"All the time the ladies be asking me: 'Tom D, what's one of your favourite things on the web?', and I say, 'Ladies! Ladies...'"

I love the Wikipedia Reference Desk service.

Its completely brilliant.

Basically, for those not in The Know, the Reference Desk is a big ol' wiki page, where passers-by can ask a question, and wait for Wikipedia's most knowledgable contributors to turn up and spill their brains over their query.

The Reference Desk is split into 8(-ish?) subsections: the Language Desk, (probably the single best free translation service on the entire interwebs, while far from instantaneous, it will always translate exactly what you want it to); the Computers and Shit Desk, for computers and shit; the... um, I don't know, the Pie Desk... for like... questions about pie; about a handful of others, and, my favourite, the Humanities Desk.

The Humanities Desk is there for questions relating to Art, History, Politics and et cetera, so already its piqued my interests. Its a great place to learn. Its home to the kind of people who manage to appear charasmatic via a textual medium, (I don't know how that's done... probably witchcraft...), and who are thus quite entertaining when they start typin' on about 18th Century Scotland, or the kinky exploits of Mao Zedong.

In addition, seeing as its a wiki page, its completely editable. So often, if I'm feeling in a brain-boxxy mood, I'll edit it. Help out some 14-year old Californian on their obvious questions, its pretty rewarding. But mostly, I like submitting replies that are slightly obtuse and sardonic - not unhelpful mind!, with some skill, it is possible to be obtuse without being unhelpful.

So yes. That's why I love the Wikipedia Reference Desk. In other news, the title is a HomestarRunner.com reference.