I kind of ripped Knol a new one on my blog, if anyone's interested: http://www.enotes.com/blogs/wikipedia/2008-07/5-mistakes-google-made-with-kn...
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Sheldon Rampton sheldon@prwatch.org wrote:
Anthony wikimail@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@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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