An expert Wikipedia?

Wired posted an article today on Google's latest new thing: Knol, a Wikipedia-alike with the twist that the articles are written by a single, named individual (presumably an expert) and subject only to expert moderation after that point. As an added wrinkle, if the author wants they can get ad revenue from their site if it gets hit often enough.

I have to admit I have no idea if this will go anywhere at all. If removes by far the best part of Wikipedia: that anyone can author or edit an article. This is the reason that Wikipedia has articles on virtually every topic you could ever want to read, often with copious references and a fairly decent stab at a neutral point of view. Get someone with some specialized knowledge on an obscure topic: bingo, another article!

If also removes by far the worst part of Wikipedia: that anyone can author or edit an article. The competence and neutrality of Wikipedia's editors have been challenged time and time again, as anyone who watches the Colbert Report will note. There has been a lot of discussion about the regression to mediocrity in Wikipedia articles written by true experts followed by tons of "helpful" edits by people who don't understand the topic anywhere near as well as they think.

Right now there don't seem to be a huge number of Knols (understandable since it just launched) and those that are there seem to be mostly health related. This is actually an area where other-than-Wikipedia web sites do fairly well- the featured Knol is on Type 1 Diabetes, which is great except that there are at least a dozen other sites out there with similar information. The others seem to be random bits like how to make pancakes- the areas where true experts could chime in (hard sciences especially) don't seem to be very populated.

Given that many modern student's first resort for research is Wikipedia, any additional site with quality information will be welcomed. Let's just hope it doesn't end up like Wikiepedia, which is often also the *last* place students look for research.