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Knol-Project

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Knol-Project

Thank you for visiting the Knol Project page on the One Buck Wiki. This page was created to provide you with the latest information regarding Google's latest wiki project, the Knol Project, often dubbed also as "Knols Project".

The Knol Project is currently under Google's "beta" stage, meaning only people who are "invited" are allowed to try it out.

Do you want to add your criticism, neutral, or praise response to this page? Send your URL to zedomax [at] gmail.com and we will post it for you.

What is Knol Project?

Google's new Knol Project is basically a combination of Wikipedia and Squidoo as some experts say.

According to Google's blog post: 

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. 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. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

According to BloggingStocks: 

Basically, this is a knowledge base – where experts write up articles and users have a chance to benefit from the wisdom. The system is currently under an invitation-only status.

Knol-Project Screenshots

Knol Project Criticisms

Dashes - Google and Theory of Mind - "If the desire is to increase knowledge sharing, and the methods of compensation that Google controls include traffic/attention and money/advertising, then a more effective system than Knol would be to algorithmically determine the most valuable and well-presented sources of knowledge, identify the identity of authorites using the same journalistic techniques that the Google News team will have to learn, and then reward those sources with increased traffic, attention and/or monetary compensation."

SFWeekly - "It's a little bit bloggy, a little bit wiki, it's Knol (meaning "unit of knowledge"), the latest Google project to be hailed as a revolution before anybody's actually tried it, and -- if the tech industry was like a Rocky movie -- the Clubber Lang to Wikipedia's Rocky Balboa. But leave to it Wired take the rhetoric down a notch and ruin everybody's fight-inspired headlines. Thanks a lot."

Knol Project Neutrals

Zedomax - Knols Project Followup - Google’s Knol Project reminds me of a Paid Wiki - "Well, Google offer revenue sharing as stated in their blog:

At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.

Wow, that IS a paid wiki, just like the QuarterWiki and the One Buck Wiki. The only difference is that you don’t have to pay for pages in the beginning. I believe this is due to Google’s enourmous status as an Internet Giant with billions of dollars to spend on moderators, developers, and what not. We wish we could too but no we have to charge a small fee for each page.

Plus, there’s “one author” per page, just like the paid wikis. Google might have ripped off those ideas…

Regardless, this is a definite sign that Wikis are going to start taking over the world. (and Google will try to take over the world, literally…)"


Knol Project Praises

Goldtoe Lemon.Nut - Argumentum ad Verecundiam - "On the first point, a big reason this is happening is because of the amount of unmonetizable traffic Google sends to Wikipedia. ... And Wikipedia won’t accept advertising. Let’s build Knol.

The further justification for Knol is “Who can trust all that crap on Wikipeda?” Google is fundamentally an academic institution and part of that ethos is that things aren’t really “good” unless peer reviewed. The concept of peer review is central to how work is done inside Google and that basically works as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that ethos has extended to the way Google views content on the web. Sergey once asked the Blogger team how Blogger was going to compete with the New York Times. Even though our pageviews exceeded those of the NYT, the point I think he was making was “When are you gonna produce something authoritative that lots of people will accept as good.” Blogger’s answer was “Huh?” Knol’s answer is peer review."

According to BloggingStocks, Google will certainly have to play catch-up to Wikipedia, but Google will ultimately end up creating more value for themselves: 

With huge amounts of content across the web, it's often hard to find the quality stuff. Even if you go to places like Wikipedia, it's not easy to get a sense of the accuracy. Often, I use these sources as a starting point – not something that's definitive.

As expected, Google wants knols for all topics, which is certainly ambitious and will likely encounter problems along the way. But, it's certainly a worthy goal – and, in the end, could result in a valuable property.

References


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