In a rather surprising move, the Knol article that I had mentioned a couple of days ago has -poof- vanished into the ether. We’re now left with a “Knol not published” screen:
Ok, maybe it was a kind of embarrassing article for Blackbaud but really, did Blackbaud/Timothy Chou have to pull the article and thus deprive us of the enjoyment of mentioning “Software as a Service” and Blackbaud in the same breath? I think a biography from Timothy would have sufficed, no?
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Good for you, Allan. I totally agree with you that the issue wasn’t whether or not Blackbaud is a SaaS provider, it was that the author did not disclose his relationship with the companies he was writing about. Google is obviously trying to get around this by pushing people to verify their identify on Knol, but it’s always good when the user community sees conflicts like this and exposes them.
Come now. There never was a Knol. We’ve always been at war with Eurasia
@Judi Sohn: My only wish was to get the attribution right but hey, it’s just smart to tell companies that serve our sector that we (the user community) aren’t totally asleep at the switches…
@Peter Gulka: ZOMG! Peter, I hereby nominate you as the “Maker of the Best Zinger on the Non-Profit Tech Blog”!
oops… fake HTML-pwned.
*bows deeply*
To the author. I was a beta user of Knol over 6 months ago and tried out an early version of the software with some content. I was unaware that they made all of the knols public until a week or so ago. I took the article down to clean it up, format, etc. Please let your readers know the full article is back up.
Hi there, Timothy. I’m glad the article is back and it looks like there’s more information and charts so that’s good. However, you still haven’t filled in the biographical details for yourself. I believe that confuses readers to no end and in fact, one of the commenters to your Knol post actually accused you of plagiarizing what seems to be your own book. Let’s make your position as a Blackbaud director and your previous professional ties more clear so that this confusion will lessen in the future. I implore you to add your biographical information to your Knol post so that authorial intent can be better understood.
Alan – pilot error – biographical information is now published.
Awesome! Thanks for doing it the right way. Readers, here is Timothy Chou’s official Knol biography.