[Foundation-l] Knol, a year later

Mon Aug 10 17:59:13 UTC 2009

Hoi,
Given that Knol has not done what was expected of it, it can be considered a
failure. However, Google does learn and it is exactly because the Google
engineers are free to spend time on other things that I would hesitate to
characterise Google because of Knol. When you consider Google Wave, you find
an environment that is very powerful. Very powerful and in my opinion quite
capable to support the kind of public writing that Wikipedia is known for.

When we talk about Wikipedia, we are talking about content. This content is
currently delivered by MediaWiki, currently because we used other software
before MediaWiki. When we find software that can outwiki MediaWiki, we
should consider migrating. Consider how it will impact our usability, impact
how it will impact people new to our projects.  We have nothing to fear,
both our software and our content is FREE as long as our software and
content remains free, we can experiment and choose how to progress.
Thanks,
     GerardM

2009/8/10 Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com>

> Another interesting point that knol drives home is : Google has a
> limited conception of what human collaboration looks like : how to
> identify it, how to harness it.  Their efforts to support
> collaboration are very one-to-one, small-group or single contributor
> walled gardens that can be made world-readable, but with few tools to
> support public writing, and with little interest in public
> bug-trackers and discussion.
>
> Is it important for the Foundation to help more global organizations
> figure this out?  Should we set an example in new fields of
> collaboration, or using other tools as well?  There are certainly
> whole communities of creators who don't contribute to Wikimedia
> because they can't visualize taking the first step -- or are used to
> creating / remixing / reviewing with different interfaces and tools.
>
> SJ
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Gerard
> Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > What I like about Google is that they have the guts to try things out. I
> > like Google because they allow their staff to things that intrigue them.
> > This has brought me gmail among other things. With Google things may
> fail.
> >
> > What you express is the expectation that Knol would fail and I am with
> you,
> > I had the same sentiments. A project like Knol is not of interest because
> it
> > confirms our assumptions, it is of interest because it challenges our
> > assumptions. I hope we will continue to have our assumptions tested
> because
> > this will keep us on our toes.
> > Thanks,
> >       GerardM
> >
> > 2009/8/7 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
> >
> >> More than a year ago Google lunched Knol. It was a sensation then
> >> (BTW, it was a sensation for more time than Wolfram Alpha was). Today
> >> I just may say that I don't remember when I heard for the Knol last
> >> time.
> >>
> >> More than a year ago, I've wrote a blog post about Knol [1] (I didn't
> >> read it again, so I am not so sure what did I write there :) ) and
> >> today I've got one comment about Knol at my blog post. Person who made
> >> it introduced himself as Michael:
> >>
> >> "There is the Verifiability of Knol. I never found anything relevant
> >> or reliable on knol. Knol is starting to be used as a spam platform
> >> and self promotion platform. There are high chances that the info you
> >> get from knol is false or subiective, not to say that I’ve found
> >> articles promoting xenofobism, antisemitism and a lot of ill guided
> >> authors. At this time knol seem to be nothing more than a blog
> >> platform (with clever marketing) where people can write anything they
> >> want. I hardly see any resilience between Wikipedia and Knol,
> >> Wikipedia has Verifiability (”editors should provide a reliable source
> >> for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be
> >> challenged”) while on knol you can write any phantasmagoric or lunatic
> >> thing you want nobody really cares if it’s false or true or what
> >> repercussions may have on people seeking knowledge. Knol has nothing
> >> to do with knowledge, it’s just library of opinions not knowledge,
> >> unless we agree on the fact that anything that can be written by
> >> anybody is knowledge. So from my point of view knol should not be
> >> taken serious at this time, at least not more serious than anybody’s
> >> blog on the internet."
> >>
> >> My response is:
> >>
> >> "Michael, thanks for the comment. Yes, I’ve supposed, at Knol’s
> >> beginnings, that bias may become its significant problem. It doesn’t
> >> have self-regulation and collaboration as a default, like Wikipedia
> >> has. And the product is obviously bad.
> >>
> >> We’ve got, also, one significant lesson: An organization which is very
> >> good in many businesses, like Google is, don’t need to be even average
> >> in another business. (Wikia is, for example, much better than Knol in
> >> that business.)
> >>
> >> Also, I think that voluntarily knowledge building can’t be built as a
> >> [commercial] business model. Nobody cares to make a lot of money to
> >> someone else and almost nothing for herself, but a lot of humans care
> >> to build knowledge for all of us."
> >>
> >> [1] -
> >>
> http://millosh.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/google-knol-and-the-future-of-wikipedia-and-wikimedia/
> >>
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