Go ahead, just ask a question

Ask Peter Trask. He will tell you that white wine is best stored at 50 degrees, that he occasionally sleeps with a teddy bear at age 48 and thinks it's fine, and that broccoli can be made into liquor but not a very tasty one.

The accountant from Pembroke, Mass., spends a couple of hours every night answering questions like these posed on answerbag.com, where members post queries on topics as diverse as philosophy, math, dancing and religion. He's offered more than 1,000 pieces of advice since stumbling onto the website a year ago.

"I'm a wealth of useless knowledge," he said. "I have more contact with some of these people than I do with my own brothers and sisters."

The Internet is packed with specialty sites devoted to just about every ailment, passion and topic. But millions of people also seek answers from armies of volunteers such as Trask on sites like Answerbag, WikiAnswers and Yahoo Answers. The leader, Yahoo Answers, attracted nearly 20 million visitors last month, according to Web measurement firm ComScore Media Metrix.

When it comes to answering questions, expertise is preferred -- but none is required. Anyone on these services can ask or answer a question.

Many of the self-appointed authorities spend hours crafting their responses. They cite many motivations: to contribute to the greater good, fend off boredom, procrastinate as work looms or earn recognition.

They're the online equivalents of the neighborhood busybody, the helpful librarian or the sage professor. Often, that's who they are in real life, too.

By day, Lisa Poirier is comparative religion professor and director of graduate studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. By night, she's "Professor X." After dinner, the 43-year-old Poirier winds down by logging into her Yahoo account and fielding questions on higher education.

She has referred people to colleges with horseback riding programs, counseled students on getting into graduate school and doled out opinions on various colleges. Once, when an Afghan woman posted a question about how to study in the U.S., Poirier offered her knowledge of organizations that provide full scholarships to women from Afghanistan.

"While my partner plays video games, I answer questions," Poirier said. "It's my own game."