Monday, July 28, 2008

What Is the Motivation for Editing Someone Else’s Knol Article?

Reto Meier in a comment to the ranking debate over Knol wrote, “I don’t see any evidence that the moderated collaboration is working yet.” This led to some thoughts on the editing of other people’s Knols feature, and the question “What is the motivation for editing someone else’s Knol article?” For instance:

• When I edit someone else’s Knol article, as opposed to what happens on Wikipedia, my edit may never see the light of the day. To see the light of day, it also needs to pass a person who may disagree with my edit or who may be insulted by the correction.
• If I spot a factual error in an article, editing it to remove it would make the article’s message better perhaps, but it would also skew the original voice of the author. If someone else would now try to judge the overall factualness of the information contained within that article, then I did a disservice to that reader because I removed the easy indicators of non-factualness.
• If 20 articles on the subject X contain a factual error, and I’m an expert on X, will I go and edit 20 articles individually? Seems like a waste of energy, which would be better spent on Wikipedia, where one edit will suffice (if it stays in).
• If the article is written in first person like many articles are, and if they are highly opinionated or personal, who am I to tell someone else what they should say? This is great about opinions, there’s plenty of them and the diversity may make them great. Trying to unify all personal views into one seems impossible for a single-author-driven approach, and for articles using first-person writing, it also seems like you’d be fabricating lies. If someone says “I like Wednesdays because the Spaghetti Monster told people that’s when you can eat all the spaghetti you want” who am I to correct this and “adjust” the belief of the author just because I think the Spaghetti Monster doesn’t exist and that eating spaghetti on Wednesdays doesn’t have any special health-related benefits? If I would do that edit, I’d remove potentially valuable info about the author and their beliefs.

In most cases like these, unless you know the author and work together with them on the article in some way, a comment seems to be the better alternative, doesn’t it? The comment will be live immediately, and it won’t skew the original author’s voice. Admittedly, we may get most involved in with articles from people we know and trust and have read for some time, for which the blog format seems easier, because it will build communication over a longer period. Don’t we best like to alert people of issues with their articles if we know them? (The occasional reaching out to try to restore universal balance aside...)

Reto added, “I don’t really see the use-case for editing someone else’s article. I can see a use for the [multiple]-author model, but otherwise a comment, review, or message to the author suggesting a change seems more useful.”

Again I got to ask: What is the motivation for editing someone else’s Knol article?

What Is the Motivation fo ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (22)

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