Quadrille - 12:16 pm on Sep 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

I don't think there's much doubt that most article farms offer little or no benefit to authors - but you, of course, help them and their adsense.

It may be that a few quality ones do justify the risks of duplicate content - but on balance, self publishing is much more likely to get visitors to your site, encourage links, and generally improve your ranking.

I am heavily biassed, however, as I believe that multiple clone articles simply clutters the web - and I wouldn't consider mixing my high quality articles ;) with the dross that populates most article farms :)