Those articles are on the front page, but shlock is creeping into the inside pages and will continue to do so as long as there’s no editorial oversight.

Let’s be honest, most of ezinearticle’s authors are selling something. I am. But there’s a difference between those of us who are willing to trade quality information to get people to visit our site, and the sleazemeisters who scrape articles, insert ads and put it all on a site that looks like what it is – a splog, whose owner can’t be contacted.

My name is on my site and so is my email address. I use my own articles on my site, but if I were going to use someone else’s articles, I wouldn’t go to Knol. I’d go to ezinearticles where I know a human being has vetted the articles for quality and content.

Eb Netr

Having looked at a number of directories, I still think ezinearticles is the class of the field.

However, thanks to you I looked at alexa for the first ttime in months

I may be wrong but Knol traffic cannot be determined from alexa cos its a sub domain

see

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/google.com

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/knol.google.com

Alexa cannot at this time discriminate between the main domain and its sub domains

Hope you keep editing and developing ezinearticles and that it continues to have a different character from wikipedia.org and knol.google.com

I think diversity is precious and ezinearticle has given me the opportunity to be published in a publication that I and others respect

Well done

Oladotun

I really think it is too early to try and speculate on what Google Knols will do to the article marketing community. However, I do think that we should be poised and ready to take necessary action if Googel Knols begin to re-mold the community as a whole…however that may be.

The fact that the name “Google” is attached to this service is what most of us are attracted to (or in the case of most directory owners, scared of). So commenting on crap article directories might be side-stepping a little bit. Sorry, just keeping it real.

The “police force” in the Knol community is lacking, at best. If Knols fail, it will be because of the phenominal amount of spam and useless information that is sure to saturate their databases within the next few weeks. I have already found useless, blatant advertising in their community.

As you and I both know, the key to surviving in this industry has always come down to one thing…providing quality content for our visitors. If Google does not make any changes, they will realize that the name “Google” won’t be enough to keep people coming back.

Content is King. Even with the power that Google has as a search engine and traffic generator, it won’t be enough to support a bunch of crappy, sales-filled articles.

Respectfully,
Allen Graves

Judith,

I don’t know about others, but my perception is that Knol wants to have human intervention but only human logarithmically and not human editorially…

Given the gray areas of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), those who state they don’t get involved editorially are less liable and can better stand behind the OSP (Online Service Provider) shield… but ultimately, that shield is pierced by the raw fact that without intervention in either automatic software or human personal review of content, …the value of the site becomes worthless in a matter of hours to days due to content spam.

I’m not sure the founders of the DMCA properly accounted for the reality that web & ezine publishers need to have quality controls of multiple kinds & systems, less the whole experience becomes one spammy cesspool of a website after another.

Google and others just want technology to be a panacea without human intervention — and that will never work. Adding the human being into the process, as EA always has done and will continue to do, does nothing but add quality, value and relevancy that computers, applications or algorithms will never be able to accomplish. To leave editorial values and decisions up to users encourages blatant irrelevant self promotion of the worst kind.

Google would need to look at adding the human factor into their algorithm and into Knol so they too can set themselves apart. Only then would that be a possible competitive environment.

Just think… If they did, that would also mean less dead, outdated, 404 and AdSense sites pulling as the “most relevant.” That won’t happen…

So, see? EA has nothing to worry about!

Keep up the great work!

At your service,
Judith

Sarah

Knol is a (k)novelty right now – and yes it is providing early results. But eventually it will become saturated and not as useful.

I think the personal service that EA offers is far superior in the long term.

As fo adding Adsense to our articles, it’s possibly a good idea – I know Qassia do it, but if EA don’t want to go that way then it’s fine with me :)

Articles at EzineArticles have a personal touch and are not boring content like the lexicon type “articles” on Knol or Wikipedia.

Pete

No computer generated ranking system like Alexa will ever replace the kind of human respect and emotions readers have on good authors.

It’s a bit like, if you want to eat good curry, go to an Indian Restaurant. But if you really want to eat great curry, go to India.

Can’t compare EA and Knol, if you win using both, why not? The spices are different anyway.