Knol Edge Is Power, Google Test Topics Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

Dynamic Update Page

Topics that I search on a routine basis, listed here for the purpose of tracking Google rankings, with special attention to the relative rankings of Knol versus Wikipedia over time.

1. Ampheck
2. Charles Sanders Peirce
3. Differential Logic
4. Hypostatic Abstraction
5. Inquiry
6. Logic of Relatives
7. Logical Graph
8. Logical Graphs
9. Peirce's Law
10. Peirce’s Law
11. Praeclarum Theorema
12. Pragmatic Maxim
13. Propositional Calculus
14. Relation Theory
15. Semeiotic
16. Sign Relation
17. Triadic Relation
18. Zeroth Order Logic

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Sat 1st November 2008, 1:36pm

[thekohser]

Jon, it would be a good idea to use this thread as a longitudinal tracker, but you'll have to provide data points on a regular interval (such as monthly). We'll want to know WHERE in your search engine results pages, the various iterations of your content dumps show up.

The small-type message that follows is not intended to be read by strong supporters of Guy and Poetlister. Just move along, don't read it.

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(Now that Guy and Poetlister are gone, you might even throw in MyWikiBiz pages into the Knol vs. Wikipedia mix, just as another point of reference.)

[Dzonatas]

A program that measures these rankings daily could be a handy statistic. Do it for various topics, like 100 or so.

I bet the medical related knols rank higher on google.

Wouldn't be hard to write such a program. I've done it before... before the MP3.com boom... to help find MP3s. LOL... told the guy he could add my code to his site when he asked, which i put in public domain, as "fallen off the tree". That was before the time yahoo invented the term "scriptkiddies" against those that wrote web-page scrubbers.

This post has been edited by Dzonatas: Wed 30th July 2008, 3:29pm

[Jon Awbrey]

Jon, it would be a good idea to use this thread as a longitudinal tracker, but you'll have to provide data points on a regular interval (such as monthly). We'll want to know WHERE in your search engine results pages, the various iterations of your content dumps show up.

… you might even throw in MyWikiBiz pages into the Knol vs. Wikipedia mix, just as another point of reference.

Sure, but that's waaay more work than I'm in for at present. And I didn't say that Knol vs. Wikipedia was my exclusive interest, just that it seems timely to focus on them.

Anec<dot>ally speaking, though, I notice that the knol for Differential Logic that I created just yesterday is already half-way up the first page of my namesake search, if that gives you any hint of the Shape of Things to Come.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Wed 30th July 2008, 3:52pm

[Dzonatas]

Since greasemonkey came out, writing simple scripts became a bit easier and interactive.

Here is one modified awhile ago to put a "play" button on the revision history:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dzonatas/script/history

So, one could be made to, for example, highlight the wikipedia hits and the knol hits when one enters anything in the google search. More could be done.

[The Joy]

I'm rather disappointed. I looks like the majority of articles at the moment are for medical conditions.

It's bad enough I sometimes look up symptoms I have on Wikipedia and find out I might need painful injections to cure gout or my eye twitch could mean death is approaching.

[Jon Awbrey]

I'm rather disappointed. I looks like the majority of articles at the moment are for medical conditions.

It's bad enough I sometimes look up symptoms I have on Wikipedia and find out I might need painful injections to cure gout or my eye twitch could mean death is approaching.

I'm guessing that the Knol team at Google probably invited a lot of people from various medical and public health communities to write knols during their pre-roll-out phase — that's a ready source of authors with fairly impressive credentials, and they always have a lot of patient education and research quality papers in the can at any given time.

To assist with your sampling, there's a knol for New Knols that's being maintained manually at the moment, as Googlepetto's workshop is pretty primitive when it comes to power tools at this stage of construction.

Jon

[Milton Roe]

I'm guessing that the Knol team at Google probably invited a lot of people from various medical and public health communities to write knols during their pre-roll-out phase — that's a ready source of authors with fairly impressive credentials, and they always have a lot of patient education and research quality papers in the can at any given time.
Jon

Your cynicism has failed you, for once. Most of this stuff ultimately derives from pharm company promotional writing. Some parts have been more carefully laundered than others, but in general, practicing physicians don't have time to write patient education. And research physicians write grant proposals, and reviews based on grant proposals, but these are often either funded directly by pharma, or else based on work originally done by pharma. It's all pretty much like those "erectile dysfunction" commericals you see on TV...

