@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Before the post itself, a little insight into how I got involved with Google Knol. A friend kindly flagged me about it, knowing as he does my interest in knowledge sharing tools. I contacted someone I know at Google London, they contacted Google Mountainview and they designated me a “Trusted Tester”. This was before Knol was opened up to the public.

Anyone who knows the way I test technology knows I tend to REALLY test it and try to take it beyond its natural parameters to explore what else it can do, doesn’t yet do and should do in the future. This is the advantage of being able to code and also understanding business models, monetization and user dynamics.

****************************************************

So as my reward for winning “Best Knol, June 2009” I’ve received a few hundred translation points which is a form of virtual exchange monies on Knol. Once I have enough points, someone will help me translate ‘The Global Brain, etc’ knol into another language. Now, this is a fantastic way of fostering international relations within the Knol community and it’s obvious some of the other authors on Knol — who’ve created a type of user committee —- are doing innovative and good things on behalf of Knol’s community development, which is also beneficial for making Knol different from (and better than, imo) Wikipedia.

This is a win-win situation for Google and for users.

I have to admit that apart from writing my knols to share knowhow, I’ve not engaged in any form of community development on Google Knol so far. This is because I was so badly disappointed from the Semweb platform experience whereby I spent 10 months doing this:

· sanity-checked the company’s SemTech 2008 presentation

· produced user guides for newbies (which the company failed to do until 3 months post-launch)

· collaborated with fellow core users to help newbies familiarize with the site and troubleshoot their glitches

· generated a lot of original, witty and quality content with core users to engage the interests of users

· collectively identified areas of improvement to the system, including in “show + tell” visuals

· collectively acted as champions and advocates of the platform

· collectively fostered a positive, democratic community spirit and ethos

· provided advice to the CEO on strategy (e.g., reward users, Report This feature, marketing, code features, conflict resolution panel organized by users, benchmarking by users)

and ended up having my time wasted that I would not repeat this again. We did all this out of our collective goodwill and with the objective of good community practice……..only to have the company do this:

· closed User Feedback — not once but three times, repeating their mistakes — and (deceitfully) conjure up falsehoods about why it was closed and blaming it on users

· decimated our content and failed to restore it despite a personal promise to me by the CEO

· continuously breached our privacy in areas we’d allocated as private.

Then to add to a complete lack of respect towards users, the CEO had the gall and lack of backbone to assume a fake identity on a tech blog and say that there had been a users’ vote to exclude me from the community. Frankly, this is a complete untruth: there was no vote of any kind. I know the core users and no one accepts or is fooled by this or any falsehood(s) from the CEO.

The way the company acted also showed a lack of credit and generosity — including some form of payment — towards the core users for their contributions, their tolerance and their intelligence.

Worst of all, including innocent users in what was exclusively his and his team’s underhand work and attempted character assassination of me was simply unacceptable. The CEO and the company’s actions were as s*** and sub-standard as their homemade product launch video which made their platform the laughing stock instead of the shining star of the SemWeb sector.

Moreover, since there was bad taste, poor judgment and communication problems from a team that had difficulty understanding its own users’ communications (mano-à-mano), how do they expect their algorithm to be smart enough to semantically understand us (man-machine)?

The experience certainly highlighted to me how context, perspective, perspicacity, wit and chains of logic are still missing in semantic tech capabilities.

As for the business model side, there is no amount of marketing or PR by the company now which will undo the damage they inflicted themselves with their absurd decisions and disrespect towards the very core users who gave the platform not only distinctive and quality content, they also gave it a soul, an identity and a strive towards better realization of a Global Brain.

As for me, well……………..I would now demand a substantial consulting fee and equity in the company to bring my brainpower and skills to bear on any platform, its strategy, its content and its community management. It would be some form of compensation and insurance against any small-minded dolt(s) deciding to delete users’ content because the coders didn’t have the intelligence to double-check their algorithms in the first place.

Anyway, my relative non-participation on Google Knol is the by-product of that SemWeb platform experience. It was unpleasant and raised some stark realizations in me.  

