I just opened an unpublished knol and published. I did not notice the
difference you are pointing out. I hope Google overhauls the platform
and makes every feature on the platform work.
Good news is that tomorrow, our estimate for unique visitors per month
to Knol will be 5.5 million and Knol is a top 1000 website as per the
data of Google adwords. For July 2011, the 1000th ranked website has
5.5 million monthly unique visitors. Hence Knol is a successful
product and all authors of Knol can feel happy and put in some more
effort to greater heights. There is great momentum on Knol in terms of
new knols published and visitors to old popular knols.
If any of the members of the group are Google+ please let us know so
that we can follow you.