25 Best Blogs 2009

This is the community weblog that gives crowdsourcing a good name. Every day, MeFi (as it's known to fans) posts a dozen or so detailed items (with copious links) on subjects that users thought interesting enough to share with the rest of the class. The result is a ludicrously diverse encyclopedia of surprisingly useful and shockingly useless knowledge — the latest findings on string theory and evolutionary biology share space with fond remembrances of the TV show Charlie's Angels and rumors of a new Spinal Tap album. Plenty of blogs traffic in pop culture ephemera, but Metafilter takes it seriously. A recent online food fight over whether the lead character in the old Road Runner cartoons said "beep-beep" or "meep-meep," was finally settled by a MeFi contributor who once had dinner with the cartoon's animator. The verdict: Meep-meep. Now you know.

Sample Metafilter post: For the last few years across Melbourne, a mysterious, box-like man has been appearing. He is known as Crate Man.

Entry you'll never see: I was going to share a detailed history of miniature golf with everybody, but it seemed too trivial to post here.