On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 6:18 AM, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> wrote: I agree that Knol is currently less well focused and written than Wikipedia is. But both in response to this and to the Copyleft / BY discussion - Let me put forth the idea that experimentation in the "freely available information" space is an extremely good thing. Wikipedia took some time to get where it is today, where we have at least nominally functional content accuracy, anti-vandalism, community functions. These are all still clearly problem points but I think that "it works" is clearly defensible. We also may not be the ultimate best solution for creating or distributing good freely available information. A lot of the problems we do have are pretty core issues with how we work and very hard to fix. The question of whether making money off ads associated with freely available information works for the better of the community at large and content creators/editors is an open question. Wikipedia chose very deliberately not to. Wikia does, but the company makes the money. In Knol's case, writers/editors can make at least some of it. Many of Wikipedia's mirror sites make money similarly to Wikia. It may well be that there's potentially enough money in some editing/writing that it can attract better writers and editors to help create better, stronger information pages / Knols on popular topics. That would probably benefit everyone. The copyleft vs BY-like license dispute is also an open question. I don't know of any serious study or historical analysis which has indicated that open content, software, or anything else licensed under GPL or copyleft terms has thrived more or been higher quality than BSD or BY-like licenses. This is a philosophical answer more than a practical one - it's fine to prefer one or the other, and I have no problem with Wikipedia's GFDL / eventually CC-BY-SA-like stance. But other licenses and license philosophies may work just as well, or better, in the long term. There should be more effort put into studying what the licenses' practical effects are. There should also be more openness to other projects doing it differently, so that we have test cases of the different options. Knol as it stands now is ridiculously primitive in comparison to Wikipedia now. But compared to Wikipedia a month into the project? I don't know if it will ultimately thrive or wither on the vine. Either way, it's an important experiment in alternate ways to create and distribute information freely. We should be standing up and clapping and wishing it the best. This is not a competition in the "Wikipedia wins Knol loses" sense. We're here to create and distribute free information - everyone wins if someone finds a better way to do that. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com