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whadu · Level 47: Snake Eater **Posts:** 31336 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 5:06 AM

ZD Net: Google's Wikipedia competitor, Knol, was opened to the public on Wednesday morning.

So-called knols are articles about specific topics written by experts on that subject.

Google is partnering with The New Yorker magazine to allow any author to add a cartoon from the magazine to their knol. Knol authors can run ads with them, as well, and receive a cut of the revenue from Google.

What makes Knol different from Wikipedia is that every knol will have an author, or group of authors, whose name is prominent.

"The big difference is authorship is highlighted," Cedric Dupont, Knol product manager, said in an interview with ZDNet.co.uk sister site CNET News.com. "In the long term, we hope that encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, would use knols as references... If Knol is successful, it will help Wikipedia."

People can submit comments, and rate and review knols. Authors can choose to close their knol so that no-one else can edit it, make it completely open to others to edit — like a wiki — or keep the default "moderated collaboration" mode, in which the author selects which edits to allow.

By introducing more service-level agreements and monitoring tools, Google could persuade companies to entrust their business to the cloud...

"We think moderated-collaboration mode will solve a large part of the problem" of complaints about accuracy that have plagued Wikipedia, Dupont said. There will, no doubt, be multiple knols on any one topic.

There will not be a Knol destination site or portal, but people can see some highlights on the main Knol page and search by subject or author. Every knol will be treated like any other web page, crawled by Google's spider and indexed in the search engine.

"The ultimate goal is: we want to improve search," Dupont added.

Knol was announced late last year.

Source: Zdnet.co.uk

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Google Knol Is Live

Blogo Scoped: Google went live with Knol, a platform to read and write articles on all kinds of subjects. Knol was being tested privately since some time and had been pre-announced back in 2007. The address is knol.google.com, but notably not knol.com or knol.org or even googleknol.com. This project is somewhat reminiscent of Wikipedia, though there are many differences as well. You may also think of this as an alternative to creating a small info website if your aim is to cover only a single subject.

When you log-in within your Google account to write an article on a subject you’re familiar with, you’ll use the kind of live-layout editor typical for Google (and much easier to use than Wikipedia’s editor). For every article you can also choose your licensing, your collaboration, and your advertising model. For instance, you can connect an article to your AdSense account – this triggers a verification process. You can pick a license; either a Creative Commons Attribution license, or a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license, or the old-style “all rights reserved.” And for collaboration, you can pick open (everyone who’s signed in can edit), moderated (everyone can suggest edits but you or another author will be able to approve these before they would go live – this is the default setting), and closed (meaning only owners – i.e. admins – and authors can edit).

Right now, a lot of the existing Knols – Google defines a knol as a “unit of knowledge”, and perhaps this will be how people name articles hosted on Knol too – deal with subjects of a more serious or scientific nature, like health. (Google’s help page says you can write “(Almost) anything you like,” adding that you pick the subject “and write it the way you see fit” as they don’t edit knols nor do they “try to enforce any particular viewpoint”... subject to the terms of service and their content policy, which disallows e.g. images containing nudity, and “spam,” a rather broad term in this case. You may also not write anything commercial if you’re in “Cuba, Iran, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, Syria, or Sudan,” Google says.)

Other articles, like the frontpage-featured “How to Backpack”, are of a lighter nature, but still very long and detailed. (I’ve started a collaborative stub covering FriendFeed.) On that note, even the URL is quite long, and includes the owner’s name... a peculiar choice for collaborative pages, and a potential barrier if you consider going for the open collaboration model, as people may associate other people’s edits with yours.

Naturally, the current articles are just the site’s seeding – it remains to be seen in what direction it grows. The quality of wikis and other projects hoping for user participation often depend on a good community spirit, which in turn often reflects a company’s karma... and usually, that’s the sum of that company’s past actions.