I knew I had high cholesterol, but I was suprised when my doctor said it could have led to my ED.

But then my doctor told me about Mycoxadril. Mycoxadril works longer, so even if my kids show up unexpectedly on weekends, I can still get it on, after they're out of here. Mycoxadril doesn't do a thing for the Crisco and Velveta clogging my coronaries, so I'm still headed for the Big One, followed by a quadruple bypass. But do I care? No, look at me, sitting naked in this tub on the beach. Do I look like I'm worried?*

*Mycoxadril does not protect from sexually transmitted diseases, and if you thought it might, probably the blood flow to your brain is as compromised as what's going through your clogged coronaries and clogged peepee. Micoxadril is not for everyone, but we wish it was, and hope that everybody will try it at least. Men should only take Micoxadril if they are healthy enough for sexual activity, and if they need it because of cholesterol, they probably aren't, but that's not our problem. Tell your doctor if you experience an erection lasting all weekend and into Monday or Tuesday, as it may be a sign the your peepee is about to fall off. Report any visual changes to your doctor, and this might be sign of impending blindness, just like the nuns warned you about. Unlike denture commercial actors who are required to be toothless, the actor in this commerical is a 40 year-old perfectly healthy man with hair dyed gray, who has never had impotence in his life, and if you think he has the same problems as you do, O fat, bald, elderly, hypertensive diabetic couch-potato, well then, this commercial has suceeded.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Sat 2nd August 2008, 3:30am

[JohnA]

Jon,

Why haven't you written the definitive Knol biography of CS. Peirce?

[Jon Awbrey]

I'm guessing that the Knol team at Google probably invited a lot of people from various medical and public health communities to write knols during their pre-roll-out phase — that's a ready source of authors with fairly impressive credentials, and they always have a lot of patient education and research quality papers in the can at any given time.

Jon

Your cynicism has failed you, for once. Most of this stuff ultimately derives from pharm company promotional writing. Some parts have been more carefully laundered than others, but in general, practicing physicians don't have time to write patient education. And research physicians write grant proposals, and reviews based on grant proposals, but these are often either funded directly by pharma, or else based on work originally done by pharma. It's all pretty much like those "erectile dysfunction" commericals you see on TV —

Now looky here, I worked as everything from a student data coder, to a grad student statistical aide, to a statistical package jockey, to a consultant on research methodology in Colleges and Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Osteopathic Med, Public Health, and even Vet Med (Parasitology and Tropical Diseases often fall under Vet Med) — so I know whereof I speak here. Pharmer Brown peddling his wares in every hallway, sure enough, but that's just MED-USA, as we know her. Doesn't stop folks from caring about their end-patients, though, even the ones afflicted with River-Blindness in the Sudan, who can't take Western Pills without their immune systems going into shock.

Jon

[Milton Roe]

Now looky here, I worked as everything from a student data coder, to a grad student statistical aide, to a statistical package jockey, to a consultant on research methodology in Colleges and Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Osteopathic Med, Public Health, and even Vet Med (Parasitology and Tropical Diseases often fall under Vet Med) — so I know whereof I speak here. Pharmer Brown peddling his wares in every hallway, sure enough, but that's just MED-USA, as we know her. Doesn't stop folks from caring about their end-patients, though, even the ones afflicted with River-Blindness in the Sudan, who can't take Western Pills without their immune systems going into shock.

Jon

Ivermectin can be taken by anybody and indeed is one of the few really good examples of drug company altruism.

It's not that most drug companies are trying to make a buck against patients' best interests (though this does happen again and again). It's just that drug companies have more time and money than anybody to describe the diseases they have pills for.

If you will give me some specific links, I will tell you what drug company provided the initial source material, or subsidized the writing of it. Try it as an exercise. For example, guess the drug: http://www.sightsavers.org/What%20We%20Do/.../World1622.html

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Sat 2nd August 2008, 4:07am

[Jon Awbrey]

They had different dopes for different folks back in the '80s, but it wasn't the pill that kills the patient, not directly. It's what happens when your body is so full of parasites that are fooling your immune system into happily accepting them as kin, but the pill that kills them all at once leaves your immune system with all those dead bugs to clean up at once. Not a pretty para-site.

