On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:47 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Farhad has a fatal flaw in his argument (I assume it is a *he*). His flaw is believing that Knol is an encyclopedia and that it is "the next Wikipedia". Neither situation represents what Knol actually is.
Knol is an online magazine -- multiple authors with bylines (credit), writing mostly individual articles *with some small input* and doing so to promote their business or themselves. That's not the reason d'etre of an encyclopedia.
This was what was wrong with much of the media discussion of Knol at its launch.
Google's own message at the time was that Knol is a publishing platform that's something of a complement to another of its properties, Blogger, but unfortunately the media found Wikipedia to be a more headline grabbing comparison.
http://thoughtsfordeletion.blogspot.com/2008/07/kno-contest.html