The Google Debates

Google has recently launched a service within Google Knol known as Google Debates. While still in it's infancy, hundreds of users have already begun participating, as have well known think tanks and NGOs, including The Cato Institute,the Economic Policy Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Of course, the current debates center around the presidential election, an excellent choice to pull in users.

 

The clever part about the system is that the entire system, save for the answers, is user generated, with users both submitting and voting on questions for inclusion on each topic. Having ran through the hundred odd questions submitted so far, I'd have to say that most of them are actually valid questions, though there is one or two repeats, and I noted at least one blatant advertisement. Fortunately, these can be reported to the moderators. In addition, users also may rate and respond to the answers supplied by the various institutes.

 

So, what does this mean for the state of online debating? My survey of the questions revealed that relatively short, clear questions with a wide variety of possible responses, such as "What are the main security threats faced by our nation?" are quite popular, and anything asked in a partisan way tends to be rapidly blackballed. Articles, while clearly reflecting a given viewpoint, are well sourced, and neatly written. All in all, it seems to be surprisingly varied and unbiased, especially when compared to other online political discussions. If it can do that for politics, I've faith it'll work equally well for less volatile topics.

 

What does google get out of this? This area has no ads, though it does occasionally link to related knols, which may themselves contain adsense ads, so at least indirectly, it might contribute a bit to revenue, though I imagine not enough to really matter. I suspect instead that it's simply another way to boost the knol system. After all, theres no particular reason it needs to be linked heavily to knols, and most of googles apps work quite well independantly.

 

If it is merely a publicity generator then, can we expect it to stick around for a while? First off, it's missing the standard beta tag google gives everything new and old. Im not sure if this is good, bad, or irrelevant, but it certainly is unusual. Regardless, it's fate is tied to that of Knol. How is knol doing? Not sure. growth in articles seems to be steady, but they suffer from widely varying quality, and a general lack of interconnection. Safe for now, but perhaps a search engine alone isn't sufficient for someone who simply wants to browse knols in the way people frequent wikipedia.

 

All in all, it's a good system, it seems to bring out the best in collaborative discussions, they managed to get some fascinating organizations on board and I look forward to seeing further debates in it. I remain a bit doubtful as to how well it ties into the rest of the knol system, , but it certainly has possibilities, and I'll be fascinated to see what it becomes.