The ‘W’ will get Wikipedia to beat Knol
Posted by Alexander Ginzburg on May 6, 2008
Filed Under Misc |
Google has recently launched a rather ambitious project, a free encyclopedia service by the name Knol. The most challenging aspect of this initiative is the confrontation with Wikipedia rather than the implementation of the service itself. Why would Google want to make such a move? The first reason is that Wikipedia is off the limit for Google’s AdSense program, which is responsible for about 35% of its entire revenue. So, the only way to reach the encyclopedia traffic is to attract it to a more Google-friendly environment. Apparently, Wikipedia’s 7 billion page views per month are worth fighting for. Another and more significant reason, in my opinion, is Google’s dependence on Wikipedia. About 5% of Google’s search traffic end up in Wikipedia, this kind of dependence on one content producer makes Google vulnerable. If any present or future competitor manages to obtain exclusivity over Wikipedia, Google’s leading position would be at risk. The way to treat this kind of threat is by finding or creating an alternative source of content. In this article, I’ll try to analyze Google’s chances of achieving those goals with Knol.
In for Knol to be successful, Google needs to attract users to the new service. To do so, it must present some advantages over Wikipedia, both for the readers and especially for the writers. For that reason, two new features were introduced in Knol: highlighting the authors and sharing revenue. The first one is meant for the readers. Its purpose is to increase the credibility of the articles by revealing the identity of the authors. Though I do appreciate the importance of this feature, I believe that it’s not relevant at the moment, simply because the content which integrity is meant to be assured is yet to exist. Therefore I will be concentrating on the second feature. Its purpose is to encourage writers to post articles by providing them a financial incentive. Google will reward the authors by sharing with them the advertising revenue from ads, placed along with the articles. Knol’s chances for a success depend vastly on the effectiveness of this measure. In order to explore how good those chances are, I will turn to an academic field, which combines aspects of psychology and economics – behavioral economics. Particularly I’ll use a theory that explains the relationship between the incentives that one receives to the level of effort he makes. This theory called – the ‘W’ effect of incentives.
The highlight of this theory is that people invest a lower degree of effort when receiving small incentives than they do when they are getting no incentive at all. Another insight of the ‘W’ effect theory is that strong incentives encourage the highest level of effort of all. The same rules also apply for the negative incentives (punishments), as a result the incentive–effort graph looks like a ‘W’ which is the source of the theory’s name. I’ll try to make this phenomenon sense with an example. Let’s say that a certain government is interested in promoting recycling of drinking bottles among its citizens. For that reason, they set a small deposit that is included in the price of the beverage and could be collected back after returning the empty bottle. Seemingly, this kind of incentive should increase the willingness of all citizens to recycle; however, in reality it may have an opposite effect on some parts of the population. Let’s take some middle class family for example. Before the existence of the deposit they were used to return their empty bottles to the collection point, but since it became financially rewarded they stopped. The simple explanation to this inverse result is that the members of this family were making an effort to recycle for free because they knew that their action was seen by others as environmental awareness; on the other hand, they are not willing to make the same effort for a small reward because they don’t want to be seen by others as if they are doing it for the money and consequently to be considered cheap. Nevertheless, for others, like homeless people and low income families, even the small deposit amount may be significant and make them start recycling even though they do not care for the environment. Therefore, financial incentives can make people increase their effort as long as they are strong enough; otherwise it may be better off without them at all. Now, let’s try to apply this theory to our case.
Since people have no financial benefits from sharing their knowledge on Wikipedia, they probably have other reasons, like philanthropy for instance. On the other hand, Knol will present some monetary compensation for the effort invested by writers, which will suppress the voluntary nature of sharing knowledge for free. By applying the ‘W’ effect theory, we should be able to determine whose approach is more effective. The key variable in this puzzle is the strength of the incentive that will be offered by Knol. In case of an insignificant reward, most people won’t be interested in publishing articles, simply because it won’t be worth the trouble to do it for money and as opposed to Wikipedia, it won’t be seen as a noble contribution to the humankind. However, if the amount is large enough it may motivate some knowledgeable people to share information as their secondary or even main occupation. That is definitely a result that will be a triumph for Knol. In this scenario the information market will become competitive and it will attract the best experts, so that the quality of the information will rise accordingly. Meanwhile, Wikipedia will stay behind relying on people who wish to contribute knowledge or just do it for fun but not necessary on the best ones. So the question now is whether Knol’s incentives are expected to be strong enough.
