Google's Wikipedia rival, Knol, goes public
Updated at 12:50 p.m. PDT with more details following Google interview.
Think you are an expert on a subject? Well, Google's got a proposition for you.
Google's Wikipedia competitor, Knol, was opened to the public on Wednesday morning, according to the Official Google Blog.
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 CNET News. "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.
"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," he added.
A quick glance at some of the topics on the Knol page revealed many written by doctors that had to do with medical conditions, including an excellent article on rheumatoid arthritis. There also were some from The Family Handyman magazine on subjects including toilet clogs and installing a bathroom vanity.
A search on a few other topics yielded no or few results. For instance, there was one result for "dance" and it had no content, just a link to a related but not informative YouTube video.
Knol was announced late last year.
Google's Knol site is open to anyone who wants to write an article on a topic about which they're knowledgeable.
(Credit: Google)
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
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williamgeorge
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For many topics Wikipedia is an outstanding source and way to gather up references. In the articles coving science, mathematics, engineering and computer science, it is extremely useful and accurate.
Unfortunately the charges of bias in some(usually in political and historical articles) is usually based on opposite bias by the complainer and not any facts.
It is not 100% accurate, nothing is, but is considerably more accurate then its naysayers claim. Iit has a much broader scope than any other encyclopedia and articles cover the topic in a much broader and deeper way. It is almost the best place to start research, it gives a good overview of a topic and usually gives plenty of resources to delve deeper.
Of course there are problems, I have even seen cyclical references(a wikipedia article(on knights tour) reference an outside resource and that resource referenced the wikipedia article. Stuff that like is a problem even though the article in question was accurate.
Still, it doesn't make a case for Google trying to copy them. Besides, a google search is equivalent to a wikipedia search since Google is indexing every piece of data it can, copyrights be damned.
For me, Wikipedia works perfectly fine. If I ever have my doubts about something on there, I can just follow the references and make my own decision.
Knol just sounds like Citizendium that has gone corporate. At least Citizendium was created by the founder of Wikipedia.
- by Flag_Rental November 22, 2008 9:11 AM PST
- After checking out both Knol and Wikipedia, I definately prefer the look and feel of Knol. Google has done a great job at making a great user experience.
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