Andy Henry wrote a how-to guide on writing a great knol that might appeal a beginner knol writer.

Early in his knol, Andy wrote an interesting remark:

Introductory message for newbies to knols – Do NOT listen to any hype and sensationalising from people hallucinating benefits of using knols. Knols are a Google resource of content contributed by members much like a next generation version of Wikis, Squidoo Lenses and article repositories. There is NO evidence to suggest that Google will bump knols to the top of the search engine positions, or that they will get any sort of preferential treatment – anyone telling you otherwise is feeding you stories. Don’t jump in and make bad knols because someone told you that it was a bandwagon to ride or that you’re gonna miss ‘the next big thing’ by not throwing up every piece of content you have.

That is very much true, as I have visited some knols on Google Knol that are blatantly created for the search engine optimisation and Internet marketing purposes.

Fortunately, the knols won’t stay on Google Knol for long – As Andy confirmed in his knol, Google Knol Team and members do the quality control.

However, as I witnessed in knols, users and members alike don’t really do quality control in term of the knol’s purpose. I’ve seen knols with scraped contents from other websites that get good star rating by users – the knols are obviously don’t deserve a five star for excellent, but copied content.

The Google Knol Team has introduced some sort of a system that allows user to flag inappropriate content, but that’s up to the users’ opinion and knowledge about what is ethical and what is not in knol writing.

Hopefully this will change in the near future, or as I’m afraid what will the Google Knol become – the spam haven.

Image by blisspix.

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.