[WikiEN-l] Knol goes live

[Sheldon Rampton]

Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:

>> Cutting and pasting wikipedia content without following the terms of
>> the GFDL is rather problematical.
>>
> At least he preserved the section entitled History...
> http://knol.google.com/k/sheldon-rampton/-/8r9tdjdcsltq/2#H0-History


I created my article with an "All rights reserved" license. Knol gives  
me two other Creative Commons optiions. Not being an expert on the  
Talmudic details of GFDL, I don't know whether any of these options is  
consistent with its terms.

For me this is just an experiment so I can get a feel how Knol works.  
I don't have any desire to become a permanent maintainer of the  
Wikipedia article on Knol. The identified author of each article seems  
to be responsible for overseeing edits, and I don't have the time.  
Eventually I'll probably just delete the Wikipedia article.

One thing I'm curious about is how Knol handles disputes and  
complaints. If someone here wants to try submitting a complaint about  
my "All reserved license" or about the accuracy of the article, I  
won't be offended. I'm wondering myself how Google would handle it.

Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, if you search for Sheldon's Wikipedia article instead of  
> following the
> link you won't find it. That is because, apparently, Google has not  
> made
> most of the user added knol's publicly searchable. If you search for  
> your
> own while logged in, you'll see it - but no one else will. At least  
> in the
> early stages, it means a lot of people will create duplicate articles
> unaware of what has already been written.


Interesting. As Nathan pointed out, my Wikipedia article shows up in a  
search when I'm logged in, but not when I'm logged out.

I'm usually very impressed with Google's offerings, but so far this  
one leaves me underwhelmed. In theory, the WYSIWYG editing should be  
nicer than Wikipedia's wikitext, which is a lot less user-friendly  
than its proponents imagine. In practice, however, WYSIWYG editing on  
a web browser tends to be buggy, and Knol doesn't seem to have solved  
that. And things get worse when it comes to collaborative features.  
Other users can submit proposed changes, but the only person who can  
see a proposed change is the article's owner (at least in "moderated  
collaboration" mode). When someone submits a change, Knol tries to  
show me a WYSIWYG version of the diff, which I find confusing rather  
than helpful. Someone else here pointed out that Knol looks more like  
Google's alternative to Geocities than like an alternative to  
Wikipedia. I'd second that emotion.

-------------------------------------------

SHELDON RAMPTON
Research director, Center for Media & Democracy
Center for Media & Democracy
520 University Avenue, Suite 227
Madison, WI 53703
phone: 608-260-9713

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