Jon

[Milton Roe]

They had different dopes for different folks back in the '80s, but it wasn't the pill that kills the patient, not directly. It's what happens when your body is so full of parasites that are fooling your immune system into happily accepting them as kin, but the pill that kills them all at once leaves your immune system with all those dead bugs to clean up at once. Not a pretty para-site.

Jon

Sure, but it's never a reason not to treat onchocerciasis. It just has to be done slowly. Quite often starting with treatment of the parasite's co-agent, the bacteria Wolbachia, with a tetracycline. However, you won't find nearly as much about this, as the people who make and sell tetracycline-derivatives like doxycycline (these are industrial cattle industry antibiotics produced by the ton generically) don't make enough money from it to do squat, ad-wise. People like Merck who sell ivermectin have many uses for it from high-paying customers (the US vet market, for example) and can thus afford to divert some of that for charity to Africa, and write about it.

If you have some idea that there are non-Western treatments for this, which sponsor writing about the disease, give a link. Or, just find some links which don't get money from Merck, etc. Or from people who rely on materials which ultimately derive from Merck.

You're the one who brought up this disease. However, I'm afraid the more you look, the more you'll dig a hole for your argument. However, that will be good for you. Have at it.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Sat 2nd August 2008, 4:26am

[Jon Awbrey]

They had different dopes for different folks back in the '80s, but it wasn't the pill that kills the patient, not directly. It's what happens when your body is so full of parasites that are fooling your immune system into happily accepting them as kin, but the pill that kills them all at once leaves your immune system with all those dead bugs to clean up at once. Not a pretty para-site.

Jon

Sure, but it's never a reason not to treat onchocerciasis. It just has to be done slowly. Quite often starting with treatment of the parasite's co-agent, the bacteria Wolbachia, with a tetracycline. However, you won't find nearly as much about this, as the people who make and sell tetracycline-derivatives like doxycycline (these are industrial cattle industry antibiotics produced by the ton generically) don't make enough money from it to do squat, ad-wise. People like Merck who sell ivermectin have many uses for it from high-paying customers (the US vet market, for example) and can thus afford to divert some of that for charity to Africa, and write about it.

If you have some idea that there are non-Western treatments for this, which sponsor writing about the disease, give a link. Or, just find some links which don't get money from Merck, etc. Or from people who rely on materials which ultimately derive from Merck.

You're the one who brought up this disease. However, I'm afraid the more you look, the more you'll dig a hole for your argument. However, that will be good for you. Have at it.

Now why would you think I would say something that bluddy stupid !?

IANAD, IABAS, but you are not telling me anything I don't know about ¤€$£¥-genic bias in research. That was my job, to keep the studies honest, and any other day I'd be delivering that same lecture about ¤€$£¥-genic bias — in ♠s. People have to get the requisite ¤€$£¥ from somewhere to fund their institutions and their research — and it's the evisceration of the Public Sector in all phases of US Life that has created this side effect on Medicine. But the people I worked with were not ipso facto prostitutes, and they were not naive about ¤€$£¥-genic bias. As a rule, researchers do tend to be somewhat blindly sanguine about what is probably the worst source of bias, and that is the researcher's Need To Believe that his or her Pet Hypothesis is Some Kinda Bluddy Stroke Of Genius.

The question was, "Why are there so many health-related knols on that Knol starter page?" I may have glanced at all of about 3 of them, read a few Bio knols, and so I made an educated guess about why that might be. It may be a wrong guess, but I know from experience that all of the facts I adduced in support of it are true.

Jon

[Milton Roe]

The question was, "Why are there so many health-related knols on that Knol starter page?" I may have glanced at all of about 3 of them, read a few Bio knols, and so I made an educated guess about why that might be. It may be a wrong guess, but I know from experience that all of the facts I adduced in support of it are true.

Jon

Well, I know from experience just the opposite, so there

IANAD, IABAS, but you are not telling me anything I don't know about ¤€$£¥-genic bias in research. That was my job, to keep the studies honest, and any other day I'd be delivering that same lecture about ¤€$£¥-genic bias — in ♠s. People have to get the requisite ¤€$£¥ from somewhere to fund their institutions and their research — and it's the evisceration of the Public Sector in all phases of US Life that has created this side effect on Medicine. But the people I worked with were not ipso facto prostitutes, and they were not naive about ¤€$£¥-genic bias. As a rule, researchers do tend to be somewhat blindly sanguine about what is probably the worst source of bias, and that is the researcher's Need To Believe that his or her Pet Hypothesis is Some Kinda Bluddy Stroke Of Genius.

