Knol Discussion Page

The Knol platform has developed into the most advanced multi-media publishing platform on the net today .... by a long shot. It's ability to seamlessly integrate so many other outstanding, separate yet complimentary platforms, revolutionizes the concept of online publishing: so much so that having mastered writing Knols, I suspect that most Knol authors will not want to publish online in any other medium.

My only problem with the current configuration is that when an author publishes what they know in a Knol, they do so virtually for free. Now, most Knol authors support this in part because much of their knowledge came to them in the same way - for free. But there is a percentage of an author's knowledge (Intellectual Capital) that they need to monetize in order to create an income stream to live. Furthermore they should be compensated for the high cost (in time, energy, failures & $ outlays) of acquiring that knowledge.

With that in mind, I would like Knol to consider a way in which Knol authors could publish the vast majority of their knowledge as Knols but have the option of either Public and Private release. Access to the Private release could be controlled by say passwords or by automaticly granted access from author nominated external sites.

This would allow the Knol author to operate an external commercial subscription website but have the content provided to subscribers via links to the Private release Knols. Corporations and educational institutions could then utilize the power of the Knol platform to produce the best online learning products but share this Intellectual Property/Capital only with paying members and enrolled students.

Obviously Knol would need to monetize 'Knol Private' using a different model than Adsense. I think that some sort of user pays model would be acceptable because the Knol author users is also benefiting financially from the operation. Just maybe, this could be a great place to trial a micro-payments system envisaged for online newspapers?

I logged out and tried again, and I think the Knol Help main page has been set to Arabic for the English language default. Please check!

I recently had a look at Digg.com.
It is a site where individual online articles can be announced and the community members rate them. The rating is in terms of diggs.

Many of the good knols have to be listed on them and authors themselves can do it. Then some of the knol authors can vote for them based on the content and quality. Daily 1.7 million visitors come to Digg and some of them will also rate knols.

Digg.com is a good article promotion platform that knol authors have to use. I initiated a knol to record knols submitted to Digg.com to create awareness of the opportunity. Let us join together and take up an initiative to promote knol.

http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/knol-submitted-to-diggcom/2utb2lsm2k7a/1719#

September 5 is celebrated as teacher's dy in India.

http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/september-5-teachers-day-india/2utb2lsm2k7a/1695#

I mentioned this idea earlier also in feature requests.

Knol can come out with a knol honor system. A system that facilitates honoring knowledgeable people. Amazon has this system already. Visitors or readers of knol pages can honor the author of the page through a credit card payment. These payments are paid through adsense payment mechanism to authors. Such a feature will create a strong reason for many teachers to come on to the knol platform and write. Especially, the payments may not immediately from a reader. But at a later date, when the students succeed in life and are in a mood to give back, they may come back to knol, and search for their teachers/authors whose artcles helped them and honor them. The facility once designed canbe extended to bloggers as well as youtube also.

We thought of a knol conference. It is yet to materialize.
Dr. Krishan Maggan came out with the concept of a Journal. Now PLOS has started publishing moderated papers. Slowly more serious paper writing is attempted on knol.

I initiated a proposal to start the following.

Knol Journal of Industrial Engineering
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/knol-journal-of-industrial-engineering/2utb2lsm2k7a/1661#

Knol Magazine of Industrial Engineering
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/knol-magazine-of-industrial-engineering/2utb2lsm2k7a/1662#

Knol Journal of Equity Research
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/knol-journal-of-equity-research/2utb2lsm2k7a/1659

Knol Magazine of Equity Research
http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/knol-magazine-of-equity-research/2utb2lsm2k7a/1660

I already explained the concept to two potential editorial board members and both accepted to be on the board. A good beginning. Now we are confident that we can assemble the full board shortly and start the publication. I hope many other authors on knol take up such initiatives. The brand of journal can make it easy to contact more persons and motivate them to write on knol. We need many people to take up many initiatives to make knol a successful platform. We need to provide a model and encourage others to initiate it in their area.

Support to the knol platform by Google is announced with a strong initiative. Knol authors can feel relieved.

But I am surprised that there in no home page announcement of this initiative. I came to know of this initiative only through a blog search. I think knol management is not using knol adequately to keep authors and visitors informed on a timely basis.

