Google unveils Wikipedia rival

Interesting to say the least.

[onebxr]

Maybe HL can get a page on google's wiki.
-1

[screwballl]

I think that this will help for a bit more unbiased and truthful information rather than senators deleting embarrassing stuff from their own wikis...

[Zambini]

I hope people use it, cuz I believe this will be a credible source for essays

[polobunny]

Google will win. :D

[fstroupe]

As invaluable as Wikipedia has been for me, and as cool as it was to see other people linking to some of my online essays, an alternative to the Wiki dictatorship would be nice.

My biggest problem with them is the fact that someone else from my ISP uses a proxy server, and obviously has done some bad stuff at Wiki, and three times in the last five years, I end up with an IP address that has been banned. Maybe more. Just so happened that those three times I had put together something to submit to Wiki, and couldn't. You can't appeal without registering, and you can't register with a banned IP. Yeah, all it takes is turning off my cable modem when not in use, and eventually I got a new IP address. By then, I had lost interest each time.

If the format is similar, there will be like a million links to Wiki.