Opensource Economics is still new for many people. Here, Law professor Yochai Benkler explains what it is and how it is shaping the human society.
Chronicle.com reports
Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences adopted a policy this evening that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.
New York Times reports
Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.
Today Google announced their new project, Google Knol. Their idea is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. My first take on Google Knol is
If it is done correctly, it might kick the butt of Mahalo and if it is done wrong, it will add splog kinda pages messing up the search results
Before we I explain my reasoning, let us take a look at the two other competing projects, Wikipedia and Mahalo. In the case of Wikipedia, the collective wisdom of crowds are used to develop “authoritative” pages on different topics. Mahalo tries to become a “better” search engine by using a small group of paid employees and tipped “volunteers” to write search result pages which can be considered as “authoritative” collection of information on certain topics. Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, is planning to develop a search engine which will also put the “wisdom of crowds” to good use. I am pretty convinced that Mahalo cannot be a Google beater. Only an algorithmic search engine can solve the world’s search problems. I still stand by it. Mahalo kinda products can only add a layer of filtering to algorithmic engines. They cannot replace them. I am not sure what Jimmy Wales is going to do with his project but I am pretty convinced that it can only succeed if there is an algorithmic engine at the center with the “wisdom of crowds” offering a filtering layer. I have listed down my reasons to justify these arguments already, in the post criticizing punditry about Mahalo overthrowing Google. Also, if Jimmy Wales’ project takes off and gets a following like Wikipedia, then their filtering of algorithmic search results will be far superior than Mahalo’s results because of the sheer number of volunteers lending their “brain’s processing power” for Wales’ project.
Letz get back to the discussion about Google Knol. The knols on different topics are meant to be the first thing someone who searches for a topic for the first time will want to read. Now, Wikipedia plays this role in Google searches. Google is expecting their knols to replace Wikipedia in the search results. This has started a discussion in the blogosphere about the demise of Wikipedia. Any such talk is premature. The big differentiator between Wikipedia articles and Knol is that Wikipedia has one (well, in most cases) article on a single topic which is edited and tweaked by the “wisdom of crowds” whereas Knol gives an option for anyone and everyone to write a separate article on any particular topic. For example, a topic like evolution could have thousands of articles offering two entirely opposing views, thereby confusing the readers. There is no “collective” wisdom to weed out the nonsense from sense. Thus Google’s Knol project lacks the “authoritativeness” of Wikipedia. This requires Google to come up with another algorithm that can rank the Knols on the same topic based on rating, comments, etc. Such a system is also a good breeding ground for another SEO like cottage industry. This is where my statements about “Google doing right or wrong in Knol” assumes significance. We have to wait for this project to become mainstream before we can know if it is going to work or not. Google has a very difficult job of bringing in “authoritativeness” in these Knols, in a totally unbiased manner. It is not an easy task. There are way too many topics where it will be difficult to establish the “authoritativeness”, when there are hundreds or thousands of articles on the same topic. It is easily done in the case of Wikipedia where the wisdom of crowds is applied to a single article. However, if Google manage to get it right, they are going to have a pretty neat system that will augment well for their search results. If Google has “good” search results as a result of Knols, Mahalo loses the meaning of its existence, unless they shift gears to offer something else along with their search results. If Google messes up, Jason Calacanis’ criticism of increased spam in Google search results will get amplified. We have to reserve our judgment on Google Knol till it used in a widespread manner and becomes part of mainstream search experience. But we can be sure that it is definitely not a Wikipedia killer.
Bingo to Jeremy
But when you stop and look at how technology has changed and opened in response to networks, the Internet, simple/open protocols, view source, and self-serve business systems, there’s a clear pattern emerging. Strong forces are at work here–strong enough that you’re better taking advantage of them rather than fighting them. You will lose. I don’t care if you’re Microsoft, Google, or even Facebook (the latest golden child).
Open beats closed. Simple beats complex. Freedom of choice beats being told what technology to use.
I commented on the rather naive article on Open source by Dr. Keith Sawyer. He had quoted Nicholas Carr’s article on open source. I have already rebutted Carr’s argument in my blog. So I posted the following comments.
Nicholas Carr’s argument is weak. I have already rebutted it in my blog. Check it out
http://www.krishworld.com/blog/open-source/nicholar-carr-has-got-it-wrong/
They removed it. I posted another comment asking for explanation. They removed it too. It is a shame that the so called liberal media doesn’t allow dissenting opinion and indulge in such creepy activities.
Howard Owens makes a case against the widespread belief that big media companies are resorting to user generated content as a cost cutting measure
Take Bakersfield.com, for example. Visit and invest some time to dig into the community building effort there. Adding that functionality wasn’t cheap, but more importantly, there is a real effort there to build community, not just generate free content. TBC does actively solicit user-submitted news and feature articles for the web and print editions, but most of the UGC that comes in through Bakersfield.com is never even surfaced in any meaningful way. It survives purely as part of conversation, not content aimed at replacing paid staff. In fact, TBC has three or four people on staff just to handle the load of all that UGC.
Is that cheaping out on free content?
To do UGC right is far from cheap. It takes good people and good software.
I am an advocate of anything open (open source, open media, open standards, open access, etc). I was happy when the scientific journal Nature announced that it will use an open peer review model. But Wall Street Journal reports that Nature has given up on this approach. The reason? Lack of participation. it is sad that scientific community is not supportive of such an “open effort”.
But Nature, which is published by a unit of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., said in an editorial in Thursday’s issue that it was ending the experiment due to lack of participation. The journal found that in the competitive world of scientific publishing, the vast majority of authors were unwilling to post their papers and few scientists were willing to criticize their peers’ work publicly by posting comments on Nature’s Web site.
Wired News reports
According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened “information centers,” and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like “data,” “digital” and “community conversation.”
The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.
Technorati Tags: Newspapers, USA Today, Gannett, Crowdsourcing, Citizen Journalism
PC World reports that Wikipedia is considering a plan to get copyrighted materials to public domain. Way to go Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is considering a plan to purchase copyright content and make it available under public domain.
“It’s not a project yet, but an idea,” said Jimmy Wales, founder and chairman of Wikimedia Foundation, in an interview with IDG on Thursday. Wikipedia is a Web encyclopedia that anyone can add to or edit.
