Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers was the wonderfully unreliable public help desk where every question had an answer, whether or not it helped.

The service put ordinary curiosity in public. A question could be practical, confused, deeply personal, or simply strange, and the replies became part of a searchable record that other people might encounter long afterward. Its unevenness was inseparable from its open-ended scope.

That makes the archive of remembered questions more than a collection of useful explanations. It also reflects how people asked for help online, what they felt comfortable asking strangers, and the unexpected humor that could appear in a very ordinary attempt to find an answer.

Yahoo! ended the question-and-answer site after years of declining use.