Google Opens Up Knowledge Base
Posted in Open Source by admin on July 25th, 2008 Internet search giant Google has released a new knowledge base called “Knol”. A ‘Knol’, according to Google, is a unit of knowledge.
To be a bit more specific, a Knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic, which has been written by people who know about those subjects. Announced last year, Google kept Knol it an invite only beta – until now.
In a similar fashion to Wikipedia, Google’s Knol is an attempt to allow people with knowledge to spreads it around for us simpletons to digest, regurgitate and look intelligent at our next dinner party. Rather than the anonymity awarded by Wikipedia, Google’s Knol gives the authors a name.
“The key principle behind Knol is authorship,” said Google employees Cedric Dupont and Michael McNally.
“Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good,” they said.
Although Google intends to push the author as expert, the company isn’t going to ignore general net users. With “moderated collaboration,” any reader can make suggested edits to a Knol, and the author can choose to accept, reject or modify the suggestions and remain in control of the content.
Knols are also dynamic, which means people can submit comments, rate or write a review of a knol.
“Knol will be a conversation open to everyone, not just the experts,” Paul Saffo, an independent technology forecaster, said.
“It’ll be entertaining, I’m sure - there’ll be UFO (unidentified flying object) nuts writing very authoritatively on their chosen subject,” he added.
