"pre-order" is an unnecessary and stupid formation. Either you order the book or you don't. That you order the book before it is released does not qualify as "pre-ordering."

Leave behind the bullshit: free gift (as opposed to the gift you pay for?) pre-order, pre-owned (but never, of course, actually used).

Have a nice day.

Wonder how Google is preparing for the inevitable wave of Holocaust deniers and marijuana advocates.

I found out that the guy who invented Milli Vanilli was the guy who came up with Boney M

...that these sites would at least have some capability for editing in terms of grammar. "Attempting to sleep should be made only after..." WTF?? I'd expect a Stanford expert to parse a sentence better than that. My fifth-grade teacher wouldn't let me get away with that kind of mistake.

But it seems editing is an art that's fast going the way of the dinosaur. I'm appalled at the horrid grammar, punctuation and total lack of style that runs rampant on the web, and I'm not talking about forum posts. Articles in major news outlets read like a 12-year-old wrote them. FEH.

Maybe you should drop the earth friendly solar powered Jew baiting ISP and get a real company.

As the original article states, this would be a boon to editors on Wikipedia looking to properly source articles. As these would by Wikipedia policy be considered primary, verifiable sources with full disclosure as to the credentials of their authors, they'd be fair game to cite and improve a Wikipedia article.

So really I entirely agree with the points made. Wikipedia represents digest-format information with links to more specific source material. Ideally these two sites would be ideal companions to each other, with Wikipedia articles potentially driving traffic to Knols. Taking this view it would be rather silly to think that Google is looking for a "Wikipedia killer" because their supposed rival could well be helping support this new project with referrals and hits.

I certainly think there's room in the virtual marketplace for both sites.

h2g2?

Now sponsored by the BBC, h2g2 is an online "Guide"/encyclopedia that's been around since 1999. Its goal? To provide accurate, peer-reviewed information written by amateurs, with focus on single authors.

Google shouldn't think it's being so innovative. There's nothing new under the sun.

Nobody mentioned one of the main draws of Wikipedia, which is that the content is freely licensed. And it is run by a nonprofit that keeps it that way and keeps the ads away. Are experts really going to want to write authoritative, high quality articles to give away to a huge public company that profits off of advertising? Oh, they share some unspecified tiny fraction with the authors. That's nice. If my article is so great, why don't I publish it on my OWN website and then I can keep ALL the ad revenues, as well as total control over the article?

Then there is the downside to this whole "my writeup is my own and nobody else's" methodology. You sacrifice any hope of maintaining uniform standards. For this kind of project you can't expect it to just develop by itself magically into high quality. You would need to, I don't know, actually PAY people money and have real, paid EDITORS. H2g2 was mentioned as another similar website. There's also everything2.com. They both suffer from several of the same problems mentioned.

Didn't Jimmy Wales start out with, basically, Google's model, and then rapidly give it up?