I just now came across Google's new "KNOL" encyclopedia. I'll have to give it a close look, but at first glance it looks promising. It seems to give the original author of an article complete control over further revisions, keeping Google itself out of the content-control business.

I'm intrigued. It seems to me that it would potentially solve a lot of problems. One issue that I could imagine is a vandal first being black from revising, and then copying someone else's article and posting it with the vandalism intact, making it difficult for a newcomer to tell which was the "main" or "original" version.

In any case, I'd be very interested to read what other people here think of "KNOL."

Sounds a lot like the former Centiare.com, now at Wikipedia Review.com.

Google's more huge, but they'll only distribute a portion of ad revenues to the authors. Wikipedia Review.com is small, but they allow authors to capture 100% of the ad revenues they place on their page.

What happened with Centiare.com?

Karl Nagel wanted to unplug the wiki and try a new mode of allowing individuals and corporations to "network" and "promote" themselves. His inclination was to keep the domain name "Centiare.com" for the new project (against my inclinations, but it's his property). Karl was quite kind enough to negotiate with me for the transfer of the entire wiki content over to Wikipedia Review.com. So, that's where it is now.

I'm thinking that the name will stay as is -- "Wikipedia Review", since we've already got brand recognition with that name (rather than some new name like "Promotopedia.com" or "MzolisDatabase.com"), and it sort of fits. "Wikipedia Review" is a "wiki" where you (there's the "my") or your business (there's the "biz") can author your legacy. That's the tagline from the original Wikipedia Review entity -- "authoring your legacy". Simple adjustment to "author your legacy".

I'm just waiting for the world to catch on to how cool Semantic Mediawiki is. If that ever happens, Wikipedia Review.com will be well-positioned to be the best destination for people who want to exploit that coolness.

Greg

I just noticed that I can log in to Wikipedia Review with my Centiare username. Also all my content is intact. Thanks for taking care of that. I think OpenCycle didn't close so gracefully. As a contributor I appreciate the difference.

Muchas gracias for noticing, Senor Bead!

Yes, we took the approach of solving the "fork" amicably, hiring the same webhost to simply re-direct the server DNS, so that we wouldn't have a mountain of rebuilding 30,600 pages and restoring over 400 user accounts.

The only kludgy thing is that there remains a fairly voluminous "name space" for Centiare, and that is how the site is "named" as far as some root Semantic Mediawiki references are concerned. My sister and I are going to see if we can convert all that with a bot, or whether we're going to have to farm it out to some propeller-head to fix. The goal is to have no lingering spots of "Centiare-speak" in the entire wiki, at least by the end of next month. We'll see if we can be more timely than the Wikimedia audit team.

What happened to OpenCycle?

Greg

As far as I know it closed without notice or discussion.

Generation Of Vipers

Veneration Of Vapors

Take your pick, Gimli …

Jonny

With all due respect to Karl Nagel and Centaire, that site doesn't exist. I'm wondering what people think of Google's effort. Not of Google itself, and not particularly of the corporate or competitive backstory unless it's directly relevant. Fact is, Google is a 20-ton gorilla and that's the way it is.

As I mentioned at the outset, I have to kick the tires on the "Knol" site. If there's one thing everyone who's dealt with The Children's Encyclopdia (Wikipedia) know, it's that the devil's in the details. That said, as I currently understand the concept it seems like a nice sidestep of Wikipedia's fundamental flaw, which is the disconnection between authorship and administration.

But I'm truly just starting down the road of looking at it, and I hope to stimulate some discussion that focuses not on other efforts (except as they're directly relevant) but on "Knol" itself.

That sounds fairly simple. After much searching around, it looks like only a two-step process.

1. Search for instances of "Centiare" in database mw_text & replace with Wikipedia Review.

The SQL query you want to execute is:
update mw_text set table_field = replace(table_field,'Centiare','Wikipedia Review');
(where table_field is the name of the field, there are two you should run the query on - old_text and old_flags - and that should take care of the database)

2. Then make sure the value $wgSitename in DefaultSettings.php is set to Wikipedia Review (which you probably already have).

That should take care of everything else unless I'm missing anything.

Sorry for going a little overboard with the marketing there, Pwok.

If you search the blogosphere, there have been a couple dozen blog posts about the opportunities and pitfalls of Knol. WR may not be the absolutely best place to reinvent that wheel of analysis.

My two basic thoughts about it center on the license (would I just be able to copy a Wikipedia page, credit the most significant five authors per the GFDL, make a few improvements to it, and BAM, the page is mine?) and on duplication of pages (will there be separate pages about Coca-Cola, Coke, Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Coca-Cola formula, and History of Coca-Cola -- each with multiple versions vying for preeminence?). I need answers to those questions before it even is worth my while trying to speculate on how it's going to perform vs. Wikipedia.

Nathan -- thank you for your Mediawiki lesson plan. I forwarded it to my sis. It's over my head, but she's trying to DIY as much as we can. Your pro bono assistance is appreciated.

Greg

Sure you can do that. Then you sign the article with your real name, institutional affiliation, and other credentials.

If your article is credit-worthy, it will enhance your reputation and the prestige of your institution.

If it's a blatant rip-off of the work of others, they can go after you for violation of ethical standards, plagiarism for uncredited use, copyright violation, or whatever.

The only real issue I see with this Knol thing is that if the "original author" maintains a significant control over each article over the course of time, in effect becoming that article's admin (or something like it), there will be a land-rush of people trying to be the first to post high-traffic articles. I think someone mentioned Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, for example. That could get really messy, I suspect, and give people bad first impressions.

The other thing I'm wondering is, doesn't Google usually wait until it has at least a working beta site before making announcements like this? Apparently Dave Gerard, inveterate mouse-clicker that he is, managed to find this, but it's so sketchy-looking they can't possibly want it to get out into general visibility. Even Wikia tries to at least set up new wikis first, with one of Sannse's nice logos and maybe even an article or two, before they go to the media.

I guess this is Microsoft's legacy to the world of IT: Announce early, announce often...

That's an interesting find. By clicking on the Project Tab, we see that the article has a license (GNU General Public License v3), a project owner, and an option to join the project.

This helps to ground the model a little better.

Evidently every article either has an owner who is a sole proprietor, or a project team under the leadership of a team captain.

Thus competing teams can develop competing articles on a given subject.

The editing code appears to be straight Wiki Markup.

On Edit: Actually, the Knol Project is just one of many code-development projects listed in Google Code, which is a searchable database of all code-development projects at Google. Knol itself will not look like Google Code.

Google's answer to the world is Google ...and with that, we get the best of the best.
From the people that brought us Google, we get Google's competition for Wikipedia.

It will be wildly successful and it will allow brilliant people to be brilliant without being forced to fight kids / vandals.

It will also allow people like our friends here, to succeed in sharing their brilliance with the world while actually making money doing it.

The great news? The company has enough capital to make this work. They also have Google to Google everything.

Please remember that without Google searches, Wikipedia does not have much on anyone.

Google will search itself.

By the way, Microsoft and MySpace and Facebook and Apple will likely participate in all of the above. Yes!

I forgot...I warned Jimmy of this last year. He never replied to my e-mails.

Footure Noos …

It Makes Me Snooz …

Jonny

Just for the sake of argument, I suggest trying to Google, "Google".

You will find that Wikipedia has an article about Google on page two somewhere.

Note, the WP article is way behind the Google ... everything? Done.

Because everyone in the world now knows that Wikipedia is not reliable and the schools do not allow the use of Wikipedia as a source for anything, Google will have a vast new landscape to work from.

The governments that have been concerned about Wikipedia will now have reason to believe that the "everyone can edit and change everything at will" will, indeed, be curtailed and laws will be brought forth to change things. (Yep.)


Wikipedia will do well as a social site with all of the sleuthing really taking over. Maybe it will become sur-reality show.

The only difference between Wikipedia and Survivor is that anyone can play.

I doubt this is going to have a serious impact. Despite all its faults, Wikipedia does have the advantage over this system in that it provides one version of each article. Knol apparently is going to have as many seperate versions as people who wish to write on the subject.

If I'm reading for entertainment, this may very well be good. But most people don't do that; they read to obtain information. And most people don't want to have to decide on what is true themselves. Wikipedia at least provides the illusion that one doesn't have to do this.

The Knol articles will be PageRanked, and also will have ratings from readers. If they tune it right, the best quality articles will rise to the top of the listings.

Also, each Knol article has a feature for comments by readers, so that ratings will be supplemented by feedback, helping an author to improve it.

One possibility is that independent authors might agree to team up to co-write a common article instead of battling it out with distinct articles.

any truth to the rumour, which i'm just starting, that Google SuperSekret Agents have invaded WP to wreak genius havoc, the likes that haven't been seen since Utah Invaded WP?

is it true that Google is now a BADSITE, and not because Somey has gone index on their asses?

Agent 0.100, Durova, Licensed to Wig-out, has been dispatched to Shoot on Site, any Googlonians seens perusing WP pages?

Watchout WP, those Googlonians have about $500 Kajillion more buckos than the Register, and they don't take any prithoners!

Nah. Google is supervised by a coupla graduates from Stanford. Their motto is Do No Evil. Stanford grads are well-acquainted with the concept of ethical business practices.

Did I mention that using PHPMyAdmin will get the job done faster, and to backup the database before making major changes?
Sorry, I forgot those ones.

Google is very much in the Company X vs Company Y mode of thinking, but they seem to forget that Company Y (WMF) isn't trying to make a profit. If knol is a great success and the wikimedia foundation closes down, then it will still have achieved its objective of making free knowledge accessible to everyone.

I assume that many knol writers will be be wikimedians. No doubt a load of people will use them to post original research and then cite them on wikipedia articles. There'll have to be some kind of quality control on these knols, to stop people making up false info.

Phoenix-wiki
----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phoenix-wiki

That may be WMF's stated aim, but is it really the aim of everyone involved?

That's easy. There's already a rule that no Wiki (not even Wikipedia itself) is a reliable source; that obviously extends to Knol.

But knol isn't a wiki is it? Some of them will be quite realiable. As for that not being the goal of everyone involved, well, there'll always be some who like having power.

Phoenix-wiki

KNOL will be an on-line source of knowledge that is referenced and sourced and as reliable as the author that is creating and monitoring and managing each "knol" or segment / molecule, of said knowledge.

If a law professor at Harvard is writing on and managing a particular topic of law; he or she has a proven expert background in same, I think many people will view that particular topic and subject matter as pretty reliable.

KNOL will appeal to library type people. References and sources and etc.

KNOL will not be a traditional "Wiki" by any stretch.

No free editing of my topics, or about me, thank you. If I invite you to edit, it will be very "species" and topic specific, I assure you.

If I were the principal editor of a topic on which I claim some degree of subject matter expertise, I would nonetheless invite responsible commentary and criticism from those holding contrary views.

Welcome to the Review Phoenix-wiki, enjoy your stay.

I attempted to give Wikipedia good, basic, free knowledge about The Family & Workplace Connection, Norman Technologies, and Arch Coal, but the Wikipediots clearly were not interested in making THAT particular set of knowledge accessible to ANYONE.

Not to mention the dozen or so other client firms and products that we did successfully see entered into Wikipedia, and they have stayed in place for over a year now, for the sole reason that they are good articles and I never opened my yapper about them. See the difference?

Greg

The Foundation could run out of money and close, or it could do the next right thing and merge.

It is clear that without funding, nothing save for hermits with a hand out or "living off the land" can exist for long. Electricity costs money and servers take a lot of electricity.

Bill Gates had to make billions before he could start his foundation and give away billions.

Jimmy started the process in reverse and must change it before it changes for him.

We know that you're a sensible person who knows that. How many others on WP will?

And the money, of course.