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Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED; also spelled Encyclopædia Dramatica) is a satirical
online community An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...
centered around a
wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
that acts as a "
troll A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human ...
archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from
Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the List of most visited websites, most-visi ...
in 2010. It has been linked to one school shooting and participates in harassment campaigns. Its articles lampoon topics and current events related or relevant to contemporary internet culture in an encyclopedic fashion. It often serves as a repository of information and a means of discussion for the internet subculture known as
Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anony ...
. Encyclopedia Dramatica celebrates a subversive " NSFW" "
trolling In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the i ...
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
" and documents
internet memes An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
, events such as mass organized pranks; trolling events called "raids", large-scale failures of internet security, and criticism by those within its subculture of other internet communities which are accused of
self-censorship Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own discourse. This is done out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities or preferences (actual or perceived) of others and without overt pressure from any specific party or insti ...
in order to garner positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets. The site hosts numerous pornographic images, along with content that is misogynistic, racist, and homophobic. Julian Dibbell, in ''
Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'', described Encyclopedia Dramatica as the site "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: flamingly racist, homophobic and misogynistic content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend.". The site is also known for its pervasive
clickbait Clickbait is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise mis ...
advertisements, in addition to its having almost none of the
rules Rule or ruling may refer to: Education * Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pert ...
expected on other similar communities.
Ninemsn Nine.com.au (formerly Ninemsn) is an Australian news and current events website, owned by ASX-listed company, Nine Entertainment Co. It was originally established as a 50:50 joint venture between Microsoft and PBL Media (now Nine Entertainmen ...
described Encyclopedia Dramatica as
Wikipedia's evil twin. It's a site where almost every article is biased, offensive, unsourced, and without the faintest trace of political correctness. A search through its archives will reveal animated images of people committing suicide, articles glorifying extreme racism and sexism, and a seemingly endless supply of twisted, shocking views on just about every major human tragedy in history.
On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named "Oh Internet" that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes. On the night of the Encyclopedia Dramatica shutdown, regular ED visitors bombarded the 'Oh Internet'
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
wall with hate messages. The Web Ecology Project published a downloadable archive of Encyclopedia Dramatica content's the next day. Besides this archive, fan-made torrents and several mirrors of the original site were subsequently generated. Based on these archives, the site has repeatedly gone offline and come back under new domain names, with the website currently being hosted at encyclopediadramatica.online. Between 2013 and 2019, the website was hosted under various top level domains:
.rs .rs is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Serbia. The domain name registry that operates it is the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry (RNIDS). The letters ''rs'' stand for '/Република Србија (Republic of ...
,
.ch .ch is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Switzerland in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Made available in 1987, only two years after .com, it is administered by SWITCH Information Technology Services. The domain ''ch'', as ...
,
.es .es (espana) is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Spain. It is administered by the Network Information Centre of Spain. Registrations are permitted at the second level or at the third level beneath various generic second level categ ...
, and
.se .se, formerly branded as .SE, is the Internet country code top-level domain ( ccTLD) for Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is ...
, with each domain bearing the second-level domain "encyclopediadramatica".


History


DeGrippo Era (.com)

Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo, also known by the online
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individu ...
"Girlvinyl". DeGrippo joined
LiveJournal LiveJournal (russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, a ...
in 2000 and became enthralled by the behavior of some of its members:
People were accessible and it was bidirectional. Voyeurs and exhibitionists were able to interact in a way that was normalized. That’s why I started ED. It was mostly just personalities that were just so nuts and fascinating.
She became involved in the LJdrama community, which covered stories on LiveJournal gossip. When the community was banned from LiveJournal, they created their own website. In 2002, two LiveJournal users, Joshua Williams (aka mediacrat) and Andrewpants, became intimately involved with each other. After they broke off their relationship, LJdrama decided to document the resulting drama. Unflattering photographs of Williams were spread on the web, and Williams considered this to be harassment. He threatened legal action, traveled to Portland, Oregon, in order to speak to LiveJournal's abuse team, and reported the alleged harassment to a local TV news station. DeGrippo created Encyclopedia Dramatica in order to "house some information from livejournal and some drama about hackers Theo DeRaadt and Darren Reed." Encyclopedia Dramatica characterized itself as being "In the spirit of
Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book ''The Devil's Dictionary'' was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by t ...
's '' The Devil's Dictionary''." ''
The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...
'' recognized the wiki as "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore" that it labeled a "troll archive". '' C't'', a European magazine for IT professionals, noted the site's role in introducing newcomers to the culture of 4chan's /b/, a notorious Internet imageboard. Encyclopedia Dramatica defines trolling in terms of doing things "for the ''
lulz LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to ...
''" (for laughs), a phrase that it qualifies as "a catchall explanation for any trolling you do.". The targets of this trolling come from "every pocket of the Web",. to include not only the non-
corporeal Corporeal may refer to: *Matter (corporeal, or actual, physical substance or matter), generally considered to be a substance (often a particle) that has rest mass and (usually) also volume *Body, of or relating to the body *Corporeal (Altar Linen) ...
aspects of
Internet phenomena Social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet include Internet memes, such as popular themes, catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more wides ...
, (e.g. online catchphrases, fan pages, forums, and viral phenomena), but also real people (e.g. amateur celebrities, identifiable internet drama participants and even Encyclopedia Dramatica's own forum members). These are derided in a manner described variously as "coarse", "offensive", "obscene", "irreverent, obtuse,
politically incorrect ''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...
", "crude but hilarious", and "crude and abusive".. The material is presented to appear comprehensive, with extensive use of shock-value prose, drawings, photographs, and the like. The emotional responses are then added to the articles, often in similarly derogatory or inflammatory manner, with the purpose of provoking further emotional response. Adherents of the practice assert that visitors to the website "shouldn't take anything said on Dramatica seriously." Articles at Encyclopedia Dramatica were particularly critical of MySpace. as well as users on
YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
, LiveJournal,
DeviantART DeviantArt (historically stylized as deviantART) is an American online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others. DeviantArt, ...
,
Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to ...
, and Wikipedia. In ''The New York Times Magazine'', journalist Jonathan Dee described it as a " snarky Wikipedia anti-fansite".. Shaun Davies of Australia's ''
Nine Network The Nine Network (stylised 9Network, commonly known as Channel Nine or simply Nine) is an Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by parent company Nine Entertainment and is one of five main free-to-air television netw ...
'' called it "Wikipedia's bastard child, a compendium of internet trends and culture which lampoons every subject it touches.". The site "is run like Wikipedia, but its style is the opposite; most of its information is biased and opinionated, not to mention racist, homophobic, and spiteful, but on the upside its snide attitude makes it spot-on about most Internet memes it covers.". This coverage of
Internet jargon Internet slang (also called Internet shorthand, cyber-slang, netspeak, digispeak or chatspeak) is a non-standard or unofficial form of language used by people on the Internet to communicate to one another. An example of Internet slang is "LOL" m ...
and memes had been acknowledged in the ''
New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...
'', on
Language Log ''Language Log'' is a collaborative language blog maintained by Mark Liberman, a phonetician at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of the posts focus on language use in the media and in popular culture. Text available through Google Search f ...
, in '' C't'' magazine,online copy
.
and in ''Wired'' magazine. According to Sherrod DeGrippo,
As long as something wasn’t submitted as illegal or an abuse complaint, I didn’t even see it. Wikis are something that you either closely, closely monitor and manage, or you just let it go.
Predating sites like the former
Cheezburger Network Ben Huh is a South Korean-American internet entrepreneur and the former CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?, The Cheezburger Network, which at its peak in 2010 received 375 million views a month across its 50 sites.Chard, TheaCheezburger CEO Ben Huh o ...
(now known as Know Your Meme) by several years, Encyclopedia Dramatica was the first encyclopedia dedicated to the memes and "mean-spirited trolling" of 4chan culture.


2010 ownership by Evers

In March 2010, a "Joseph Evers" was recognized as the owner by ABC News, reporting on the site being blacklisted by the
Australian Communications and Media Authority The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is an Australian government statutory authority within the Communications portfolio. ACMA was formed on 1 July 2005 with the merger of the Australian Broadcasting Authority and the Aus ...
. The
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but oper ...
(aka HREOC) contacted Evers threatening him with charges under Australian law.
.
On December 8, 2010, Encyclopedia Dramatica deleted its article on
Operation Payback Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Ma ...
. On the same day, Facebook deleted its Operation Payback page, and Twitter suspended Operation Payback's account. An anonymous source told
Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded ...
that the Encyclopedia Dramatica article was deleted as the result of court orders. In June 2020 it was reported by
Canary Mission Canary Mission is a website established in 2014 that compiles dossiers on student activists, professors, and organizations, focusing primarily on those at North American universities, which it considers be anti-Israel or antisemitic and has said th ...
that Andrew "weev" Auernheimer is both the "" who " Zoombombed" a March 2020 chat for Jewish teens, and the "Joseph Evers" who owned and co-created the 2010 instance of ED and who has been wanted by the
Australian Human Rights Commission The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but oper ...
since.


2011 establishment of Oh Internet

DeGrippo reportedly "came to hate" Encyclopedia Dramatica. She had hoped that ED would return to its roots and focus on LiveJournal drama. Furthermore, according to her, Encyclopedia Dramatica never turned a profit during the time she owned it, due to its content putting off advertisers. On April 14, 2011, the URL encyclopediadramatica.com was redirected to "Oh Internet", an entirely different safe-for-work website that DeGrippo had created. The name "Oh Internet" is meant to convey "Oh, Internet, you are so crazy!" DeGrippo stated that "Shock for shock's sake is old at this point ..." Some regular users of Encyclopedia Dramatica were displeased by the change and attacked the website's official
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
fan page with "hate messages and pornography". In a question and answer session at the ROFLCon summit in October 2011, DeGrippo was asked why Encyclopedia Dramatica was closed and replaced with Oh Internet. She replied: "We were unable to stop the degradation of the content. It just kept getting longer and longer and dumber and dumber and less and less coherent over time." She also explained why she had not released the site as an archive, saying that she "didn't want to", and suggesting that this would have made her personally responsible for any
DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...
and privacy violations that it contained. She also stated that hosting Encyclopedia Dramatica caused her to have troubles involving the FBI.


