Ethical Knol Writing

During my wanderings on Google Knol, I found some unethical knol writing practices in knols.

There are knols that are entirely copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia; There are knols that are also a rip-off other sites, and use certain keywords in them to link to the knol writer websites; There are also knols that do nothing except selling products or services; and many more unethical knol writing existed.

I have written about this before – please read my post titled Will Google Knol Become a Spam Farm?

This post is about to list what is, in my opinion, defined as ethical knol writing.

What’s good for being ethical?

This is always a question about being good and responsible Google Knol user. It has a lot of potential – so big the potential, that many use it as promotional-only purposes.

What happened to Google Knol is no difference to what happened to Wikipedia, Squidoo, YouTube, Digg, and other similar sites. This is just the nature of user generated content – users basically can do almost anything, and their acts are ‘controlled’ by moderators and other users – it’s a free floating system, with a string attached to it.

Being ethical keep Google Knol ‘true’, as a source of knowledge. Google Knol has been beneficial, mainly for educational purposes. I’ve seen lecturers use knols as reference, and consultants use knols for consulting purposes.

Ethical knol writing

Here is what I think about ethical knol writing:

1. Don’t use excessive links – one or two links to outside sites are recommended.
2. Use a resource box with a paragraph of your info and a link or two in it – don’t do sales or promotional pitch inside the knol.
3. Don’t rip Wikipedia or other sites content – write your own, unique, article.
4. Use formal language and proper grammar – knols are different to blog posts.
5. If you source your knol from other sites, cite the source properly.
6. Use public domain or creative common images on knols to avoid copyright infringements – and don’t forget to cite the image source.
7. Promote your knol reasonably – avoid spamming people with your knol links.

You can also learn all about knol, including the dos-and-don’ts from the official guide to Google Knol by Google Knol Team.

If you have any other tips on being ethical knol writer, please add to the list by commenting to this post.

Image by justinbaeder.