
Google's Wikipedia clone Knol launches. - ptm
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html
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plaggypig
There are many things about this project that don't make any sense, as others
have commented; it is not a wiki, does not compete with Wikipedia, seems to
stand alone from other Google products in terms of design and yet they still
haven't changed the name even after the owner of knol.com refused to sell.

One of the things that I like about Wikipedia is that I can just hand craft a
/wiki/Title URL - Knol's URLs are obfuscated behind strange ID's and author's
names. Do they not consider these things?

On a similar topic, I'll never understand why they decided to shelve Google
Answers - there could have been a great synergy between that community and a
wiki.

Knol will fail simply because it does not beat Wikipedia in any respect.

Was this born from a 20% side project by any chance? I can imagine some
executive sitting behind his desk thinking "we need to buy wikipedia, but we
can't.. so anyway, this knol thing looks close enough.. let's promote it to
production".

~~~
teamonkey
They have a plan. :)

I posted this when they launched Lively:

> in this view it also makes sense for them to take over Wikipedia and Flickr

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=244629>

Now they've got their own product that fills the Wikipedia gap and is also
more suited to their purposes.

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SwellJoe
Looks like an About.com clone, to me. There's no "wiki" involved here...the
point of a wiki is "anyone can edit it", not what data the wiki happens to
contain. WikiPedia is first, and foremost, a wiki. (Secondly, it's a culture.
The data it contains only comes in a distant third, I think.)

~~~
nickb
It looks like a Squidoo clone to me, more than an About.com or Wikipedia
clone.

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rapind
Agreed. Squidoo clone.

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unalone
Does anybody else think the design looks a bit two-faced?

Serious-looking, authoritative text - and a round, cartoony button asking you
to help out.

EDIT: Also, the site can't seem to decide whether it wants to be single-spaced
or double-spaced. And it's not certain of what fonts it wants to use, either.

~~~
plusbryan
Word. I'm getting sick of Google's lack of design sense. Either stick with the
spartan, or hire some good designers. I'm sure that horrendous 'write
something' button was the result of an A-B test, but the knol logo is an
embarrassment.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. That's the problem I have with Google. They have functionality that's
second-to-none, but they have no taste for visuals. I'm debating moving
entirely over to MobileMe for email, for instance, forsaking lack of tabs for
the sake of not hating my screen when Gmail's showing. (I also find it funny
that Google-leaving founders have the same taste: FriendFeed's visual update
is one of the few updates that was noticeably a step backwards.)

And for the love of God, you're right. That is embarrassing logo if I ever saw
one. Writing the message out in plaintext, the logo itself, and the miniature
scaling... I was hoping Knol could actually look BETTER than Wikipedia, and
this is not looking good.

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brianlash
That begs an important question: What's good design?

Good design in a magazine print ad is different from good design on a fashion
blog is different from good design in a web app or a mail client.

So good design should be judged in terms of what it's supposed to do. In that
light it seems the best design for Gmail is that which _gets in the way least_
, because it's efficiency that counts when you're using it.

~~~
unalone
It's a matter of form follows function, always. But form includes the
impression the end user gets. That's why big buttons don't always work.

For Knol, that feel ought to include a stately manner. Something large buttons
don't convey well.

With Gmail, there's quite a lot of clutter. Google tends to have a lot of
clutter. Curves where you don't need curves, visual tics that don't have to be
there. the ribbon that highlights the Inbox. The bulkiness of the selector.

I noticed this on Windows, much more now that I'm on a Mac. Google wastes
pixels not for functionality but for this idea of a design. They could smooth
it out, add much more color contrast, make things more usable while still
looking nice, without much of an effort. But they rarely do. Gmail and Google
Reader are the two hugest offenders, I find; Maps and their actual Search are
good comparisons, because very little space is wasted.

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bscofield
Not really sure why people keep calling this a Wikipedia clone - seems much
closer to Squidoo than to Wikipedia, to me. Granted, that's a debate that's
already been had and done (back in December, if I recall correctly).

* disclaimer: I have worked with Squidoo in the past, and still have a couple of lenses there. I'm not taking a position on which is better - just pointing out a better comparison.

~~~
danhak
Don't know about Squidoo, but based on my brief look at Knol it seems very
distinct from Wikipedia for a single reason: individual authors credited along
with name, photo and profile link.

I think this flies in the face of many things that made Wikipedia a success.

Not to mention my first instinct was to visit knol.com, the website of a Dutch
company who manufactures something resembling a crippled R2D2 using a walker.

I vote against this project as a serious rival for Wikipedia but only time
will tell.

~~~
unalone
Squidoo and Knol seems to have the same idea behind it. Knol has the advantage
of looking very nice in the process, and - of course - being sponsored by
Google. Seth Godin is bright, but Squidoo is not fun to use and not fun to
look at. Knol has an edge there.

The fact that Google didn't buy Knol.com is sort of odd, agreed.

I don't think this can compete against Wikipedia. It can, however, serve as a
supplement - it doesn't have the disadvantage of tyrannical, half-crazed
admins. That makes it much freer than Wikipedia, in a sense, and that'll give
it an advantage in quantity, if not quality.

