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Google is finally allowing public to participate in Knol, a service similar to Wikipedia, in which users contribute articles on various topics.

Apart from the obvious difference in  design and theme, the main difference between Wikipedia and Knol is, the later uses author name with each article while former is anonymous.

It will place the author’s name on each article, allowing readers to see who contributed the articles they read. The service will allow multiple articles on the same topic.

Users can submit articles on topics ranging from technology to scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.

Knol was first launched in December 2007 but even since it was in closed testing and for the first time Google is allowing public to use this service. The term Knol, which Google defines as a “unit of knowledge” refers to both the project and an article in the project.

According to Google product manager Cedric Dupont and software engineer Michael McNally:

The key principle behind Knol is authorship.Every knol will have an author, or group of authors, who put their name behind their content. It’s their knol, their voice, their opinion.

Third parties will be allowed to edit and amend articles through a process called ‘moderated collaboration’ in which the author will be required to approve any edits to a page.

One the other hand the anonymity of Wikipedia has long been a point of contention amongst its users. Political groups, PR firms and overzealous users have been involved in numerous instances of Wikipedia entries being inappropriately amended.