Great article from the Washington Post recounting the ups (and downs) of human done searches - both in the past (with programs like the now defunct one on Ask Jeeves - and the present (like Yahoo! Answers and Google Co-Op). While I like the idea of a human touch to a search, I wish there was a way to filter some of the more obnoxious questions I’ve seen while trolling through Yahoo! Answers - ones that look more like opinion polls. Questions like “If you could describe yourself in one word what would it be?” and “What is love to you?,” along with other, less savory questions, crowd out the legitimate questions. I prefer more serious “human run” information programs like Wikipedia.

Though, if I did have a question, it would probably be why so many people ask really, really stupid questions.