Google went live with 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.
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). How to Backpack”, are of a lighter nature, but still very long and detailed. (I’ve started a collaborative
Backrub” engine, and later, Google search).
If we do want to compare this project to 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 Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!