Personal Background
I have been with Google for over five years, and am currently on the Ad Traffic Quality team.
Previously, I was the Tech Lead on the Knol project. That work entailed website design and software architecture, writing and posting as Knol Help , coding new features, and trying to facilitate the efforts of other Knol developers (including a few 20%-time contributors who are adding features to Knol.) We began investigating the possibility of doing the project in Feb. 2007. We have had a private/tester release since December 2007, and released a public beta in July, 2008. The product is now about six months old, and we've recently celebrated the 100,000th published knol . You can track our progress on the Release Notes page.
Previously, I was the Tech Lead on the Knol project. That work entailed website design and software architecture, writing and posting as Knol Help , coding new features, and trying to facilitate the efforts of other Knol developers (including a few 20%-time contributors who are adding features to Knol.) We began investigating the possibility of doing the project in Feb. 2007. We have had a private/tester release since December 2007, and released a public beta in July, 2008. The product is now about six months old, and we've recently celebrated the 100,000th published knol . You can track our progress on the Release Notes page.
I joined Google in April 2004. Prior to Knol, I've worked on machine learning, websearch, test and quality infrastructure, and gmail spamfighting.
Prior to Google, I worked at AiLive (formerly iKuni) developing artificial intelligence middleware for computer games (my former coworker John Funge has a demo of their new product on YouTube).
At Write Brothers (formerly Screenplay Systems), I developed software for the movie and television industries.
Prior to that, in the late 80s, early 90s, I designed and programmed computer games for the IBM PC, Sega Genesis, Macintosh and Amiga. I have a M.S. in Computer Science from UCLA, where I studied artificial intelligence and scientific computing.







Narayana Rao K.V.S.S.
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Congratulations for Patent
Even though the patent might have been filed long back, I came to know only today and congratulate you and Mr. Strathearn on this achievement.
I do not know whether the feature was already installed on knol or some more improvement to knol will happen at a later stage due to your patented process. But it is a good news for all of us associated with google knol.
I feel advertorials can be a good business opportunity for knol.
I collected and posted my thoughts on this issue in a knol.
http://knol.google.c
We require knols to follow our Content Policy guidelines. Some commercially oriented pages do, but many do not.
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Narayana Rao K.V.S.S.
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Help in Recruiting More Knol Authors
http://knol.google.c
http://knol.google.c
Knol Foundation
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Knol Author Foundation
Maybe you can help us with this or point us in the right direction.
MaiSao Trans became director of the Vietnamese Chapter of the Knol Author foundation. He has this question-
Hi, i am running into this difficulty if you could please help. I need the cite to be users friendly with Vni- fonts so I can update the Vietnamese Knol cite. This font is a user friendly and official used in Vietnam and internationally.
Thanks,
Mai Sao
Thank you for your time
Here is our page on Knol in Different languages.
http://knol.google.c
Most knol related questions will be answered faster if you post to a page owned by Knol Help instead of me. I used to be Knol Help frequently, but now we have others serving in that role.
I added a paragraph on installing fonts -- but that is something which you as users do, Knol cannot install fonts for you. Specifically for VNI I found this page with instructions on installing VNI fonts:
http://www.vnisoft.c
Use with caution -- I do not endorse it, or know anything about it. Please find a trustworthy supplier for fonts in the languages you care about, and if many users in those languages have difficulty in having appropriate fonts, provide Help pages or build a "font resources" list.
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Randy K
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Name Change
http://knol.google.c
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Krishan Maggon
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Quality badge and 5* ratings downgrades
Today, I was surprised to see several of my knols now have 4* ratings after revisions in place of 5*?
Global Pharmaceutical Market Review & World Top Ten/Twenty Drugs 2008
My best knol had 8X 5* ratings before revisions and now has 9X4* ratings today? Earlier changes resulted in loss of quality badge. Do I revert to the old system with common and uniform sections?
I suggest that you create a new knol to better explain the Quality badge and star system changes picked up by your current algorithms?
