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Google Knol takes on Wikipedia’s online encyclopedia Bernard Cole San Francisco, Ca. – Google has just launched Knol, a collaborative reference site similar to Wikipedia, except that Knol allows its authors to generate income from the articles they've authored. Google hopes to avoid the vandalism and spin-driven editing that has plagued Wikipedia through a name verification program. With it, anyone can author a Knol, but authors also have the option of having their identities verified. Those who would appear more trustworthy to other Knol users can opt to be verified by phone number or credit card. Verified Knol users can display a badge indicating that they've been vetted by Google's automated system. Knol will differ from Wikipedia in that each Knol has a designated author. That author may have collaborators, but all payments go to the primary author. If there's any revenue division to be done, that's left to team members to sort out. Knol's collaboration model is also more hierarchical. Article collaborators can suggest changes but cannot make them without the author's approval. While this bottleneck may lead to Knol being less timely than Wikipedia, it should prevent the revision wars that plague controversial Wikipedia articles. To learn more, go to http://knol.google.com/k#.
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