Google has opened ‘Knol’, its answer to Wikipedia, to the public for the first time.
The website, which was first announced in December 2007 when Google began limited testing on the site, allows people to write about their areas of expertise under their bylines in a twist on encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows those posting to remain anonymous.
Knol are convinced that authorship - knowing who wrote what - helps readers trust the content.
The name of the service is a play on an individual unit of knowledge, and entries on the site are called "knols".
Knol has publishing tools similar to single blog pages, but unlike blogs, they encourage writers to reduce what they know about a topic to a single page that is not chronologically updated. Google wants to rank entries by popularity, decided by user ratings, reviews and how often people refer to the specific pages, to encourage competition.
What they want to get away from is the ‘last voice wins' model which is very difficult if you are a busy professional. Knol focuses on individual authors, or groups of authors, in marked contrast to Wikipedia's subject entries, which are updated by users and edited behind the scenes.
In another point of difference from Wikipedia, the new offering does not edit or endorse the information, and visitors will not be able to edit or contribute to a Knol unless they have the author's permission. Readers will also be able to notify Google if they find any content objectionable.
Although Knol is backed by the might of Google, it has a long way to go in catching Wikipedia, which boasts 7 million collectively edited articles in 200 languages.
http://knol.google.com/
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