"Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project."
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Just wondering what people think. :)
There has been a lot of blog buzz charting this as a possible competitor to Wikipedia. And at first it seemed quite real, and honestly, quite frightening to me. But if you read the post carefully, I don't think that ideas such as "For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject." and "...will include the opinions and points of view of the authors." sounds like a competition for a source of reliable information. To get reliable info, students and other people who are looking for "the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read" aren't going to want to read ten different articles on the Holocaust to get the full perspective. They need one, comprehensive unbiased source for an introduction.
On Dec 13, 2007 9:15 PM, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
"Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project."
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Just wondering what people think. :)
Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
If anything, to me it seems like a bad mistep by google. At first sight, it is hard to imagine Knol having any traction whatsoever.
Most of the stuff that people could plausibly want beyond what wikipedia offers, is already better packaged by wikia, than anything googles announcements seems to suggest.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
"Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project."
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Just wondering what people think. :)
Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
It reminds me a lot of everything2, except for 'experts'.
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html Just wondering what people think. :)
It's not free content, so that immediately makes it less useful or interesting in our terms. Sounds like about.com or Scholarpedia, which are also non-free.
(The quote "We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine." appears to be trying very hard not to make it free content. It's not clear what they gain from this.)
Mostly we'd find it useful for references, I expect.
- d.
David Gerard schrieb am 14.12.2007 09:22:
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html Just wondering what people think. :)
It's not free content, so that immediately makes it less useful or interesting in our terms. Sounds like about.com or Scholarpedia, which are also non-free.
http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png
According to the Screenshot it would probably be released under CC-BY-Something.
Bye, Tim.
On 14/12/2007, Tim 'avatar' Bartel wikipedia@computerkultur.org wrote:
David Gerard schrieb am 14.12.2007 09:22:
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html Just wondering what people think. :)
It's not free content, so that immediately makes it less useful or interesting in our terms. Sounds like about.com or Scholarpedia, which are also non-free.
http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png According to the Screenshot it would probably be released under CC-BY-Something.
Oooh. Straight CC-by-3.0? That's excellent! If they require release under a free licence then that's a BIG WIN for our aims.
- d.
Hoi, The best bit is that it makes KNOL and Wikipedia share the same aims. If there is one thing, we can use their content .... Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 14, 2007 10:59 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Tim 'avatar' Bartel wikipedia@computerkultur.org wrote:
David Gerard schrieb am 14.12.2007 09:22:
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
From google
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html
Just wondering what people think. :)
It's not free content, so that immediately makes it less useful or interesting in our terms. Sounds like about.com or Scholarpedia, which are also non-free.
http://www.google.com/images/blogs/knol_lg.png According to the Screenshot it would probably be released under CC-BY-Something.
Oooh. Straight CC-by-3.0? That's excellent! If they require release under a free licence then that's a BIG WIN for our aims.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:59:16 +0200, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
From google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html Just wondering what people think. :)
...
Oooh. Straight CC-by-3.0? That's excellent! If they require release under a free licence then that's a BIG WIN for our aims.
I wouldn't view this initiative as intended to be a complete Wikipedia-killer, but surely it's aimed to compete for the knowledge-related traffic. Already there are: the coined buzzword and the author's vanity factor.
While Wikipedia's community process is too often abused, it is all but non-existent in the said inititive: "...For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.".
Google's backing isn't mean thing: "...If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads."
And who said anything about free licences on content? There's no one word on such in all the Official Google Blog post. The image shows mockup using some CC-by'ed photo from flickr.
---
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:59:16 +0200, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
From google
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html Just wondering what people think. :)
...
Oooh. Straight CC-by-3.0? That's excellent! If they require release under a free licence then that's a BIG WIN for our aims.
I wouldn't view this initiative as intended to be a complete Wikipedia-killer, but surely it's aimed to compete for the knowledge-related traffic. Already there are: the coined buzzword and the author's vanity factor.
While Wikipedia's community process is too often abused, it is all but non-existent in the said inititive: "...For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.".
Google's backing isn't mean thing: "...If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads."
And who said anything about free licences on content? There's no one word on such in all the Official Google Blog post. The image shows mockup using some CC-by'ed photo from flickr.
The CC-by-3.0 license is on the image. Just hard to find. Look at the sidebar on the right.
Fred
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:01:53 +0200, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
...
And who said anything about free licences on content? There's no one word on such in all the Official Google Blog post. The image shows mockup using some CC-by'ed photo from flickr.
The CC-by-3.0 license is on the image. Just hard to find. Look at the sidebar on the right.
Mockup isn't a promise, and right now I'm talking about announcement. Anyway, how would what's effectively the authored article be "released" under a "free" license?
---
On 14/12/2007, Yury Tarasievich yury.tarasievich@gmail.com wrote:
Mockup isn't a promise, and right now I'm talking about announcement.
It's true the mockup isn't a promise, but that they did that is very promising and we should encourage them to continue in this direction.
Anyway, how would what's effectively the authored article be "released" under a "free" license?
I don't understand your question. The author of any piece of writing can place it under a free licence - that's what we do every time we hit "submit" to add something to a Wikipedia.
- d.
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:14:54 +0200, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 14/12/2007, Yury Tarasievich yury.tarasievich@gmail.com wrote:
...
Anyway, how would what's effectively the authored article be "released" under a "free" license?
I don't understand your question. The author of any piece of writing can place it under a free licence - that's what we do every time we hit "submit" to add something to a Wikipedia.
