Yup, there's a stack of knols "written" by me that are actually copies of Wikipedia articles. On any given search on Knol, most of the results are crap or Wikipedia articles. Its an interesting experiment, I think. All Knols under my name (now) include the GFDL notice at the bottom, and they have always contained the link to the Wikipedia revision in the summary - more than most reusers do. The issue of how CC-BY is not compatible with GFDL is a little opaque, to me, but the intent seems to be pretty close to the same. Still, as I said, everything is posted with the appropriate license. The "attribution" is a little limited, but providing the revision link makes it possible to determine who wrote what.
As far as the question of should Wikimedia content be copied over to Google Knol - I guess I don't understand how doing it negatively impacts the greater goals of the WMF. It just increases the exposure of good information, putting it in more places, etc. There are some issues of maintenance, of accuracy in an article that won't be updated frequently if at all, etc. - but no different than with anyone else who reuses our content.
The only downside to Knol for Wikimedia is if it draws away contributors and donors - I don't think it will, because generally speaking I expect the noise, low quality and lack of uniformity of organization/style/etc. to prevent much of our reader traffic moving there permanently. If we keep our donors and editors, then republishing material on Knol fits just fine with the mission of spreading free information.
Nathan
P.S.: The protest ratings are pretty comical.
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 4:00 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
Interesting, that there's one by Nathan Awrich. Nathan, you're on foundation-l right? Surely you'd know better than that? You wrote 22 knols, most if not all of which are copies of the relevant Wikipedia articles....why?
-Dan
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 3:52 AM, Nicolas Guérin <nguerin.zurich@gmail.com
wrote: