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Google Project "knol"  (View post)

beussery [PersonRank 10]

Friday, December 14, 2007
16 years ago20,590 views

More information on project "knol"!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/encouraging-people-to-contribute.html

DPic [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Google vs. Wikipedia?

DPic [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Anybody got an invite?

GoogleTrader [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

That's pretty fascinating. Wikipedia has very high results in so many search results. Google will start to cut them out by putting links at the top of search results to these entries. I wonder if they'll revenue share with content creators.

Colin Colehour [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I really hope its not going to be named 'Knol' once it goes live. They can keep that as their motto or something '1 unit of knolwedge at a time'. But come up with a better name.

GoogleTrader [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

I think they're smarter than that. I doubt anyone at google thinks people are going to click a "Knol" link at the top of the page! :P

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Yeah "knol" doesn't seem like the best name in terms of marketing but then again, why not?

DaveB [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

DPic – "Google vs. Wikipedia?"

That was my first thought.

que [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think it will be called Knol since they mention their 'new' term 15 times in the article, plus it is a unique name and not called a wiki like most others in this genre. Very interesting and definitely a wikipedia-like effort with a slant toward more author recognition, a ranking mechanism and of course ads. The sample article looks very sharp and professional.
I wonder if this was derived from Jotspot's wiki type functionality? And, I'm curious why they are announcing it now since its invite only. And maybe due to their recent Google News comments that seem to be well written by authoritative sources – they want to solicit some of those authors to begin adding some content before releasing it.

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Don't know about you but I'd appreciate a "Google Knol Invite"? Can't wait to check it out (my userid above at gmail ;)!

thanks,
Brian

Brock [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Since there will be "experts" in charge of knols, this sounds more like http://scholarpedia.org/

DaveB [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

Wondering now if Ionut's Q&A post is related to this?

On the bottom of the sample "Knol" page there is a spot for Q&As.

Colin Colehour [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

TechCrunch has a writeup of this now:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/13/google-preparing-to-launch-game-changing-wikipedia-meets-squidoo-project/

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Grrr... this doesn't work:
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?service=knol

But "knol" is definitely the service name:
https://www.google.com/accounts/Login?service=knol

Above 14 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Hmmm... Knol sounds a bit too Orkut-like to me. Probably never take off because they'll never push it, so what's the point of it existing?

jilm [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Knol.com is already taken...

Mambo: Orkut is a absolutely different case. Knol is going to gain so much visitors as much content it will have. So if they pay money for creating articles, people will come through the search. There is no effective model how to convert search users into social network users. Thats the reason why Google is so weak in "social" space.

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]jilm: I guess you're right. Writers don't have a common place for publishing their work, without either launching their own service or using non-free services.

It does look fairly interesting.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Apart from one key detail, this is not much different from what helium.com already does. The articles are by named writers, and are peer-ranked and also algorithm-ranked, and are supported by advertising. But here's the key difference:

> People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits,
> additional content, and so on.

I hope this means that anyone would be able to "edit" the article – but then the edits would then be sent to the page-owner to be accepted, rejected or modified.

That aspect would be quite exciting, and truly different from what is offered by Helium, Wikipedia, About, etc. A hint of that functionality is the "revisions" tab near the top of the screenshot.

Also note the four-line summary section at the top. Just right to be included in the search results, isn't it?

My only negative comment: the sample article on insomnia is too long and too detailed for a "knol"; a single unit of knowledge.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Knol.com is already taken...

Maybe Google already acquired the permission to get hold of this domain in the future? Doesn't seem like a super huge site, maybe the right amount of money would make the domain owner willing to give it up...

If the Knol domain owner does't know about Google's project Knol though, I bet he'll be seeing a huge surprising spike in his traffic today :)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> I hope this means that anyone would be able to "edit" the article
> – but then the edits would then be sent to the page-owner
> to be accepted, rejected or modified.

Wonder if those who submit edits will then get micro-percentages from that page's ad revenue, too.

I also wonder if this set-up will cause big disputes for popular articles, e.g. when an editor is not approving good edits, abusing power.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan talked to Udi Manber and says that Google may release a Knol API; that they may not necessarily nofollow outgoing Knol links; and that Google may use internal database factors, like Knol ratings, when ranking a Knol (hinting it's not completely organic). From the article at http://searchengineland.com/071213-213400.php :

<<But does hosting content turn it into a competitor with other content providers and set up an unfair advantage in gaining traffic that might otherwise flow to them?

Manber offered a number of reassurances that this is not the case:

   * The content will be owned by the authors, who can reprint it as they like
  
   * Authors can link out at will (and links might NOT have nofollow attributes on them, allowing reputation to flow from Knol pages to others)
  
   * APIs will allow Knol information to be used by others
  
   * Allowing ads other than Google's might be a possibility (though this was something I raised, rather than Google suggesting itself. Personally, I highly doubt this would ever happen)
  
   * Google will give no special weight to these pages; if they rank, they rank because they compete with other pages and win the algorithm race

Of course, Manber did say that Google could better tell which of the Knol pages were of high quality by looking at signals such as ratings. Because the content database is hosted at Google, it could easily pull the rating info in without having to "guess" or "scrape" it off pages.

My concern in hearing this was that other pages with ratings might not have their information taking in as a quality signal, since Google couldn't as easily harvest it. Thus, Knol pages might get an unfair advantage. To that, Manber stressed that he didn't see such signals being used at first, and if they were down the line, Google might seek a way for others to provide similar signals to its search engine.>>

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Google might seek a way for others to provide similar
> signals to its search engine.

Well duh, Google already offers the possibility for others to use sitemaps to indicate the relative usefulness/importance of each individual page within their sites.

We don't know whether Google pays any attention to that data, but hey the mechanism is there already.

Veky [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

OMG.

How many people will, first thing they do when they get a Knol invitation, start copying Wikipedia articles as knols, with their names as authors? The only question is who will be the fastest in this – probably someone who automatizes the process. ;-)

Hashim Warren [PersonRank 4]

16 years ago #

Why does it have to look so ugly? Is that on purpose?

Keith Chan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I won't say it looks ugly .. at least I like this layout more than the Wikipedia one where all the [edit] links are so annoying ...

I'm pretty excited about this feature and I'm sure it reinforces the saying "Knowledge is Power" ... if you know what I mean ;)

AussieWebmaster [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

The fact that that suggest there may not be a no follow is the big thing. This one will be getting some serious viral marketing in the coming year.

I see it as hot as the initial GMail invites... who wouldn't want to be a listed "authority" at Google.

If you are in business it would be better than any other type of award or recognition given the cache of Google at all levels of society right now.

Eugene Villar [PersonRank 5]

16 years ago #

I'm surprised no one mentioned Mahalo. Jason Calacanis' "human-powered search engine" he says will compete with Google, but some insightful person (I forgot which) says that Mahalo actually competes with Wikipedia. Now with Knol, Google competes with both Mahalo and Wikipedia.

Additionally, Knol completely and utterly destroys any notion of Google not hosting any content and being just a simple traffic source.

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think if it was pronounced kin-all and not nall it would be a great name. Sorry I can't do the proper pronounciation thing but I mean if you pronounced the k it would be cool...

Oren Goldschmidt [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

Now _this_ is a Google Alpha/Beta I want in on.

I Haven't felt this way in ages, kudos to Google for piquing my interest again (Although I see many, many potential pitfalls for this venture).

Charlie Perry [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Did this news catch everyone by surprise? I hadn't heard any rumours. Also, there's no reason why a group of people couldn't come together to write a knol from what I've seen.

Rich [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

This is silly and thoughtless. The two things that distinguish it from a wiki will also bring it to failure: ad revenue and once-and-for-all creator/moderators.

It will result in a huge "title grab", for control of all the popular article titles, and then include edits from knowledgeable people. Those of low moral character will get all the ad revenue.

A similar situation will develop with the contentious articles; Islam, Christianity, Iraq, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein, etc. Who gets the revenue? The person who started the article?

Not to mention all the vanity articles that will result!

JeffJonez [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Still sounds like Googlepedia to me, with an elitist spin.

orhan [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

what I understand it is that knol will basically be an all-round easy tool for writers who want to get published. it will be author-oriented service rather than being reader-oriented one.

knol is a very good name by the way.

SQ89 [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

Heh, http://knol.com/ now reads (in Dutch):
--
Knol Steam cleaning systems wants to thank, among others, the following sites:
- Google
- 040 Hosting
- nu.nl
- Webwereld
- TechCrunch
The attention really is overwhelming!

Joey F [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Where can I get an invite? Anyone?

drtimofey [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

i think that all blogoscopedoholics shoud receive an invite!!

Reto Meier [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

The service it sounds most like to me is Everything2. Similar concept where authorship is key, with the community able to comment and rate writeups for a given subject. 'Authors' gain reputation which in turn gives them more power to rate other people's articles. If Knol follows the E2 philosophy I'll be more than happy with it.

I always preferred it in concept to wikipedia which had a very elitest air. The problem with wikipedia is that it assumes that people who have been around a long time and made lots of edits are somehow a better authority on a subject than someone with actual knowledge in the area. Which by itself is fine, except those people can actually change the text!

It always bothered me in Wikipedia that I didn't know who (in real terms, not a login name) authored or edited an article. I'd rather have three well written, conflicting writeups with details on the authors than one constantly changing 'authoratative' article edited constantly by anonymous users.

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

if someone gets an invite,please send me one too. Thanks! ;-)

ladybroadoak, virginia simson [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Ditto, if someone gets an invite, please send me one, three.

My items get posted on google blog searches constantly, but will google consider my content as "expert" .. on many topics I am the only blogspot author posting on such things and analyzing them in terms of a "bigger" picture.

Are they taking into account the changing nature of journalism with its intense focus on bloggers as REAL journalists as opposed to government operatives posing as journalists ..? I am sorry to inform everyone but Operation Mockingbird is alive and well and very very busy today. So some of us "non experts" are actually MORE expert, if you see what I mean. 'When the San Jose Mercury and the NY Daily News got sold this year, investigative journalism went basically down the drain in the mainstream press. Kaput.

So this is all highly interesting indeed.

Jansie Blom [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Well it's happening, so we might as well look forward to it!

rem [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

http://en.citizendium.org

Hef [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Your point?!

James [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

This URL sums up my feelings: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/12/google-runs-out-of-content-to-monetize-wants-you-to-build-more.html

James [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

(It reads Google Runs Out of Content to Monetize; Wants You to Build More, damn url shortening)

Omnivorous-GA [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

I hope that when they do it, they incorporate the ability to use a wider character set, including mathematical symbols and foreign character sets. One of the restrictions with Google Answers was the text-only aspect. When there would be calculus or finance questions, the researchers were limited by how symbols would display.

Alicia [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

"Gpedia.com" is up for sale! Arghhh.....

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Additionally, Knol completely and utterly destroys
> any notion of Google not hosting any content and
> being just a simple traffic source.

Though the same was also already true some years back when Google bought Blogger, or Deja News, some of their earliest acquisitions...

> It will result in a huge "title grab", for
> control of all the popular article titles,
> and then include edits from knowledgeable
> people. Those of low moral character will
> get all the ad revenue.

From what Google announced, any given subject can get multiple articles. Though I do agree that some people may try to pick hot topics early on, and maybe there will be some kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop... e.g. that when you're the first to write a good article on X and people search for X, you will be the first to get some good ratings for it, which might then show you ranked above future articles of X (which will get you more good ratings and so on). I guess that is a phenomenon potentially available in Google web search too, with perhaps some means to defend against.

> How many people will, first thing they do
> when they get a Knol invitation, start copying
> Wikipedia articles as knols, with their names as authors?

Would that be fine with Wikipedia's licensing? I mean, when you disclaim somewhere in the article that the content was originally from Wikipedia.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Would that be fine with Wikipedia's licensing?

That depends what licensing Google uses for Knol. Intriguingly, the screenshot shows CC-BY (the Creative Commons Attribution license). This very permissive license would allow anyone do anything with the content, commercially or noncommercially, provided they attribute the authorship.

If Google requires CC-BY for all knols, that would not allow Wikipedia content to be re-posted. Wikipedia is GFDL-licensed, but Wikipedia has announced that it will be changing to CC-BY-SA.

jonathan [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

i think it is a good thing that wikepedia get some an other player on the same market, This can only improve the quality of both

Veky [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> Would that be fine with Wikipedia's licensing? I mean, when you disclaim somewhere in the article that the content was originally from Wikipedia.

Even if it would, it would just reinforce what I'm saying: it's unfair. Let's say I make a script to do so, and copy a few million Wikipedia articles into knols, authored by me, with a usual "taken from Wikipedia" notice in a little smaller font than my "explicitly highlighted" name as an author (notice what Google says about that, author's name will be prominent).

When new people write new knols, they usually need to link to something. Probably, Google's authoring tools will make it easier to link to other knols than rest of web (including Wikipedia), and that people will link to "my" knols. Google doesn't know (although they could, but there's no incentive for them to do so) the content is from Wikipedia, and associates the popularity of these knols with my name.

With time, people associate my name with quality and balancedness of the articles, and Google echoes their beliefs with ratings. After a while, people start believing what I say, because I am the "expert". But the only thing I've shown to be an expert at is writing Perl scripts. ;-)

jeff hudsson [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Google's move to compete, and maybe swallow wikipedia with it's own online encyclopedia, isn't just alarming because wikipedia is a free for all, NFP venture, but also because google is sure to stick so much ads down our throats with this one, that one will have to consider whether letting children use Knoll is a sensible thing. Here's a recent poll about letting kids use google's ad infested knoll:
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/4647/would-you-let-your-kid-use-an-online-encyclopedia-filled-with-ads

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Come on Jeff, Google said that it's not a walled garden – anyone will be able to use the content. So you can set up your own site and show the content without the ads. The Wikimedia Foundation could also do this if they wanted to.

The license terms haven't been announced, but the intent has.

bhuva [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

its a good service that google is making for us , knol or knowledge is infinite-
so i don't see any competition betwen the two , i would like to refer to both services and see both wiki and knol , not as competing to each other.
   both full of knowledge where we can refer to
   both- unlimited.
where one has many authors and the latter has one author,
   hence a variety of references at our disposal.

like encyclopedia britannica and encyclopedia amercana

bhuva [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

google search shouldn't cut out the wiki from their search engines for competiton. somebody said in the earlier posts. that right.
   then google is reputed to search all the points on the net from long time why stop now.
it should be balanced and let us select when and which
   online encyclopedia to refer to.when ever we want to
   and certainly the ads would be a turn off.

then we would have to go to the search engine specifically asking for a wiki reference on purpose.when it should have come on its own.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I asked the Knol.com domain owner, Hilco Knol of Knol Steamcleaningssystems, whether or not Google contacted them in regards to buying the domain. His answer: no, they didn't.

<<Till now have google don't take contact with us we are positif suprised for using the name KNOL because it is my own name.
  
We want to launch our own products what you can see on our knol.com Internet site.
  
For the rest we see whats happening.>>

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Knol is probably an internal name, I don't think they'll use it when the product launches. It's too weird.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I think quirkiness can help adoption. The more business-like and serious it might sound, the more people may think it: belongs to the company, not to them; is too serious for them; that it is too much like a big evil corporate monopoly; etc.. Think of the quirkiest logo of them all, for instance: the Google logo! (Not to say that Google will stick to Knol... who knows!)

Google was quite smart with their naming recently... like OpenSocial, which they might as well have named "Google Gadgets for Social Networks"... but then it might have sounded too much like Google's product.

seo yarışması [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

i think it is a good thing that wikepedia get some an other player on the same market, This can only improve the quality of both

[Signature removed. -Philipp]

Stuart James [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

Sounds like Google are finally accepting that their search engine doesn't return good results any more. Do a search on anything, and you'll get thousands of pages of unrelated links. These days you have to be an expert search at using Googles search logic, or very patient when clicking on page after page after page of results. If you're lucky, you might get something loosely related to what you are looking for within the first 5 pages.

And so with Knol, Google are trying cash in on someone elses proven model, Wikipedia.

But Wikipedia doesn't improve search results, it just organises it...very well. Well done Wiki!

So instead of muscling in on someone else area of expertise, why don't the people at Google try and focus on what "used" to be their area of expertise....search. The Google home page for searching hasn't changed for 10 years, even though the content on the web has grown thousands (if not more) of times bigger than when Google first started. So how about getting back to your roots and fix your deteriorating search engine before a new kid of the block comes along to deal with the changing face of the web.

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

^^^I disagree on both points

Everybody uses Google-Even my technophobe grandmother, and she loves it

Wikipedia has good information, but the organisation is dreadful-maybe i've just come to expect all search engines to have a "Did You Mean:" Service

Andy Wong [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Surely this will draw great debates, and push Wikipedia to improve. Hopefully Wikipedia will get inspiration from Knol.

It is really easy for Wikipedia to highlight authors of an entry, as Wikipedia maintains history of changes. If Wikipedia does so, we will see who created, how much each author contributed to a page or to whole Wikipedia.

Another so called advantage of Knol is that Google does not impose moderation. This is not new, as many people pointed out, this is just old school About.com. Without moderation, quality is hard to maintain. Though for the same entry there might be multiple posts, however, this will confuse readers.

Though such "No Moderation" policy quite follow the tradition of Google, avoiding any labor intensive jobs, I doubt whether Google really want to finalize a "GoogleWikiPedia" directly competing with Wikipedia. I tend to think such move of Google is comparable to Google's Orkut. Orkut was an experimental project without clear position in the world markets, though it was very popular in Brazil. Only a few months ago, Google refreshed Orkut with other new services for online communities. Google did not want another FaceBook or MySpace, and Google just needed a market entry point to integrate FaceBook-like products into Google's core services.

In summary, I think the creation of Knol serves 2 purposes:
1. An experimental project to integrate with other services in the future. For example, it will integrate with Google's business wiki products like Jotspot in order to market Jotspot.
2. Gain better position for strengthen cooperation with Wikipedia. Who know whether the right holder of Wikipedia won't agree to be acquired by Google, as long as Wikipedia can have a position similar to the one of IMDB and Amazon.

scott [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

I wonder how many knolers are waiting in the background to see how this project pans out?

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Andy

And make some money :D

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here] Philipp Lenssen & Ionut Alex. Chitu

Quirkiness could help with adoption come to think of it, especially if "Knol" has no meaning in other languages.

priya n jadhav.. [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

DPic – "Google vs. Wikipedia?"

That was my first thought.

For more technical you can visit

   http://techindemand.blogspot.com

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

> If Wikipedia does so, we will see who created, how
> much each author contributed to a page or to whole Wikipedia.

That may be very hard to correctly implement actually. E.g. what do you want to measure?

- The number of edits? This would include trolls who repeatedly add things that are edited out later on. So I guess you don't want that.

- The number of edits that remain in the system? That will be hard to measure, because how does the system know where a good fact was merely reworded in future edits by others, but its "soul" remained? And if you are indeed able to measure it, then wouldn't you want to differentiate between merely syntactical edits – say, correcting a paragraph to show as list item, or making a word link to another article – and expert content edits? (It has already led to misunderstandings in the past by counting the number of "syntax" edits vs the more content-based ones: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)

- Will you give special bonus authority to whoever started the article? Or to whoever keeps going back to it constantly? Or whoever added the most words? What if the best edits are those which concisely state a fact, i.e. not using lots of verbose phrasings which make the point harder to grasp for new readers? Because those concise edits would now be "punished" as they lack a high quantity of words which you would "honor" by your algo.