It means that someone like me would NOT commit my collaborative fair share to the Global Brain if it was hosted by that SemWeb play because I would NOT trust companies like the SemWeb play to be good stewards of content, respect IP or foster user democracy. I would certainly not give my content or solutions away for free to companies like that again. This is then connected to the Gladwell vs. Anderson arguments on whether content will be free or not in the future.

On Google Knol, at least any user’s original content can earn via Adsense, translation points and other community-generated means. The copyright belongs to them and they can assign attributions and licenses. Importantly, at least a genuine democracy operates which is influenced and managed by the authors themselves. It’s simultaneously meritocratic and collegiate, and supported by the system provider. There is an official rankings system provided by Google which is predicated on quantity of clickthroughs. However, supplementing this are peer reviews and various forms of QUALITY benchmarking by a core group of authors. They are in continuous open communication with the Google Knol technical team who try to incorporate their suggestions (e.g., the various Knol awards, peer review rules, translation services).

Some people may argue that having a core group or “Power Users” (as per Digg) runs the risk of creating a hierarchy whereby they determine what content / what knol / what concept takes precedence and ranking, and other users may feel excluded and resentful. If there is in-fighting, egotistical misunderstandings and heavy-handedness by the company later, a key user may be excluded (as in the case of zaibatsu from Digg who was ranked #3 at some point, apparently).

This lose-lose scenario need not necessarily be the inevitability of structures implemented to get the best out of a social network, its participants, their content share and collaborations.

If a platform has a group of core users who are committed to good practice, they can be the best marketing and PR possible. They can show other users by example. They can add additional filters to information streams and reduce white noise. They can provide specific context and links in the chain back to previous / related news items. They can add color and humor to what other users are seeking and interested in. They can be the ones who make the journey enjoyable because they’re prepared to share their experiences and to troubleshoot issues for other users which they’ve already gone through and overcome.

Importantly, they collectively and openly innovate. This is the optimal achievement of user democracy and connective intelligence.

Get it wrong and those core users become no more than link pushers, disenfranchised and the disengaged instead of happy content originators.

In any case, Google Knol has been heading in the right direction since beta test and official launch. This is not to say there haven’t been technical and community teething problems. Attachments did not always work out and windows would freeze. The core authors have also been through some difficult experiences together, yet this has actually reinforced their social bonds and commitment to excellence.

Before, there were two factions of them — interestingly, both factions made a beeline for me as soon as they read ‘The Global Brain’ but I kept my distance because of that negative experience elsewhere.  Both sides competed to be the arbiters of quality and ethos on Knol. Then events took a turn for the worse: one faction exposed the other’s “leader” as engaging in inappropriate behavior in order to increase his rankings, including plagiarism from another site and submitting peer reviews for himself under pseudonyms or getting cohorts to.

[Ramping of rankings is something all platforms need to be aware of and guard against to preserve platform integrity and trust in the ranking algorithm, btw. Another area the SemWeb play got wrong.]

Anyway, there was a huge uproar in the Knol community about it and the person in question had to publicly admit fault (under legal threats from the site he’d plagiarized), apologize to fellow authors and was excluded from Knol.

Subsequently, both factions have now made peace and — even more interestingly — ‘The Global Brain’ knol was voted as “Best Knol” by members of both factions, so whatever their differences they’re united in deciding my little knol is okay and passes both their benchmarks.

Credit where it’s due, I’ve now read more about the community rules they’ve put into place, guidance on benchmarking and peer reviews, tips for users, etc. and they’re doing a remarkably good job of laying the foundations for future sharing of knowledge.

It’s always the people who make something work, not the system in itself. Companies that genuinely “get” this simple truth and cultivate conducive company-user relationships (especially communications) are more than halfway to success and monetization.

This is something I’ve known for a while. After all, I did experience the Web 1.0 boom and bubble burst first-hand. In a way, maybe I did have to experience the SemWeb play’s sub-standard practices to reinforce my abilities to differentiate that from good practice.

Keep it up, Google Knol and its authors! Thanks for moving knowledge share forward towards a Global Brain.