Reading an article, there is a nice table of contents featured on top. The header section in general takes up quite a bit of space for Knol articles. Considering the focus of these articles is to get a point across, the font for the main content that follows is awkwardly small. On articles there are now a couple of review features for other users, even when you don’t have the permission to hit the Edit button on top: you may be able to comment; you can rate an article; you can flag it as inappropriate; and last not least, you can review it. When you start a review, the Knol editor as usual opens – slightly sluggish at this time, as are some other parts of the site (with its dynamic, on-page JavaScript reloads), though these may be launch effects – and you can add your opinions. Peer review is something known especially from the science community, which the Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin know well too (peer review even allegedly inspired Larry Page to create the back-links counting PageRank algorithm which led to their “Backrub” engine, and later, Google search).

If we do want to compare this project to Wikipedia, then perhaps we can think of Knol, at least at this time, as slightly more top-down than the bottoms-up, everyone-can-edit Wikipedia.org. While more and more Wikipedia too is adding restrictions and special rights, their original spirit could perhaps be summed up with “by and large people want to do good, and many small, even hasty edits, add up to a by and large great quality.” And then perhaps Google Knol’s stance is more like, “someone’s responsible for an article, changes will be owner-approved by default, and people’s actions will be rated.” Using a biography page and a real name is suggested as well, and Google offers a verification method (you can verify via your mobile phone, or a credit card... at least the latter method was broken when I tried).

Let’s see how these two models compare against each other; there’s a lot to be won by allowing everyone to quickly do edits, but a more tightly controlled model may have benefits as well. And perhaps all those people complaining about Wikipedia – or who had Wikipedia articles they started be deleted, as Wikipedia does not allow all kinds of entries – will now consider Knol a potential new home for research and sharing. And there’s another big difference to Wikipedia: at Knol you’ll potentially get paid, through the AdSense ads. Which would mean that the more popular your article, among other factors, the higher your revenues. And Google gets a share of these revenues, naturally (even when Google Knol is listed as an entity separate from AdSense with a 0% share in the process)... though I’m not so sure exactly how they aim to pay collaborators on articles. Money can be an incentive but may also cause friction. It’ll be interesting to watch where this project goes; and even if you may prefer the Wikipedia style of collaborative publishing, it seems a little competition can’t hurt.

Source: Blogoscoped.com

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Knol: Google Takes on Wikipedia

Read Write Web: Google just opened up Knol, its Wikipedia competitor, to the public after announcing a private beta of the service last December. Unlike Wikipedia, Knol puts a stronger emphasis on authorship and even encourages users to start different 'knols' for the same subject. Google is also serving up AdSense advertising on the site, whereas Wikipedia stays away from any advertising on its site.

In many respects, Knol is similar to Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, though its scope seems even more ambitious and its tools a bit more refined. It does, however, validate the Mahalo model.
Authorship/Identity

Knol puts a lot of emphasis on authorship and, somewhat akin to Amazon's "Real Name" scheme, authors can validate their identity on Knol through either a credit card or phone number.

The default setting for every Knol is "moderated collaboration." In this mode, anybody with a Google account can suggest changes to an knol, but the author has to accept these changes before they go live.

Authors can also invite others to contribute to their articles and given them the same rights as the original author.

There is also an option for authors to write a short bio of themselves in Knol. While this is interesting here, it will be even more interesting to see if Google might start sharing these Knol identities (and maybe even the users' reputation) among more of its properties.
Usage

Setting up a Knol is as easy as clicking the "Write a Knol" button. The text editor, too, is pretty straightforward, especially in the face of the often cryptic mark-up language most wikis use.

Knol uses a rich text editor, which presents users with all the typical editing functions, including basic formatting options, links (all set to 'nonfollow'), and the ability to add references.

As of now, you can not embed any videos or other content, except for the New Yorker Cartoons that Google incensed for this project for reasons only Google knows.

Users who don't want to write their own articles can review and rate knols. There is also an option to leave comments on every knol.
Creative Commons

Users can choose between three licenses for their articles, the Creative Commons Attribution License, the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, and an "All Rights Reserved" license. The Attribution license is the default setting. Users can chose a different license for every knol.
Advertising

Authors on Knol can enter their AdSense data into Knol. Besides the cut Google already takes from the advertising through AdSense anyway, authors will get the regular AdSense payout for every click on an ad. This seems like a smart way to reward users who write the best (or most popular) content, while still making money for Google.

