The success of the online encyclopaedia called Wikipedia stems from millions of people being able to write about their own expertise, and also to add to, revise, correct and update any entry. Building up a knowledge base that way is a lot faster and more agreeable than individual efforts. The authors of a useful website on fossils (www.palaeos.com), begun in 2002, recently ran out of steam. Rather than allow it to become fallow, they have turned it into a wiki (wiki wiki means quickly in the Hawaiian language) at www.palaeos.org. Hopefully it will grow explosively, and I have suggested to  Prof P.U. Siffli, of Sringeri University in Karnataka, India, that he should contribute his hitherto private but astonishing knowledge on fossil hamsters.