Other knols to suffer downgrades are
Global Diabetes Market Review 2008 & World Top Ten Diabetes drugs
Global Respiratory Market Review & World Top Ten Respiratory Drugs 2008
Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, Diagnostic, Medical Device Industry
Market Research Reports Review (Data Discrepancies)
For the last knol listed, downgrading most difficult to understand as it points out the shortcomings of the $7 billion commercial market research industry. Anyone from that industry can give it a 1* rating to score competitive advantage? I can live with this and have no problems.
These knols are important for me and I get several positive emails from readers. Solicitation for articles from editors of journals has gone up once again both in numbers and frequency
Concerned if my own changes triggered the downgrades?
Krishan Maggon
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Quality Badge Attribution
Thus your algorithm is no better than visual measurements with an error of 20%
I read in one of Peter Baskerville knol, that your algorithm qualifies knols as spam or low quality if there are frequent changes/edits in knols and similar content in knols?
By the very nature of methodology used, there is similar content on most of my Global Market Research knols. On top these knols require frequent updating due to constant stream of upcoming data. I hope that your algorithm does not attribute low quality ratings to my knols due to regular input and similar content?
Just to clarify.
Only if you update and save extremely often (like say 30 times in the space of an hour or two) will you be treated as a 'suspect'. This is because by updating often, you keep your Knol on the front page (What's new?) and thereby granting it a better chance of being picked up by the search engines. I had lots of Explorer crashes so I was not taking any chances and saved far too often for the algorithm. That's when I found I was sent to the 'back of the pack'. It should not affect Knols that are updated daily or even a few times within the hour. It's the high volume of saves over a few hours that makes you a suspect. When I made the Knol Team aware of my treatment, the Knol was soon recovered. Now I edit in Chrome and I don't have to save so often for fear of losing my work.
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Peter Baskerville
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KnolBooks & Collections
As you are aware, the open collaboration forum attracted much interest in the concept which has since moved on to collaborative groups being formed in the community to exploit what appears to many to be a by-chance phenomenon.
The Knols Project's current stated position is to simply canvas ideas but the wider community, both internal & external, are moving quickly to action. The smart contributors to the Knol Project know that any opportunities here are best exploited in conjunction with the Knol Team rather than independent of it.
Before things move ahead too far, it would be good to get some feedback or clarity on the ideas canvased in the open collaboration forum. I understand that company policy usually restricts the announcement of future plans, but in the collaborative partnership that is the Knol Project some standards may need to be adapted because I believe that the future of the Knol Project is as much about the community as it is about the engineering and the content.
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Krishan Maggon
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Unable to save imported text from MS Word
Do we need a web site at google for the journal and how can we get 5-15 gmail accounts for the journal?
I can announce it to the knol community only after posting the full text?
Fixed it by importing text from Word into gmail and then copy/paste but wasted lot of time?
Need your help, comments and suggestions for starting the first knol journal?
Journal of Therapeutic Biotechnology knol (JTBK)
The first knol journal has been initiated with a call for editors, authors, sponsors and help?
I have created a new knol as a resource for the collaborative medical book project
Medical knol collection
Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, Diagnostic, Medical Device Industry
I will forward your other questions to others on the team.
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The same operation from Word to Gmail and then to knol was OK
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Krishan Maggon
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Quality Badge attribution
I did a random check of your currently selected 9000 knols. From A and C, I found at least 10 knols which contained health fraud, junk science or misleading statements which were flagged to the team.
It means that the criteria and specifications for your algorithm quality selection require improvements and I am sure your team can fix the problem.
Krishan Maggon
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Tables 1 and 2 deleted from my cancer knol
Yesterday I had the bad experience of watching some of my latest update and saved data removed?
I had posted the sales update of my Cancer Knol and when reopened last night, the two Tables were missing as if someone had removed the latest results which command a premium market price? I write to you to find out? I do not see those 2 Tables in versions 30 and 31. I had saved the changes. I have now reverted back to an earlier version 29.
We will look into that right away. We made some changes recently to try to improve moderated collaboration, but they could have broken some other editing use cases.
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