In the competition with Wikipedia, this might mean that some authors could divert their attention from editing Wikipedia articles to Knol. However, the question will also be if spammers can find a way of abusing this.

New Yorker Cartoons?

While there is no option to embed any videos or other content into the site, authors can embed cartoons from the New Yorker. This is done through a rather cumbersome process where users have to first search for a cartoon in the New Yorker store and then enter the ID number of the cartoon into Knol. Why Google chose the New Yorker's cartoon archive for this is anybody's guess, but chances are that Google will announce more content partnerships in the near future.
Is Google Going After Wikipedia?

Given how often Wikipedia results appear as Google's top results, it would make sense for Google to look at this and decide to start its own competitor. By incentivizing authors through AdSense and by giving its users simple, but powerful tools to start their articles, Google might just be on the right track. While Google keeps reiterating that Knol is not meant to compete with Wikipedia, it's hard to see how that wouldn't be the case.

Knol, of course, has far fewer articles now than Wikipedia, but as it grows, it will be interesting to watch if Google is going to give preference to its own pages over the Wikipedia results. After all, Knol carries Google advertising and Wikipedia doesn't, so Google would clearly have an incentive in doing so, though the potential public outcry if Google would try to do this might prevent them from even attempting it.

Source: Readwriteweb.com

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Google opens doors to Knol

Computer World: July 23, 2008 (Computerworld) Seven months after Google Inc. announced plans to launch its own Wikipedia-type project, authors on Wednesday were invited to submit content to the new site, called Knol (which means a unit of knowledge).

Though the concept is quite similar to that used by Wikipedia, Google said it is not looking to compete harshly with the established site. The company said it is focusing on highlighting the authors who submit articles to the site. Each knol will have a single author or group of authors whose name or names will appear with their contributions, Google noted in a blog post.

"The Web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the Web," Google said. "An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: Millions of people know useful things, and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone."

Knol will include a new concept that Google is calling "moderated collaboration," where any reader can make suggested edits to a knol, which the author can choose to accept, reject or modify for inclusion on the site, Google said.

Knol also includes various community tools to allow users to submit comments, ratings or write reviews. Mashable blogger Adam Ostrow wrote that because Knol allows authors to insert AdSense ads on their knols and earn money based on clicks, "this sounds a lot less like the community collaborating on authoritative articles (Wikipedia) and a lot more like a potential land grab to create content for keywords."

However, he acknowledged that offering the ability for anyone to comment or review an article raises or lowers the authority of that article and should keep "would-be opportunists" at bay.

"In giving a single author control over each knol and its edits, it's hard to imagine the service will be as authoritative as Wikipedia, which many would argue has its own biases," Ostrow added. "Meanwhile, Knol could still be a huge traffic generator for Google and steal visitors from Wikipedia if it's integrated in search results -- something Google has not been shy about doing with other properties like YouTube."

Danny Sullivan, a blogger at Search Engine Land, noted that the best way to describe Knol is Wikipedia with moderation. "The collaborative advantage to Wikipedia is also its disadvantage," Sullivan noted. "Since anyone can contribute, some introduce factual errors or overtly vandalize articles. It's one reason that Wikipedia is considering moderation."

However, Sullivan added that he is concerned that hosting Knol content will set up inherent conflicts that will start to erode the trust users have in Google.

"By hosting this content, it plays too much in the content-owner space when its core business is supposed to be driving traffic outbound to others," Sullivan noted. "I can see the value in Knol's tool set and the potential it might offer to help collect further knowledge. So I'll give Knol the benefit of the doubt -- that it will perhaps occupy a space not being filled, rather than push others aside."

