Directory:Encyclopedia Dramatica
Encyclopædia Dramatica (ED) is a MediaWiki-based wiki launched on December 9, 2004 [1], by Sherrod DeGrippo [2] as a central catalog for the world to view comprehensive, reference-style parody and satire of drama, memes, and other interesting happenings on the internet. [3]
Since its creation, according to automatically generated statistics, Encyclopædia Dramatica has grown to over 90,000 articles as of October 2008, with over 66,000 registered users.[1],[2] According to Alexa Internet, "The articles in this parody of an encyclopedia explain things in a funny and not necessarily correct way".[3] and the site ranked 3,350th[4] as of the October 2008 Internet traffic ranking.
History
Encyclopædia Dramatica's history began when LiveJournal blogger and LJ Drama co-founder James Lee from Seattle, Washington, started using Wikipedia and created an article about LiveJournal blogger Grayden Rayne (former legal name Joshua Williams). The article was subsequently deleted, despite LiveJournal users, including members of LJ Drama, lobbying to keep the article.[4]
LiveJournal user and LJ Drama administrator Sherrod DeGrippo heard of the deletion of the LiveJournal-related articleTemplate:Fact, and, as a response, came up with the idea of creating Encyclopædia Dramatica so LiveJournal users could write about "the internets"Template:Fact. DeGrippo stated in a Wikipedia discussion that "[avoiding] vanity pages and personal flame wars on wikipedia [sic] is the reason Encyclopedia Dramatica exists".[5]
In January of 2006, the troll organization Bantown used Encyclopædia Dramatica to announce they had hacked 900,000 LiveJournal accounts exploiting cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in LiveJournal's core code.[5]
Types of content
Template:Content Template:OriginalResearch Template:Unreferencedsect Most ED articles avoid a "neutral point of view" [6] and encourage sarcasm, hyperbole, and other kinds of humor mocking the article's subject.Template:Fact ED articles are not required to be referenced or have any basis in fact.[7]
The Encyclopædia Dramatica makes sporadic attempts to weed out wiki pages that are are deemed to be "unfunny" or not dramatic enough. [8]s site, which is to document humor and drama on the internet. Any article listed here could be deleted at any time by a mod. [9] The administrators may ban users who in their personal viewpoint create "unfunny" articles;[10] this viewpoint varies from administrator to administrator.Template:Fact The site's policy, as currently written by Girlvinyl, does not protect users from being banned by the administrators.Template:Fact The site has not made the effort to ban open proxy servers, so banning based on IP address does not always work.Template:Fact
Example themes include:
- Criticism of Wikipedia, its editors, admins, and policies. [11][12][13]
- Social and political commentary [14][15]
- Display of sexual images [16][17]
- "Drama" from LiveJournals and websites. [18][19][20]
- Internet celebrities [21][22]
- "Internet Law", with a crash course on libel, slander and copyright as applied to web forums [23]
- "Old memes" such as "in the ass", "16 year old girls", "13 year old boys", "42", "7-11," and "At least 100 years ago".[24]
- Mocking subcultures like emo, [25] goths, [26] the "self-important", [[27]
- Mocking various computer and internet-related subcultures revolving around things from programming to gaming [28].
- Mocking of furries. [29] [30]
- Presenting an article as encyclopedic, while delivering satirical commentary or criticism. [31]
- Purposeful misinformation [32] [33]
Reviews
Template:Self-published "I love Encyclopedia Dramatica, just like I love Uncyclopedia, alternate views on Wikipedia." - Newsvine [6]