Wikipedia co-founder's 8,000-word essay on how to build a better Wikipedia: p and down. Knol’s writers were still writing for one organization, Google, and — I remember trying it out and having this thought — if you don’t come out on top according to the single Knol community, then what’s the point? And who wants to write to benefit Google, anyway?
This train of thought led me to a conclusion a few years ago: Maybe, just maybe, there is no single community that could possibly satisfy all the would-be encyclopedists out there.
This insight seems obvious, in retrospect. Knowledgeable writers come in many varieties. It is unlikely that any one community could appeal to them all. But even that isn’t strong enough; surely, you can’t start an encyclopedia-writing community and secure the interest of more than a fraction of all the available writers. It just isn’t possible. If you want to leverage the brainpower of humanity, you have to do it some other way.
This train of thought led me to a conclusion a few years ago: Maybe, just maybe, there is no single community that could possibly satisfy all the would-be encyclopedists out there.
This insight seems obvious, in retrospect. Knowledgeable writers come in many varieties. It is unlikely that any one community could appeal to them all. But even that isn’t strong enough; surely, you can’t start an encyclopedia-writing community and secure the interest of more than a fraction of all the available writers. It just isn’t possible. If you want to leverage the brainpower of humanity, you have to do it some other way.