Google’s new encyclopedia venture, Knol, resolves some of the key issues afflicting Wikipedia. Anonymity is not allowed, for instance, so every article is attributable to an author based on his or her Google account. This means Knol can house several articles on the same topic. Anybody can suggest changes to a document, but it’s up to the author whether to incorporate those revisions into his or her work, which does (of course) show up in Google search results.

From a PR perspective, this is a far better system than the “biased point of view” rule that has made Wikipedia a nightmare for many companies. There’s a noble ring to the rule that prohibits anybody—individual or company—from creating or altering content about themselves. But this keeps organizations from correcting simple factual errors (listing 300,000 employees instead of 30,000, for instance) or repairing vandalism. In the meantime, unaffiliated individuals with biased points of view (activists, for instance) are free to create, alter, or add whatever they want.

Under Knol’s approach, a company representative could create a listing for a company (or its products). Even if someone else writes an alternative knol that approaches the company from a different, less favorable angle, the quality of the company’s entry could make it the go-to reference. What’s more, companies can promote their participation in the conversation by evaluating and integrating suggestions from readers and offering their own to the authors of other articles. Google refers to this as “moderated collaboration.”

For every organization that produces an accurate, objective, comprehensive knol (which Google describes as “a unit of knowledge”), I expect more than one will use the site to propagandize, producing exactly the kind of advertising-focused content that drove Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to implement the biased-point-of-view rule in the first place. ProBlogger author Darren Rowse noted, “I can almost hear the blackhat community running over to Knol to see how it can be manipulated. I’m sure Google have safeguards in place—but where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Knol also represents yet another source for companies to monitor. A quick search for Wal-Mart, for example, turned up a single article so far, titled, “The Struggle: Wal-Mart’s Need for Organization,” which promotes the unionization of the Wal-Mart workforce. The article has earned a five-star rating but has no reviews or comments yet. Somebody at Wal-Mart (or its PR agency) may be aware of the article, electing to not dignify it with a response. As I noted in a comment to a Todd Defren post, however, there is no dignity in allowing inflammatory or inaccurate information to stand, to allow somebody else to define your issues. Constructive engagement is often a better response than stubborn silence.

There is also an opportunity to reach out to the authors of knols, another possibility fraught with peril. Gary, who wrote the Wal-Mart knol, doesn’t appear to be a ranting activist. His other knols deal with topics like biology, literary analyses, and global culture. Sincere outreach designed to initiate a dialogue could be worthwhile. Based on experience, though, I suspect a lot of companies would simply start spamming the authors of knols related to their business in hopes of getting the same results they hope they’ll get by spamming bloggers, but which usually results in nothing but resentment and hostility.

Knol has only been up and running for less than a week, so how it will be used remains to be seen. There is speculation that many could opt to write here instead of on their own blogs. Some suggest it could kill off lesser-known knowledge-creation sites like Squidoo, Mahalo, and About.com. A few have even speculated it could hurt Wikipedia.

All of which remains to be seen. It’ll be far more interesting, from the communications perspective, to see how companies tap into Knol, both wisely and stupidly. There’s certainly plenty of both to go around.