Knol, the Google challenge to the Wikipedia has been launched. It can be found here. Wired has a good overview article. At the rather sparse site Google writes: " ... Welcome to Knol - A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic. Here are some examples of knols. Share what you know. Write a Knol .... 'Authors have to identify themselves, apparently via a credit card. It sounds like they plan to invite known experts to get credible articles.
Multiple Knols can be written on the same subject. Author affiliation is explicitly asked for. Not a wiki, only the author can edit their own work. Changes can be suggested via comments. Pages are under Creative Commons license. Google claims it will not interfere with content except for legal issues like copyright and porn. (whose laws apply?) Good articles will be float to the top based on a 'pagerank' style rating. Ads will be included and authors can get a share of the revenue.
Sorry, but this sounds like a big potential for abuse. Have they seen the way the WP has had to deal with anything political? Very skeptical about having many 'knols' on the same subject where passions are high.
There are several hundred articles on Beta Knol. Quite a long way to critical mass. The Wikipedia article on Knol has been updated. Will be trying it out.
Also previewed today, a new Medpedia which will cover medical topics, to be launched in late 2008.
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