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Google launches "Knol", Wikipedia competitor/destroyer

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
Google has unleashed its Wikipedia killer.

Back in December, the search engine cum world power announced an anyone-can-edit online encyclopedia it insists on calling Knol, and this morning, with a post to The Official Google Blog, product manager Cedric Dupont and software engineer Michael McNally opened things up to world+dog.

Yes, Google is going head-to-head with Wikipedia, the cult that once saved it from extinction. But unlike Wikipedia - where Jimbo Wales hides his crazed cohorts behind anonymous accounts - Knol asks that you put your name on whatever you write.

"The key principle behind Knol is authorship," Dupont and McNally write. "Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols [grassy ones too? - ed] on the same subject, and we think that is good."

Others can edit your knol - short for "knowledge," apparently - but not without your approval. "We are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call 'moderated collaboration,'" the Goolgers continue. "With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public."

All in all, a more sensible setup than Wikipedia. If people across the globe are posting opinions to your site, it's good to call them opinions. But Wikipedia has its advantages. Most notably, its easier to make fun of.
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The Register.

Knol.
 
What a horrible, horrible name. The name MobileMe is a lot better.

And it seems so easy to make something up. I could write my professor's biography, and make it all up. Big deal. All I would need is public internet access, a new gmail account, and then publish crap that nobody could argue about since there's no point.

Also, couldn't someone just copy an article from Wikipedia, and reference it? All that knowledge is public domain anyway.

sushi said:
If it is short for knowledge, why not knowl?
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That's a far more brilliant name, but maybe they felt that the pronunciation was a bit tricky. I'd pronounce it as "now-wul", or similar to "growl" or "howl", but not "bowl".
 
I always thought Wiki's "anonimity" and ease of use was what made it grow so fast…

Google may just be complicating things too much for "Knol" to succeed.
 
Yea, I've checked this out and am very under enthused about it. Not all of Google's ideas are hits. Wikipedia is already very well established, so for this to come along and seemingly try to compete is just a waste of web space. All it's really doing is repeating other stuff that's already out there on the web.
 
Google has taken a lot of great ideas and made them better. At first glance, knol is not one of them.
 
dynamicv said:
Knol rhymes with lol.
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U has a nu e-malez from knolrus in ur gmalez box. Wud u liek to view it?

No!!!!!!! They be stealin' mah bukket!!!!!!!

--Knolrus
Formur emploiyee of Wikipediaz
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The articles so far seem very in depth, but I do wonder what they will do to avoid generating the kind of content that about.com has -- basically, the model seems on the surface fairly similar to them. And about.com is the bane of my internet searching. I hate getting a bunch of hits for them. I inevitably go there, and 99.9% of the time it's absolute crap -- so much worse than Wikipedia that there isn't even a comparison.
 
Abstract said:
And it seems so easy to make something up. I could write my professor's biography, and make it all up. Big deal. All I would need is public internet access, a new gmail account, and then publish crap that nobody could argue about since there's no point.
Click to expand...

You could do that on wikipedia or knol? I know, I've created some pretty ridiculous articles on wikipedia which still stand today.

Anyway, I don't see Knol taking off. The amount of work people have put into Wikipedia is astounding. It would be extremely difficult replicating that, only better, on Knol.
 
I have searched for "apple," "internet," and "united states" on Knol and there were zero results. I feel smarter already!

Meanwhile, there is already an entire article about Knol itself on Wikipedia.
 
how about...

googlewiki

or wikigoogle

or giki

Knol sounds so boring. Also reminds me of the last name of a person that I don't particularly like.
 
i honestly don't think that this is entirely aimed at being a wikipedia competitor, although it might develop into that, its too far behind wiki to really catch up imo. but it should have some select uses. the only way it will catch on is if google abuse their position and put their results higher than they should, thats probably the biggest concern imo.
 
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