H1N1 Influenza is a topic that has to put on knol home page for some time. Such announcements on knol home page have to made as early as possible to create enthusiasm among knol authors. I informed this news to many academicians in India. It is a news worth sharing.

hi guys,

Congratulations on this great initiative, just come across it. It is similar to something I have been thinking about here in the uk for a while. ( I am a 54 year old teacher of science, parent, and educator with experience at Teachers TV and the BBC digital curriculum, have also done education work for the European Space Agency ). User of google since it began.

In dicussions with the Open University I made a proposal they were interested in, hope you are too, while this is still in beta.

Knowledge exists at many "levels" of difficulty.. I propose a new feature that a user is able to self categorise (or not) their piece of knowledge at one of, or a selection from, 10 levels of difficulty. This grading could also be added later and/or voted on and altered by others. Each grade pitched for an average person in the middle of the range. So a very bright 7 year old might choose to read college level materials , or a parent might look for easy treatments of topics, whilst a researcher might stick to research level materials. General readers might restict seaches to general interest materials (levels 3 to 6).

A reader would be free free to roam (search) at one level, several levels, or all levels. Eg "at this level and one above" or "at this level and one above, and one below". This feature made visual and easy to access. Also a tab for "general interest".

The great benefit of this is that you can browse at roughly the level of difficulty that suits your purpose.

This would improve user satisfaction levels, and increase access for those struggling with English or with learning difficulties, as well as everyone else including professors and child prodigies, teenagers, and anyone else.

Levels might be:

very simple ( infant / very young child say 0-3 ) VS 0
simple (young child say 3-5) S 1
easy ( say av age 5-7) E 2
###########################General intererest:
moderate ( av age 7-10) M 3
junior high (av age 10-13) JH 4
high school (av age 14-16) HS 5
##########################end of general interest
college (av age 17-19) CO 6
undergrad UG 7
graduate GR 8
postgrad accessible PG 9
reaserch / specialist RS 10

I know this sounds like a pain but done visually it could be very quick, easy , and intuitive. The result -especially if started soon - could be extremely powerful and useful. As this feature was added, grades could be added retrospectively.

It might be good to have a colour code or "slider bar" for people to select the vevel of difficulty.

For example, it would help the academic scientific community. But their work would also be searchable, and findable, and browsable, in a useful way, by others. It would also help the student to find a level of difficulty they are comfortable with, and stick with that. A "general interest" tab might categorise as levels 3 to 5 . Who knows, the whole web might eventually decide to fall in with this system! It is certainly a problem currently when browsing the web, that materials at all ranges of difficulty pop up. The google search engine could be adapted to offer this feature as an option - limit searches to a certain range of difficulty levels - onece a significant amount of material had been graded (assuming the idea takes off).

SECOND point: could you create a personal productivity home page which helps me to organise my own knowledge activities better?

Tools I want: notepads; searchable lists; calendar; clock; document viewer, video viewer, calculator, possibly a spreadsheet, and a very simple webpage authoring notebook to create and edit organise and store lists of web links. Others would want twitter , facebook,etc, news and weather, whatever. NO ADVERTS! I would end up paying an annual subscription but eventually, it would be well worth it.

Cheers.

Mark E Jones


Aug 11, 2009 2:58 AM

As an author of knol "Knol Author Recruitment - Double the Number of Knol Authors" http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/knol-author-recruitment-double-the/2utb2lsm2k7a/1170#, yesterday I made a presentation to a business school faculty in Mumbai on knol.

The presentation was appreciated and one participant questioned me that knols are not appearing in google search. I told them that most of the visitors are coming from google search only. I showed them the output of google analytics and showed the key words that are showing knols in google search. I expect some of the participants to write knols.

There is one more presentation that a colleague of mine is making tomorrow to a group of faculty members and knol will be introduced in that presentation as supporting pedagogy in management.

I think top viewed knol award list is not being updated regularly.

Hindi bulletin board knol has 1219 page views but does not find a place in the list at appropriate place. Also the award is not shown on the knol.

http://knol.google.com/k/narayana-rao-kvss/hindi-knol-authors-and-visitors/2utb2lsm2k7a/1181#

It will be good if the list is regularly updated as more number top viewed knols show that knol platform is expanding.

Hi there,
Recently I revisited a Knol I wrote some months back (Healthy Organizations from Conflict Management) and noticed that four raters ratings I sought and received seemed to have gone. That the Knol now shows No ratings.

I assume this is a result of a development glitch somewhere along the line. Is it possible to fix this, since I know the raters I sought are busy professionals (who know something of the subject) and I would prefer to retain their positive ratings?

Thanks