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dominik
Curious the front page has "Who needs a search engine? Ctrl+F" on the right
hand side above the listing of Knols...

~~~
unalone
I saw that as a typical example of Google humor. But from the way the site's
laid out it also looks like they're trying to make Knol a standalone thing.
They don't want people looking at this page and thinking Google.

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zain
If that was the case, they would probably get a dedicated domain for it
instead of using knol.google.com.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. As I said elsewhere in the thread - that's weird for them. Possibly a
sign of the product's being so new?

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jrockway
From the article:

 _We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which
allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's extensive
cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your
point, even on the most serious topics._

Is today April 1? Does adding a pseudo-intellectual New Yorker cartoon to
every page really make the information seem more useful to people?

~~~
Tichy
I missed the cartoons bit. Where can I access the cartoons collection of the
New Yorker magazine?

I am totally just going ratings whore on those knols. If a nice cartoons makes
users rate my knols higher, that's fine by me - whatever. It is simply a game
Google forces me to play to increase the search rank of my web sites.

~~~
alex_c
_It is simply a game Google forces me to play to increase the search rank of
my web sites._

Can you expand on that?

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Tichy
I assume that links from Knols will factor quite well into the search rank, at
least if they also have good ratings. Therefore to compete with other sites on
the same subject as my web site, I will have to create a knol with good
ratings linking to my site.

Of course the professional SEOs will also fake the ratings by creating their
own voting networks and so on. We will see...

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alex_c
Well, I'm assuming (hoping?) Google won't tamper with PageRank to give special
consideration to Knols (if they did, the backlash would be huge). I don't
really see how a Knol's rating would affect its impact on any external pages
it links to - I'm assuming their search rank will be determined the same way
as that of any other site, based on keywords and incoming links rather than
rating.

~~~
Tichy
That's the optimistic view, but I am not taking chances for the time being.

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Tichy
Great, another Google service I am forced to use to increase the search rank
of my web site :-(

Edit: done entering a knol about "Mondkalender" (moon calendars). I really
have mixed feelings about this... What would people's incentive be to write on
knol rather than on their own blog? Presumably Knol articles will be rated
higher, so Google's power forces people to use Knol (certainly no SEO will
skip knolling). On the other hand with the rating and personal credibility
effect, it could yield some interesting results.

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bigbang
One of the reasons I love wikipedia is that its neutral and no ads. Google Im
sure will have plans to stick in some adsense and share revenue with the
author. Why should I contribute to an article bcos of which the original
author might get paid.

Even if there willbe no ads , with the author's profile there, any
contribution I may make doesnt feel like, Im part of it. I love all
contibutors being annonymous in wikipedia

I vote this me-too project down.

~~~
wmf
Obviously Knol is structured to reward/encourage _authors_ , not
_contributors_. Hopefully the result will be not a Wikipedia-killer but
something with a different flavor.

~~~
bigbang
Wont it be more like a blog then? Except ofcourse worrying about how to get
traffic

~~~
wmf
Yeah, Google needs to add some kind of benefit that you can't get from just
posting an article on your blog. The real name verification is interesting but
hardly compelling.

~~~
ars
They pay you a piece of ad money from your page. (If you want. You can also
disable ads.)

~~~
wmf
Blogs also have this feature.

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brandonkm
This looks like something really great. I think that a "google wikipedia
clone" can only benefit the web, by offering innovative features to the "web
encyclopedia" space. This is something distinctly different and I like it.
From the short time i've spent on the site it looks like this could be pretty
big.

~~~
Kaizyn
You're joking right? Basically, they're going to populate their encyclopedia
by pillaging the information out of wikipedia. Search engines should not be
competing with content providers.

~~~
crocus
How can it be pillaging when the whole point of Wikipedia is that the
information in it is free for everyone else to use?

~~~
nickb
Problem is that Google will rank their articles higher than Wikipedia's and
will suck the traffic out of Wikipedia and then who will edit Wikipedia?!

~~~
fiaz
If this is the case, then it would compromise the credibility of Google search
results. I think it's too early to say for certain if Google views Wikipedia
as such a huge threat that it would go out of its way to create a new project
for the sole purpose of intentionally ranking them higher than Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is as much of an icon of the internet as Google. I'm predicting that
Knol will go the way of Google Answers for the same reason why Digg remains a
stalwart of user generated news - it's the community.

~~~
nickb
Google definitely views Wiipedia as a potential threat. Just look at their
SERPs... Wikipedia links are usually in the top 5 on pretty much every factual
term.

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plusbryan
In other news, knol.com seems awfully slow today.

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fharper1961
The big difference I see is that you can have several competing knols on the
same or overlapping subjects.

Big consequences \- you don't need to spend a lot of time and effort enforcing
NPOV through consensus \- people can express their own POV

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gojomo
The articles, even those by MDs, read like the sort of padded, plodding
writing-for-hire crap used to manipulate Google's rankings.

Google should be fighting "MFA" (Made-For-Adsense) content, not joining the
party.

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lux
Still, what I'd like most from an open encyclopedia project is a simple,
stable API. There are external projects bringing this to Wikipedia, but Google
(API frontrunners that they sometimes are) don't have this at all. Hope they
add it soon.

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radley
Knol? Knoll?

Will there be any confusion with Knoll, the 80 year-old internationally
recognized and respected design institution?

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admoin
What is to stop people from ripping articles from wikipedia and posting them
en masse to earn adsense revenue?

~~~
wmf
Why would anyone visit such pages? Much will depend on how Google Search
treats Knol pages.

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zitterbewegung
Knol doesn't distinctly look like a google page. It seems like they are trying
a new layout and design.

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ashish1
Yet another attempt by Google!!! Knol.... hmmmm... Maybe Google should try
acquiring wikipedia instead.. ;) !!!