Source: Computerworld.com

Google, Knol, Wikipedia

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Ragedy · Level 31: Sheng Long **Posts:** 6152 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 5:43 AM

Well hopefully it's better than your wiki rival, which just re-stole wiki articles. With [/LINEBREAK] in the middle of them.
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whadu · Level 47: Snake Eater **Posts:** 31336 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 6:01 AM

whadu · Level 47: Snake Eater **Posts:** 31336 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 8:08 AM

Notes: Knol is a Google project which includes articles on topics ranging from "scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions," according to Google. Largely the brain child of Google vice president of engineering Udi Manber, it was announced on December 13, 2007 and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008 with a few hundred articles.

Knol pages are "meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read", according to Manber. The term knol, named after a "unit of knowledge", refers to both the project and an article in the project. Several experts see Knol as Google's attempt to compete with the massively successful online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
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whadu · Level 47: Snake Eater **Posts:** 31336 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 8:44 AM

Knol Contents: At the time of its launch, Knol was seeded with several hundred articles, mostly in the health and medical field. All knols are licensed by default under a Creative Commons copyleft license, but authors may choose traditional copyright protections. It is unclear if this default license is compatible with the GFDL used in Wikipedia. All contributors must sign in first with a Google account. Knol has a content policy describing topics unacceptable for the project. Relevant nudity is allowed, but pornography, commercial or otherwise, is forbidden. Also forbidden is discriminatory or violent content. Content designed to promote businesses, products or services is allowed, but articles devoid of substantive content and created solely to generate ad revenue are not.

Readers may rate, comment on, or suggest edits to the articles. There can also be multiple articles for the same topic, each written by a different author. Google "[believes] that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content." Manber said that Google hopes "knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line" and that the authors will be able to decide whether advertisements will appear on their knols, and that if there are ads, a "substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads" will be given to authors. Manber also writes that "Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors."
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Biotic · Level 33: Guitar Hero **Posts:** 7775 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 12:01 PM

tl;dr

Got the main idea though. Sounds cool.
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NativeTJ · Level 36: Rising Dragon **Posts:** 10218 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 12:09 PM

I did not see this coming.

When are they going to make their OS?
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BigNig · Level 43: Monk **Posts:** 20009 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 2:30 PM

whadu · Level 47: Snake Eater **Posts:** 31336 **Timestamp:** Thu Jul 24, 08 3:17 PM

Competition: Since its announcement in December of 2007, there has been speculation on Google's motives and its position as a producer of content rather than as an organizer. The Guardian's Jack Schofield argued that "Knol represents an attack on the media industry in general."

Knol has been described both as a rival to encyclopedia sites such as Wikipedia and Scholarpedia and as a complement to Wikipedia, offering a different format that addresses many of Wikipedia's shortcomings. The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the name Wikipedia and the servers hosting the Wikipedia projects, welcomed the Google Knol initiative saying that "The more good free content, the better for the world." While Wikipedia articles are written collectively under a "neutral point of view" policy, Knol will highlight personal expertise by emphasizing authorship and, like articles provided on Squidoo and Helium.com, knols will contain the personal opinions of the author. Despite the official Wikimedia response and the differences in format, Wikimedia Foundation chair Florence Devouard has expressed concern over Knol's potential threat to Wikipedia in terms of the competition it will create. After Knol's beta launch, Google product manager Cedric Dupont responded to the idea that Google intended Knol to be a "Wikipedia killer" by saying, “Google is very happy with Wikipedia being so successful. Anyone who tries to kill them would hurt us.” The New York Times noted similarities in design between Knol and Wikipedia, such as use of the same font. Dupont responded that the use was simply a coincidence as it is a commonly used font.

Because of Knol's format, some have said Knol will be more like About.com than Wikipedia. According to Wolfgang Hansson, a writer at DailyTech, Knol may have been planned for About.com originally when it was up for acquisition. Hansson reported that several sources close to the sale said Google was planning to acquire About.com, but the executives at About.com learned Google was planning to move from About.com's model to a wiki-style model. That would have meant layoffs for all 500 or so "Guides" at About.com.
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