Comments on: Google’s Knol: So Far, Not So Good

By: In the footsteps of Napoleon « The Alter Egozi

In the footsteps of Napoleon « The Alter Egozi — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:00:09 +0000

[...] habit of visiting adsense-less, top search result pages, tried to tackle it with Google Knol, but failed. But then, revisiting my reason #1above shows very clearly why the individualist knol concept will [...]

By: Jason King

Jason King — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:09:51 +0000

I see what you mean. The very first article I looked up (Adolf Hitler) on Knol was a copy and paste from Wikipedia.

Then I looked up “narrowboat” and found nothing relevant, just an ad for someone’s boat insurance company pretending to be an article.

Very poor show.

By: Jon Hopwood

Jon Hopwood — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:46:53 +0000

Google Knol is a nightmare. I posted 60+ knols, all based on material I had the copyright for, but polished (with added links) for Google Knol. All my knols were deleted without explanation. Comments I mad on the Help board and other boards were deleted. A first email about my problems was answered promptly with a generic comment, and the second email to knolhelp@google.com was dismissed with a flippant remark that the volume of mail was too high. They have not responded to other emails.

At that point, when I have tried to post a comment like, “What is going on” to the “Knol Bugs and Work-arounds” board I get the message, “Sorry! You have reached your daily quota for the action you are performing. Please try again tomorrow.” This has persisted for well over a month.

What is going on with this site? Is it the out and out debacle it is seems to be? I went online today and noticed that messages I left on the “Knol Bugs and Work-arounds” board were all deleted. In fact, there are only 30 messages on the board, since the first week of August. Who can believe that limited amount?

Seemingly, I have been blackballed. Maybe it is because of this article I published: “First Look at Google Knol: Beware, Bloggers — Internet Search Engine’s Encyclopedia is Very Buggy in Beta” http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/904667/first_look_at_google_knol_beware_bloggers.html?cat=15

But who knows, as there is no feedback at all from Beta.

By: jim hanson

jim hanson — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:54:54 +0000

My major complaint with wikipedia was and is that they will not allow any commercial linking! I wrote an entire wikibook on DIY household goods moving and they would not allow me to keep one lousy external link to my website on it! So I’m done with contributing any more there and I’m doing it all over again here where interested parties can link to all of my stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, I love wikipedia’s content and I use it all of the time, linking to their articles frequently. But their refusal to allow at least 1 external commercial link to an originating author’s website galls me.

I view Google’s knols as wikipedia 2.0 because of its ease of use and better options for authors. Yes, some are going to try to game it for commercial advantage but then rules just need to be established to stop them, just as Google’s search engine has done.

Google, please do not let this die! It is much better than wikipedia, as well it should be considering its benefit from wikipedia’s years of service goodness and flaws. Just listen and respond well to your commenter’s advice as quickly as possible.

You’ve started a better mousetrap and if you go on to perfect it, the world will beat a path to it to fully utilize it.

By: Harry McCracken

Harry McCracken — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:58:14 +0000

Thanks for stopping by, Michael–like I said, I think Knol is a good idea and I’m looking forward to seeing it develop…

–Harry

By: Dew Drop - September 2, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

Dew Drop - September 2, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:47:23 +0000

[...] Google’s Knol: So Far, Not So Good (Harry McCracken) [...]

By: Between the Lines mobile edition

Between the Lines mobile edition — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:16:07 +0000

[...] Paul Murphy: Partnoy’s Complaint JavaScript 2.0: Why Give Programmers Crutches? Technologizer: Google’s Knol: So Far, Not So Good Garett Rogers: Microsoft spends $486 million to compete with [...]

By: Geeknews » More Cracks in the Google Facade?

Geeknews » More Cracks in the Google Facade? — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:11:58 +0000

[...] from Technologizer joins the “one trick pony” train mentioned the other day, but he does it by talking about GOOG’s Knol that was announced last year but went public last month. If you’re not familiar with it, Knol [...]

By: Michael McNally

Michael McNally — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:28:33 +0000

Hi Harry McCracken, this is Michael McNally, the lead engineer on knol.google.com.

Thank you for your write-up and for your honest and well intentioned criticism. We do read a fair amount of what is blogged about Knol, but have limited time to respond.

A number of the specific issues you mention have been noted as bug reports or feature requests, and are wending their way through our release process.

We are constantly working to encourage the creation and discoverability of high quality content, and we look forward to many changes in the coming weeks and months that should make knol.google.com an increasingly useful site.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 19:07:41 +0000

The problem is that people don’t want ten mediocre answers to a question – they want one good one.

Understanding this is why Google blew away all the other search engines.

Content sites that bend over backwards to be writer-friendly are missing the point: it’s the readers.