An interesting analysis, Barry, and I appreciate the personal angle to it. You ask how Google Search will be used to help G-Encyclopedia, and mention that if the article author moves on, GS might have some trouble keeping it indexed. (At least, I think that's what you mentioned.) As you very probably already have read, the G-Encyclopedia—I'll call it Knol from here on out—entries will not be editable. No "wisdom of the crowds" this time around. Instead, users will be able to author competing articles which vie against one another for clicks and thus advertising revenue. Google will take the pie and then provide a slice to the author. Read up on SEO and you'll see how often Google tweaks their algorithms, and hundreds of nice mom-and-pop acts crash and burn because of it. Yes, it's a sign of frightening dependency in internet commerce, but more important, it's a bold display of power. Right now a good deal of my googling takes me to Wikipedia. Not so much as before, as I've learned to use the YubNub search engine, which makes Googling a lot less necessary, as I used to do it solely out of convenience. Google is counting those clicks on Wikipedia. For every click there, although the user might be pleased at the pertinent results, Google is angry that someone didn't click on an ad. So they want to provide you with links to sites and then provide the ads on those sites. Jimmy Wales's decision to remain anti-ad is of course what fueled this launching of Knol, in my opinion. If you google pop culture stuff, you're going to get a good deal of YouTube links, I should think. Google is a smart player in this game—smart and ferocious. Conor Barry Wellman wrote:
By now, readers of this list have heard about Google's move to develop a user-contributed encyclopedia. If not, here's an intro from the Official Google Blog (via Complexity Digest):
"Encouraging People To Contribute Knowledge , The Official Google Blog
Excerpts: The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal."
Encouraging People To Contribute Knowledge, Udi Manber, 07/12/13, The Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Barry again:
I've been pretty active on Wikipedia for a year+ as a hobby, altho having to limit myself to 30 minutes a day for fear of addiction. I've come to think of it as the un-Google. Where Google supplies an unorganized list, Wikipedia tries to organize information chaos into comprehensible bytes. Despite the problems that all experienced Wikipedia editors know, IMHO, it does a pretty good job of synthesizing, presenting and self-correcting.
But here's the trap for Google. Google has gotten really far by ripping off social network analysis with its algorithims, but ignoring the sociology. By contrast, Wikipedia has evolved into a socially complex system. Not only are misleading edits frequently (but not always) corrected by others, but there are elaborate informal and formal mechanisms for mediation, appeals, deletion of garbage, cross-referencing, syntax correction, etc. I have seen edit wars break out over many things, large and small, over the articles that I and my Wikibuddies watch: Anna Nicole Smith, social networks, The Bronx, female cartoon heroes, Iran, Jane Jacobs, etc.
Google will have to develop these, even if they go to a quasi-expert model. Moreover, Google will have to develop the clientele of Wikipedia -- I note that Citizendum -- another expert model encyclopedia developed by Larry Sanger -- the co-founder of Wikipedia -- hasn't really taken off. Of course, Google will have vastly more resources to drive people to their site, but will this be enough. And how will the search capacities of Google be used by the new G-Encyclopedia, if the busy expert who wrote the thing has moved on. Indeed, I cannot even keep up with the 10s of thousands of Google entries about myself.
YMMV,
Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________
S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Room 418 Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-7162 Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing "Return to Sender" these days _______________________________________________________________________
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