Damn straight.

Because this is.

Thanks Bug Girl, as ever.

Apparently not. It's still a conspiracy though. Yes it is.

I refer to Google's new Wikipedia ripoff, which they've called Knol to suggest knowledge, I suppose. It's got a few hundred articles by experts, apparently, and now we can add our own. Once we've added them we can allow Google Ads if we want and keep a slice of the earnings from them.

The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that in a Knol you keep editorial control over your article. If other people think they can improve on it, they have to write their own. The competing articles then fight it out for hits. The more hits you get, the higher you come in the rankings. In itself, it's not a terrible idea.

There's a scandal brewing, though, which is the placing of Knol articles in Google search rankings. Danny Sullivan of the blog Search Engine Land has done some research, and it seems like they're doing suspiciously well. Almost as if Google was biasing its search results towards knols, and therefore giving them an advantage over similar Wikipedia entries.

I'm going to write one on Ovid (probably the one single topic in the world I know a little bit about), and see what happens to it. I'll keep you posted.