And what if it turns out that despite all the great algorithms, you still end up with an almost equal authorship of 1000 people, meaning there will still be no single author?
And what if people would now feel discouraged to make small edits because they will not get equally credited for it because the 1000 former authors all made more substantial changes?

Dan Tobias [PersonRank 6]

16 years ago #

Maybe they're just going to do it within a subdomain of google.com, like many of their other services. Does everything really need a separate registred domain?

J. McNair [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

It looks pretty good, if dense. I bet 15 Euros that Knols will become a primary component of Google Health.

I like it. It reminds me of an encyclopedia (yes, I know that's the point). It's neat that the lower you scroll, the more detail you get on the subject. If you want a brief overview, stop at the first paragraph. If you want research, skip to the end. I hope they (gently) enforce this for all Knols.

But wait, I hate the grey text on white background with the passion of a million exploding suns. Honestly, who really thinks that low contrast text promotes usability. Every web "designer" who uses tiny and/or low contrast text for long content should be struck with myopia and forced to use Windows 98 on a 30" 200dpi screen.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

(Hmm, a lot of stuff on Knol.com is sold for $0... better order now!)

http://blogoscoped.com/files/knol-for-free.png
http://www.knol.com/component/option,com_virtuemart/page,shop.browse/category_id,5/Itemid,42/

Ron C. [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

They are just testing the waters... and you know something? I don't blame them! They're not a non-profit organization like Wikipedia, which has left a lot of money on the table by not running ads on their site and now asking for donations. There is plenty of room left for some other company to run an ad supported encyclopedia and this company is now Google.

Is that evil? No, this is business!

What is evil though is when you change your (core business) name ("knol" instead of Googlepedia-a name that Google has registered ages ago...) because of "guilty feelings" or because you don't want to look evil.

By this way you actually admit or confess to the public that you're doing evil, (when you are not!) – you're actually conducting business! Is Google afraid to associate its new offering with the term encyclopedia? I think yes. And that is evil.

The most appropriate name would be Googlepedia, (perhaps Gpedia like Gmail?), a name that clearly demonstrates honesty and integrity and would inspire trust among the millions of Google users who will use the new offering.

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here] Philipp

Sorry if this is off topic but, just curious as to why this post doesn't show up under "beussery's top viewed posts:" in my profile? Thanks and Happy New Year!

Martin Porcheron [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]beussery

Its because this topic has since been turned into a blog post, not sure if this is a bug that it doesn't count towards stats or not or if Philipp intended this to be the case.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Beussery, that is fixed now, thanks!

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Cool, thank you for the help!

Sally [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

"Knol" was just the codename for this project. I know a google employee who was working on this project, but he says it is not what google call a "GP 1" an "urgent" project.

He was called away to work on a GP1. He says the REAL name of the project is "Google's Universal Encyclopedia" or "Uni Pedia".

Just thought you should know.

beussery [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

unipedia.net?

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

ooh! :O

Sally [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

+"Uni Pedia" will be the new name apparently.

As for the URL, I dont know. I see that a few domain speculators have already began snapping upt the names. For instance, Unipedia.com points to the knol page probablt waiting for the launch and then earning of reditrect traffic?

Like I said, don't know what the URL will be, but according to my friend he said "UNI PEDIA" was the name that google are going to use for this.

[Domain unlinked as it's not officially owned by Google – Tony]

Gary Marsh [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

UniPedia sounds like a far better name than ´knol´ which in my opinion does not describe the product at all.

Assuming Unipedia is the name, which I think it will be, it will likely never be an actual domain name. More likely would be.

http://unipedia.google.com

Just my 2 cents.

Walter [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

I hope to see Knol soon. I dislike Wikipedia. Editors need a better place to do their jobs!

J.Baptista [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

I have also had firm information from a google employee that KNOL is KNOT the name that google will be using. KNOL was indeed just a codename.

I asked if it was 'UNI PEDIA' and he said that it's anybody's guess what it will be called, but KNOL it aint!

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