[Foundation-l] Knol, a year later

[David Gerard]

2009/8/10 Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com>:

> But to me the takeaway from this error of Knol's licensing design is not
> that Knol can't work -- it's that it actually could work, if properly
> thought through.  So my view right now is the Wikimedia community can't be
> complacent about Knol's apparent failure -- properly adjusted and
> redesigned, it could have quite an impact on us.  We're going to have to
> continue to give serious attention to all the issues, from quality to
> community to legality, that give us an advantage in terms of fueling
> creative collaboration, as we go forward.
> The next Knol can't be relied upon to make the same mistakes.


Whuh?

Educational free content production is not competition with us. It's
success for us.

Knol, as first put forward, looked like about.com - factual signed
articles. If it had worked, that would have been fantastic as a
reference source.

In what way would a successful version of Knol actually be a problem
for us? If ten other websites fulfill WMF's mission without WMF having
to pay the hosting bills, how is that a problem for us? I really don't
see it.


- d.