By judging Goole’s history with the AdSense program I may confidently assume that the rewards are going to be minor, at least for writers of the less popular topics. I have referred to this issue in the past, and my argument was that the content producers are not sufficiently rewarded because the search engines don’t pay them royalties in spite of using their content to make a profit from advertisements. Since placement of ads just aside the content will never be enough to properly reward most of the authors, I suspect that Knol’s writers will meet the same fate. Therefore, according to the ‘W’ Effect, most experts that were willing to devote some of their time in the past to share their knowledge in Wikipedia, won’t do it on Knol. Simply because in case of Wikipedia they are seeing it as the good deed of the day, or just as fun, but with Knol it will be neither. The writers will have to deal with self perception and with being seen by the surroundings as someone who is wasting his valuable time for a few bucks. Moreover, even the fun factor in Knol is expected to be weaker than in Wikipedia. Psychological researches have shown that people enjoy more when performing a task for free than from the same task done for a reward. The psychological explanation is that people generate the filling of enjoyment in order to relive the cognitive dissonance of doing something for free. Or in other words, people convince themselves that they’re enjoying some activity as an excuse for doing it for free. But if they do get paid, it’s a sufficient excuse for doing something and they don’t have to keep enjoying it anymore.
Though Wikipedia has a fore over Knol, it can still be bypassed. Google can use its power as the leading traffic supplier on the Internet and to promote Knol by placing its articles in front of others in the search results. However, the most effective and rightful way would be to provide the writers with suitable incentives.
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6 Responses to “The ‘W’ will get Wikipedia to beat Knol”
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Because you chose to ignore the “highlighting the authors” aspect, you miss a major benefit beyond the reveneue sharing. There are sure to be benefits from being known as the “Knol expert on hyperkinetic telekinesis” or whatever. Dismissing the “highlighting the authors” and the expected restrictions on random Wiki-like editing makes it look like you’re just looking for ways of choosing Wikipedia over Knol.
You are making a strong point for Wikipedia over Knol in this article. I think that the W effect that you mention has something to do with it.
I think however that you underestimate the power of highlighting the writers of the topics. If this project succeeds at generating considerable traffic to it’s articles, it will be seen as a potential source of PR. This will cause experts and commercial writers and/or corporations a good incentive to produce content on Knol.
On the other hand, I agree this content will be of lesser quality than the one that could be found on Wikipedia.
I have nothing against the W Theory, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to broaden the incentives definition a bit. Incentives can include a great deal more than monetary recompense.
For instance, Helium.com rewards its citizen journalists in a number of ways besides just with money. The writers have the chance to become better at their art without taking additional college courses, for instance. There is constant available help for anyone who wants to use it. It is a great place to compile a writing portfolio. It is a strong community and it is the community that drives its success. Members can make money on Helium, but that is only a small part of the incentives that are offered.
I’m wondering if it is a little restricted to only consider incentives involving money?
Rex
Hi Guys, thank you for your comments. I see that I was too hasty in dismissing the aspect of highlighting authors in Knol. I did refer to it as a mean of assuring the quality of the articles but not as an incentive for authors. I’ve abandoned this notion intuitively; however, now I will put in writing the logic behind the intuition.
Let’s ignore the monetary aspects for now. That leaves us mainly with two kinds of people who would be willing to share their knowledge in Knol or Wikipedia: those who wish to make a contribution and those who wish to build up a reputation. Most of the first kind won’t publish in Knol because it won’t be seen as a contribution. There are few reasons for that: many entries were already contributed to the Internet by writers of Wikipedia, thus, there is no need to do so again through Knol; a person who wishes to contribute his knowledge, could have done it earlier and sill can do it in Wikipedia; Knol is a potential platform for making money and building up a reputation, therefore it can be hardly seen as a philanthropic platform. On the other hand, people who wish to establish their reputation will swoop on Knol. I believe that eventually Knol will be used for materialistic purposes while Wikipedia will keep its philanthropic status.
So the question is: which authors are expected to provide for a better content. In the mood of this already permissive debate, I will let myself make an educated guess. I believe that the scale will tip in favor of Wikipedia. I base my guess on a hypothetical situation in which I examine the chances of a world class expert of a particular field to share his knowledge in each one of the services. I tend to believe that the probability of him preferring Wikipedia in order to satisfy his philanthropic needs is much higher than choosing Knol with the purpose of receiving recognition for his contribution. Consequently, Knol will be somewhat active, but the quality and the quantity of its content won’t be a match to Wiki’s.
Hi Dorcas, Roman, Rex and Alex,
I’d just like to add that, in my opinion, author highlighting would be a feature that if needed can be easily incorporated by Wikipedia.
I don’t think that it’s that much of a deal and I don’t think that it would harm the philanthropic status that Alex is talking about. So it’s not really an advantage of Knol.
-Jenia.
I don’t share the enthusiasm about Wikipedia anymore.
The constraints in form of editing and subject criteria and the randomness of semi-editors limiting the access to create new pages is killing Wikipedia.
The Top Down philosophy for putting knowledge into the system is now a Rule without any exception.
Like I’m used to work Bottom Up creating a subject and then inserting it into the knowledge tree by rewriting the articles above it, I’ve found my contributions killed off.
Knol enables you to write an article on the same subject that will compete with the other knols (and all other information about the subject).
And like Knol has no preconception of how the layout of an article has to be, even this can become a stronge incentive to people: emulation has always interested humans.
Finally, like you don’t have to opt-in on the revenue sharing program, it might even be more noble if you’re sharing your knowledge via Knol for free.