[WikiEN-l] Knol goes live

[Wily D]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 1:32 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I'm probably missing some elements of how Knol works... Anyone can
> create their own version of an article about something? And only pagerank
> and the starred rating determines which you see first? Won't they have an
> impossible noise problem?
>
> Also, how do they deal with crap like this:
> http://knol.google.com/k/graham-colditz-md-drph/cancer-prevention/bzml3lSg/SAmGOg#-
> "Eight Ways To Prevent Cancer"? The article they've got on squamous
> cell
> carcinoma, for instance - lots of junk in it that we wouldn't normally
> include, so generally speaking I'd say its beneath FA standards. On the
> other hand, it beats the hell out of our article on the subject. [1][2]
>
> Lastly, whats the import of the Creative Commons license they use? The
> articles I've seen are all CC-BY 3.0 - we can reuse content under that
> license, can't we?
>
> 1.
> http://knol.google.com/k/bryan-cho/squamous-cell-carcinoma-of-the-skin/VCa6d9c7/TGag1g#
> 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squamous_cell_carcinoma
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Knol isn't Google's answer to Wikipedia - it's Google's answer to
Geocities (or whatever the free hosting site of the day is).  With
stacks of editorialised articles in parallel, the goal and product are
totally different.  Of course, Google's answers are usually good, but
this is only being compared to Wikipedia because Wikipedia's popular,
not because Wikipedia's similar.

WilyD