The Bun Jokes: KNOL: A potential substitute for WIKI..…NOT!!

~Sanidhya Nanavati

Knol is not derived from any Latin utterance meaning something weird which can further complicate this interesting discovery, it is just an abbreviation of the word “knowledge”. As Joules are units of energy, we can consider knol as a unit of knowledge. But, what the heck this Knol is? Simple, it’s a bit of some information for the people, by the people about SOMETHING written in a way so that reader can understand everything about anything. Confused? Well, the leader of this project, Udi Manber can make it clear. According to him Knol pages are "meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read". Knol provides you independence of language, front, style of lettering, speech and what not. But, you should have a Google account to take benefit out of this obsession. Knols can be an article written by one or more authors representing their opinions or a company describing about its product or new launches while others related to how-to-s or even a recipe to cook a particular dish. A reader can like or dislike the article and even can comment over asserts in the article. Similar to a YouTube video, it can get popularity or even banned if it contains prohibited stuff according to the codes of Knol. With Google as a backhand search engine, the greatest power on earth after ‘Rakhi Sawant’, your knol can get visibility in search results and even enough popularity to attract adverts (shh…it’s a secret).

Stupid wiki thinks that “The more good free content, the better for the world” but we are concerned how they can compete with such expansive elaborate freely structured knoll. It is assumed that Google is trying to guzzle netting bazaar from Wiki. The thing which is making a difference between typed logical searches by wikis, other ‘cyclopedias and Knol is that the articles in here are more of a perception based analysis rather than from a neutral podium, that is; the articles have authors as their ‘owners’ with rights over their literary works and belongs to their way of thinking. But we deciphered that, this can pretense few (actually many) problems of redundant articles with lots of superfluous or erroneous information which will make things easier-said-than-done for user to search. Still, knoll is in nascent stage, can’t say of what next. It’s the champion of this milieu (the WWW…oops…we meant Google) is standing against a giant of Encylopods. The fight would be out of the ordinary. May the best Man-euver win.