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Shaun Nichols in San Francisco, vnunet.com, Friday 25 July 2008 at 02:06:00

Wikipedia rival opens to the public

Google is inviting users to participate in its new Knol online encyclopedia service. The service allows users to contribute their own articles on various subjects, allowing for experts to contribute full articles in their fields of specialty. The service had been in closed beta since it was first announced in December of 2007. The concept behind Knol is similar to that of Wikipedia, with one glaring exception. Knol will place the author's name on each article, allowing readers to see who contributed the articles they read. The service will allow multiple articles on the same topic. The anonymity of Wikipedia has long been a point of contention amongst its users. Political groups, PR firms and overzealous users have been involved in numerous instances of Wikipedia entries being inappropriately amended. "The key principle behind Knol is authorship," wrote Google product manager Cedric Dupont and software engineer Michael McNally. "Every knol will have an author, or group of authors, who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion." Third parties will be allowed to edit and amend articles through a process called 'moderated collaboration' in which the author will be required to approve any edits to a page. Google will also allow users to monetize their entries. Knol will feature an opt-in system for the company's AdWords program. Authors who choose to allow the ads will be paid a share of revenues.