I was reading Google News today, and I came across an article comparing Wikipedia to Knol. Over at Slate.com, Farhad Manjoo has written a rather interesting piece comparing the two projects.

Not uniquely, he comes to the conclusion that Knol fails in several key areas Wikipedia achieves in. The lack of central authority, the lack of financial incentive, the massive community…these are all things that Wikipedia provides to its information gatherers (colloquially known as Wikipedians or editors) that Google Knol lacks.

Now, it is arguable that these things create a better encyclopedia. One could argue that financial incentive produces higher quality work, or that not having the community can keep people from being distracted from content writing by these “meta” things.

At the same time, I do not think that Wikipedia has it 100% correct. There needs to be a balance between the two, and that’s why I don’t think either project will ever get it just right. I would argue you need the community, but you also need editorial oversight.

Thoughts? Who’s winning? Who will win in the long run?