In my view, this all boils down to the fact that if Google hosts the information, it means they can display adverts. Google presently makes money off of Wikipedia because the broad coverage of topics increases the proportion of queries that Google can potentially show advertisements for, which represents an increase in the capacity of the market. Even better than that would be for Google to host the information that constitutes the long tail of Wikipedia. Not only can adverts be purchased next to the results for these topics, but if Google is the number one result, which they will be (they emphasize in the blog post that "we are quite experienced with ranking web pages"), they also get to show advertisements next to the result that is clicked on in the event that the advertisement shown next to that result is not clicked on. This is an increase in impressions, and the larger the number of impressions, the greater the chance that one of them will be converted. Even better for Google is when a surfer clicks an advertisement in a Knol article which lands them on a page displaying Google ads, which.... you see where this is going...:)
On Dec 14, 2007 4:24 PM, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
Hi,
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this whole deal.
Can anyone explain to me exactly how Wikipedia could or would use a Creative Commons'd knol?
Suppose that a knol were written about some topic for which Wikipedia only had a stub. Then, if I understand the licensing of a "by" license correctly, the article could be cut and pasted from the knol into a WP article, and presumably wikified, and then become a normal article.
Is that right?
And if it is, anyone can do this, not the original author of the article? How and where would the citation to the original article be integrated into Wikipedia? Isn't it the case that Wikipedia could integrate more or less all of the content from Knols?
(I imagine there is documentation somewhere on Help: for how to integrate content from the various free licenses into Wikipedia, but I hope some will agree that the discussion is worth having in this thread.)
-Pat Hall
We hope to move to a Creative Commons license. Whether what we end up with is compatible with Knol or Citzendium depends on what license they chose. Ideally, we should all work together so that all these licenses are compatible. There is nothing any of us do that can't be improved on.
As a footnote, any open source license selected by the original creator of an article is acceptable on Wikinfo.
Fred
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