That may indeed be the worst source of bias, but it's not the one that produces all the writing for the public, and the nice illustrations. Don't confuse the two.

In the US, pharma does roughly 15 billion a year of research and so does the NIH. There has NOT been any "evisceration" of biomedical research funding-- it goes up year by year and always has (you cannot find a single year where it has gone DOWN, even in inflation adjusted dollars). But pharm research has gone up faster, and in addition, a far larger fraction of pharm research is clinical research producing clinical data which is hard to ignore, and pharm spends something about the same range as research funding in shear advertising, and some (large) fraction of THAT is writing for the "public". You can't escape it. Drug ads in the NEJM, drug ads in Lancet, drug ads on TV, drug ads just about everywhere. (I've mentioned Cochrane, but there aren't many Consumer Reports style things like this, in medicine, in the US or anywhere else). Drug money is so pervasive it's not even noticed, like air.

Just google a disease and see what's written about it on the web, that is NOT Wikipedia. Pick one at random. Provide concrete examples.

Let's take something very general, like .... cancer. Not even a single disease. But what the hell.
My first Google hit is the American Cancer Society. Do you know anything about the funding of the ACS, John? http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs/wealthiest_links.htm

Pick another.

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Sat 2nd August 2008, 5:26am

[Jon Awbrey]

Now here's an interesting thing —

Knol's Similar Content On Web (SCOW) widget apparently has access to previous versions of Wikipedia articles. For example, if you look at the report for my incipient knolicule on Logic of Relatives, it currently reports "wikipedia.org 57%", but that links to a version of the main Peirce article from 21 Dec 2007.
Kewl!

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Sat 2nd August 2008, 1:22pm

[Jon Awbrey]

Now how the devil am I going to maintain a dynamic list if I can't edit my entries after a few days!? Do we all have to suffer shackles because of 1 or 2 people's outrages!?

Jon

I'm going to start a dynamic list of topics that I do routine searches on, for the purpose of tracking Google rankings, with special attention to the relative rankings of Knol versus Wikipedia over time.

• Charles Sanders Peirce
• Differential Logic
• Logic of Relatives
• Logical Graphs
• Semeiotic

Jon

[thekohser]

Yes, it appears that Somey has denied us all the power to edit our posts here.

Jon, I had pointed out that Knol has the ability to show what % of some other web domain's page contains duplicate content as the Knol page in question. I copied a page of mine from MyWikiBiz, changed a sentence, and it rendered a "99% similar" link in the sidebar. It is really cool. You must have missed my post about it.

Milton, tell us how this was puffed out by pharma PR:

http://knol.google.com/k/don-c-rockey/cirr...n4VJ9Vw/Tq-BFA#

I'm not challenging you. I just want to learn more about how to spot it.

[Jon Awbrey]

Yes, it appears that Somey has denied us all the power to edit our posts here.

Jon, I had pointed out that Knol has the ability to show what % of some other web domain's page contains duplicate content as the Knol page in question. I copied a page of mine from MyWikiBiz, changed a sentence, and it rendered a "99% similar" link in the sidebar. It is really cool. You must have missed my post about it.

Could be, as I was ↑ ↑ & awaaay for a fortnight, or if you posted it outside of General or Meta, which is about all I frequent anymore.

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Yes, it appears that Somey has denied us all the power to edit our posts here.

Jon, I had pointed out that Knol has the ability to show what % of some other web domain's page contains duplicate content as the Knol page in question. I copied a page of mine from MyWikiBiz, changed a sentence, and it rendered a "99% similar" link in the sidebar. It is really cool. You must have missed my post about it.

Could be, as I was ↑ ↑ & awaaay for a fortnight, or if you posted it outside of General or Meta, which is about all I frequent anymore.

Jon

Well I just got back from vacation and it looks like it's time to take another &hellip;

Greg, could you please drop me a line by email when the Review Mods give us back the ability to edit our old posts?

Cheer-i-o &mdash;

Jon


This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Mon 4th August 2008, 2:38pm