Google Launches Knol

T he news of the week is that Google has finally launched Knol. Knol is a tool for publishing content on the network that is based on the principle of collaboration and content creation authorized, in the words of its developers:

The network contains vast amounts of information, but not everything that is known is contained in the network. An enormous amount of information is in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions could benefit from this knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to put their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.
The fundamental principle of Knol is authorship. Each has a Knol-author or group of authors who signed their content. Knol is his, his voice his opinion. We hope there will be several Knols on the same subject, and we think it is good that happens.
With Knol, we are introducing a new method for the authors to work together we call "moderate collaboration." With this feature, any reader can suggest amendments to make a Knol that the author may decide to accept, reject or modify before such changes are visible to the public. This allows the authors to accept suggestions from around the world while maintaining control over its content. After all, his name is associated with him.
Knol includes powerful tools for working in a network that allows multiple modes of interaction between readers and authors. People can send content, assigning a score or write a review about a Knol determined. Is the author's choice to include in an ad Knol's Adsense program [...]
We are pleased to announce an agreement with New Yorker that allows any author to add a bullet by Knol's extensive catalog of the magazine. The cartoons are a cash-and fun-to present your point of view, even on the most serious.

Anyway, this is another good news within the network, since it will encourage the emergence of licensed content on different topics, which in principle are not receiving the necessary attention from other areas in the network. However, one can see the face of negative news, as we have made some Onerare of the authors below, and prefer the version that goes directly against Knol Wikipedia and open content, including adapting to the laws of contents on the network that the European Union wants to adopt.

The latter approach seems excessive to me the news. The principle of authority is as old as the world, and if I can read an article by Anthony Grafton, Stephen Greenblatt, Amedeo Quondam, Jill Kray, John Monfasani, Robert Darnton, Fernando Bouza, Victor Infants or an infinite and so on a particular topic, and provide input from my research to complement it, I think it is wonderful news in the field of content creation and scientific and academic cutoff. Wikipedia is a useful tool, no mistake, but it is a giant with feet of clay from the time that contains lots of information, especially in the field of history, literature, art, political thought and other branches of the humanities-that is, being generous, wrong. If we add to this that is becoming an extensive resource for college students, and above all, it is becoming a resource that is not in contrast with other sources, I believe that the emergence of tools like Knol must be admitted, but with euphoria, at least with optimism for what they will mean for specific content online.

The move will allow Google is doing, at least in theory, that people who have not participated so extensive in the network and has an enviable training, can create content with the assurances needed to feel comfortable. Often, the news of this kind are greeted with skepticism and reluctance on the part of the communities located on the Internet, but what they do not understand these communities I think is that there are an infinite number of people who are unwilling to publish in the network without the premises from which part Knol. I think that anyone is slipping there is a very large representation of specialists in various fields that are not running on the network's reticence with regard to the place that their texts can play within an academic framework, and I think that Knol offers a plausible answer to encourage them to share their work in a more open.

This is not a perfect tool, obviously. The partnership with the contents of a number of academic-style eprint other modes of legitimation of content in-network would encourage many research projects that are doing really interesting things to use Knol as a repository of its results, with the advantage to allow the amendment of other experts who had initially not participating in the project. This opens new possibilities for cooperation that can have a very positive impact for the field of humanities.

Anyway, what I present here falls within the scope of the theory. It will be necessary to see how the project evolves and, above all, what kind of materials are displayed on the platform. From here, at least, will be followed with curiosity.

You can see different approaches in the news ...

TechCrunch: Google launches Knol, Wikipedia paid. In French, TechCrunch focuses on the fact of advertising linked to the content of Knol, and reflects on the spur implying that the most visited generate money for its authors.
Problogger: Knol Google - the end of the wikipedia or so blogs. Darren Rows, the owner of one of the most popular blogs for bloggers, Google analyzes the shift of the management of content beyond the creation of proprietary content and analyzes fairly common sense that the real difficulty Knol a danger both to Wikipedia as for blogs.
Journalistopia: The faces of Google Knol directly to the content companies. A very interesting and balanced information about the problems that may arise Knol with the main service from Google, the search engine, precisely because what is at stake is the creation of "authorized content on specific topics, it seems to me that here is where the problem of Knol and will have to see what means Google has to manage it (maybe add a tab like it did with google groups, scholar, books, images and so on).
Error 500. Two articles on the blog of Antonio Ortiz: Knol in open, with the wrong approach, I think. I do not think that Google Knol is to pose as direct competition with Wikipedia, nor do I believe that Wikipedia is the ideal solution for doctors who spoke Ortiz, Wikipedia is collaboratively in a way that only enhances the reception of the public, but not power of direct collaboration network, or check the information with other specialists, on Wikipedia is just the outcome but is not the process that leads to the result, I believe that here is the strong point of Knol . Wikipedia is a hierarchy of users. Mere mention of Knol as an alternative to the Wiki for the approach of what Ortiz called in the previous article as a classic meritocracy, and that many simply see it as the authority granting the work of years on a particular matter at the highest academic level and simple as that.
Loogic.com: Knol, the encyclopedia of Google. Again on the prioritization of Knol in the Google search engine itself, fair and informative article.
Journalists 21: Knol and the end of the neutrality of Google. Article apocalyptic and entirely unfair to Google, or Wikipedia will be threatened with Knol, nor do I believe, again, being raised as a direct attack on the platform. Rather, what you can do an interesting tool to Knol is its collaborative nature and open field specialists in the field that can contrast with other specialists, and we as people throughout the process, can you ask for more?