I just don't see this happening in that particular case.
---
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
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
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
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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...:)
That's what happens when you leave 10 billion dollars laying on the table. Someone will pick it up. And, in our case, everyone will. However, those who have picked up may also give back.
Fred
On Dec 14, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
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...:)
That's what happens when you leave 10 billion dollars laying on the table. Someone will pick it up. And, in our case, everyone will. However, those who have picked up may also give back.
So, Google knol is somewhat like wikipedia, with each new "revision" of an article having advertisements customized for that revision?
I can't wait to see how their "herbal viagra" knol cluster turns out, or which version of the "George W. Bush" knol gets the highest rank... somehow, I don't see this ending well, without major changes.
Without clear guidelines, group ownership of "a good knol", and smart- mob rule (as with wikipedia), it seems like a one-way ticket into becoming, well, a morass of plagiarism accusations, highly biased articles in competition with each other, and rampant abuse.
For us (and by "us", I mean the folks who have watched and worked in similar projects over the years), I suspect watching knol will be an experience not unlike watching one's own child learn to become a parent.
{{citation needed}} pretty much says it all.
-Bop
Hi,
The only risk is censorship at search engine level. If Google starts putting Knol entries higher in its searches an important percent of our traffic moves to Knol.
Yet it's a risky move for Google itself. Knol is basically a Wikia, and wikia, while being a successful site, is well beyond wikipedia as public image, in terms of content credibility.
If Google starts to serve less authoritative content, it won't be long before people starts to use another engine, that surely will not positively bias knol content, but will rather do the opposite in order to exploit this weakness in Google's offer.
Many people start their searches "directly" from en.wiki already. So in the end Knol (while seemingly a powerful attack to our borders) may end up in delivering us a powerful share of Google's traffic.
I will be much more impressed the day Google tunnels OUR existing pages; it gives prominence to the tunneled version and pastes ads on them. That would do the trick, if their servers were quicker than ours and they could offer added services (say an integrated autosearch on YouTube, semantic searches, plus this, that and that... some of their tools already go in that direction and are far more dangerous than Knol). Screens are getting larger and larger and so is bandwidth, there is room on them to deliver more content offer. When it's not US doing it, somebody else will.
Yet as long as knol needs to fill in a 2 million pages startup gap based on nothing more than "earn 5 dollars a year by writing on your fav subject"... no, no need to worry. I'm copying it from citizendium's home page as I write: "We have added over 4,200 articles (and many subpages) since November 2006". Say Knol may do 100 times better in quantity by delivering worst quality. So what?
They ain't going nowhere... one thing is taking possession of a desert and apparently worthless market niche, as the WMF did, another is making your way thru an hyper saturated market. Google IS big, it has lots of control, but it doesn't have enough control on the market for them to take over like this. They need a better idea if they want to kick us out.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ronald Chmara Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 2:22 AM To: fredbaud@fairpoint.net; wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Knol
On Dec 14, 2007, at 5:51 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
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...:)
That's what happens when you leave 10 billion dollars laying on the table. Someone will pick it up. And, in our case, everyone will. However, those who have picked up may also give back.
So, Google knol is somewhat like wikipedia, with each new "revision" of an article having advertisements customized for that revision?
I can't wait to see how their "herbal viagra" knol cluster turns out, or which version of the "George W. Bush" knol gets the highest rank... somehow, I don't see this ending well, without major changes.
Without clear guidelines, group ownership of "a good knol", and smart- mob rule (as with wikipedia), it seems like a one-way ticket into becoming, well, a morass of plagiarism accusations, highly biased articles in competition with each other, and rampant abuse.
For us (and by "us", I mean the folks who have watched and worked in similar projects over the years), I suspect watching knol will be an experience not unlike watching one's own child learn to become a parent.
{{citation needed}} pretty much says it all.
-Bop
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Dec 14, 2007 3:22 AM, David Gerard dgerard-at-......... |Wikipedia mailing lists (wikitech-l, wikien-l)| <... > wrote:
It's not free content, so that immediately makes it less useful or interesting in our terms.
But that has no bearing on whether it will be a competitor. The regular people reading our articles and linking us to the top search results don't know and don't care about licensing. To them, the "free" in the tagline means "no credit card required". Wikipedia is at the top because of its neutrality and comprehensiveness (and maybe indirectly because of its license; if only because of links from the multitude of mirrors our license spawns).
On 16/12/2007, Omegatron 9ybf94w02@sneakemail.com wrote:
On Dec 14, 2007 3:22 AM, David Gerard dgerard-at-......... |Wikipedia mailing lists (wikitech-l, wikien-l)| <... > wrote:
It's not free content, so that immediately makes it less useful or interesting in our terms.
But that has no bearing on whether it will be a competitor. The regular people reading our articles and linking us to the top search results don't know and don't care about licensing. To them, the "free" in the tagline means "no credit card required". Wikipedia is at the top because of its neutrality and comprehensiveness (and maybe indirectly because of its license; if only because of links from the multitude of mirrors our license spawns).
Their aim is to be a competitor in page hits. Page hits aren't our primary goal. (I just started a thread on foundation-l about the benefits and problems of popularity.) More freely-reusable content is our goal, and if we can encourage Google to turn their massive resources to that then it's excellent for everyone. And quality articles written by experts on Knol will be useful as good references for Wikipedia articles!
- d.
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