"Knol: content w/out context, collaboration, capital, or coruscation"

[David Petherick [Digital Biographer]]

Just came across a very interesting blog about Knol by Danah Boyd at Apophenia - http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/08/01/knol_content_w...

[Voces]

Thanks for posting links like this. What is your reaction to Danah Boyd's opinion? Do you agree or disagree with her fundamental premise? I think she raises some very legitimate points as well as some concerns that I have about Knol.

[David Petherick [Digital Biographer]]

I put my opinion into the comments, so you can see them in context, but out -of-context, here's what I said:

"Very thought-provoking article Danah, and similarly, the comment from Adam. Only time will tell, as you say. I think Knol has a long way to go, and it has some big elements missing at the start which really surprised me - and what I see as being a big missing element is that there is no structured community for feedback to Knol's developers built into the Knol system.

Some interesting things I've noted about Knol:

1) Only about 1650 Knols are in Google's Index so far - you can check yourself at http://www.google.com/search?q=site:http://knol.google.com/k

2) I got to Page 1 in Google Search with one Knol within 24 hours with 12 million+ pages behind me, but have no placing at all for another Knol.

3) Duplicate content is being spotted automatically (and highlighted with links to the duplicate content on the offending Knol), but does not seem to be penalised in any way for search relevancy.

I've slowly and quietly been pulling together opinion and discussion about Knol in a Ning-powered network I started in December last year at http://knolroll.com (apologies for the blatant plug) and will add a link to this article right now.

Regards from Scotland"