Taran's blog

"Google is open, Wikipedia is closed". December 14, 2007.

My own experience with administrators at Wikipedia has been less than stellar - something I have mentioned to Jimmy Wales. When one considers that the majority of the knowledge of the developing world exists outside of web references, Wikipedia really had some potential for the developing world: It could have been that place. For reasons that are fairly solid but not representative of the majority of the planet (80% of the world isn't on the Internet), Wikipedia's bureaucracy holds much of the world in disdain as far as contribution. I have been waiting for something better, and perhaps 'knol' is it.

The blog raises a question that I also had...

Will Google preferentially elevate Knol articles above Wikipedia, or will the conventional PageRank algorithm apply equally to Knol, Wikipedia, and all other competing articles on a given subject?

I hope Google keeps the playing field level, and doesn't preferentially rank Knol pages above all others. The competitive model works best when the referee doesn't favor one player over the others.

Question: will Knol serve Google AdSense ads?

Answer to that question will serve to answer your question.

Greg

The author of a Knol article can optionally choose to include AdSense or not. If included, the author gets a share of the ad revenues.

Elsewhere, I came across the answer to the PageRank question.

Because of robot-generated spam pages, Google had to disfavor otherwise unknown sites over known sites. As a result, they give Wikipedia preference in the rankings, so as to push the random spam pages down.

With Knol, they will retain this practice, but Knol pages will be ranked above Wikipedia pages.

Kind of amusing - a friend of mine goes by 'taran' online, but not that Taran