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Encyclopædia Dramatica (ED) is a MediaWiki-based wiki launched on December 9, 2004 , by Sherrod DeGrippo as a Misplaced Pages-style collection of LiveJournal events and Internet memes.
History
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Encyclopædia Dramatica's history began when LiveJournal blogger and LJ Drama co-founder James Lee from Seattle, Washington, started using Misplaced Pages 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.
LiveJournal user and LJ Drama administrator Sherrod DeGrippo heard of the deletion of the LiveJournal-related article, and, as a response, came up with the idea of creating Encyclopædia Dramatica so LiveJournal users could write about "the internets". DeGrippo stated in a Misplaced Pages discussion that " vanity pages and personal flame wars on wikipedia is the reason Encyclopedia Dramatica exists".
Since its creation, according to automatically generated statistics, Encyclopædia Dramatica has grown to over 3300 articles as of July 2006, with over 8000 registered users.
In January of 2006, the hacking group Bantown used Encyclopædia Dramatica to announce they had hacked 900,000 LiveJournal accounts exploiting cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in LiveJournal's core code.
Types of content
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Most ED articles avoid a "neutral point of view" and encourage sarcasm, hyperbole, and other kinds of humor mocking the article's subject. ED articles are not required to be referenced or have any basis in fact.
The Encyclopædia Dramatica makes sporadic attempts to weed out wiki pages that are "unfunny", a term for which the encyclopedia has its own particularized definition. The administrators may ban users who in their personal viewpoint create "unfunny" articles; this viewpoint varies from administrator to administrator. Because the MediaWiki software blocks IP addresses as well as user accounts, those who share an IP address with a banned user will also be blocked. The site's policy, as currently written by Girlvinyl, does not protect users from being banned by the administrators. The site has not made the effort to ban open proxy servers, so banning based on IP address does not always work.
Example themes include:
- Criticism of Misplaced Pages, its editors, admins, and policies.
- Social and political commentary
- Display of sexual images
- "Drama" from LiveJournals and websites.
- Internet celebrities
- "Internet Law", with a crash course on libel, slander and copyright as applied to web forums
- "Old memes" such as "in the ass", "16 year old girls", "13 year old boys", "42", "7-11," and "At least 100 years ago".
- Mocking subcultures like emo, goths, the "self-important",
- Mocking various computer and internet-related subcultures revolving around things from programming to gaming .
- Mocking of furries.
- Presenting an article as encyclopedic, while delivering satirical commentary or criticism.
- Purposeful misinformation
References
- Encyclopedia Dramatica statistics page
- Washington Post Blog on account exploit
- ED's account of Bantown