Cleary (.ch)

From April 2011, Ryan Cleary hosted a
fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...
of Encyclopedia Dramatica at encyclopediadramatica.ch. Members of this project gathered text and images from Google's web cache and other backups, and a script was created to upload cached information. On June 21, 2011,
Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...
arrested Ryan Cleary based on alleged connections to online attacks on
Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
. The arrest temporarily disrupted operation of the wiki, but other members were able to resume Cleary's duties.


Moore (.se)

Garrett E. Moore later became the fork's owner. Moore reported difficulties in securing a host for the website. On March 19, 2012, encyclopediadramatica.ch was shut down for a short time due to a " DNS block". On March 21, 2012, the site moved to a Swedish domain name, at encyclopediadramatica.se, instead of a domain in Switzerland as before. The site's Facebook account later addressed the block, stating that it was because "we didn't keep up our end of the nic.ch user agreement contract stating that we had to keep a mailing address and phone number in Switzerland." Moore told an interviewer for ''
The Daily Dot ''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometo ...
'' in July 2011:
People take themselves too seriously, they can't laugh at anything. We make fun of everything. I make fun of skinny white computer nerds, but I am one.
When asked about "abusive content", Moore stated that he removes it when he sees it, then further explained:
I'm not going to leave a 14-year-old girl's address up on a page cause some dipshit got mad at her and made an article. But if you dress up like a fox and wear diapers and then take pictures of it? That's fair game, sir.
In a September 2011 interview with ''The Daily Dot'', Moore defended his community's belief in
free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...
.


Gizmo games

In January 2013, a video game created by user "gizmo01942" came to the attention of the media. The game, ''Bullet to the Head of the NRA'', was controversial because the player could take aim and shoot at members of the
National Rifle Association of America The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent gun rights lobbying organization while conti ...
. In February 2015, ''Muhammad Sex Simulator 2015'', another video game by the same user, attracted further controversy because of the recent ''Charlie Hebdo'' shooting.


2017 Aztec High School shooting

On December 7, 2017, 21-year-old William Atchison opened fire at a high school in
Aztec, New Mexico Aztec ( nv, Kinteel) is a city in, and the county seat of, San Juan County, New Mexico, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 6,763. The Aztec Ruins National Monument is located on the north side of the city. Geogra ...
, killing two before committing suicide. Atchison had been a site admin on Encyclopedia Dramatica and had an obsession with mass shootings.


Reception

The website received mainstream media attention after Jason Fortuny used Encyclopedia Dramatica to post photographs, e-mails and phone numbers from 176 responses to a
Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the ...
advertisement he posted in 2006, in which he posed as a woman seeking sexual encounters with dominant men.. The incident was addressed in a
blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
hosted at ''
Wired News ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fran ...
'', where the
blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
ger proposes that Encyclopedia Dramatica may be the "world's lamest wiki". In 2006, "a well-known band of trolls" emailed Encyclopedia Dramatica's creator, DeGrippo, demanding edits to the protected (i.e. locked) article describing them. After she refused to do so, the trolls ordered taxis, pizzas, escort services and sent death threats and threats of rape to DeGrippo's apartment. Encyclopedia Dramatica became a "favourite target for critics, who accuse Anonymous of propagating hate," for allowing alleged members of the group to sometimes use the website as a platform. Through this association, Encyclopedia Dramatica received incidental coverage when actions by members of Anonymous led to the arrest of an alleged pedophile, when they demonstrated against
Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a Scientology as a business, business, or a new religious movement. The most recent ...
in London;. when a member of the group broke into the e-mail account of former Republican vice-presidential nominee
Sarah Palin Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...
,. and when a member of Anonymous claimed credit for an attack on the virtual ''
Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fr ...
'' headquarters of former presidential candidate
John Edwards Johnny Reid Edwards (born June 10, 1953) is an American lawyer and former politician who served as a U.S. senator from North Carolina. He was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004 alongside John Kerry, losing to incumbents George ...
.. The convergence of Encyclopedia Dramatica with the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology was noted by technology journalist Julian Dibbell. The celebration and archival of the "raids" organized on /b/ on Encyclopedia Dramatica, which acted as a "troll
hall of fame A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actual halls or muse ...
" when used this way, has been seen by some scholars, among them Liam Mitchell of
Trent University Trent University is a public liberal arts university in Peterborough, Ontario, with a satellite campus in Oshawa, which serves the Regional Municipality of Durham. Trent is known for its Oxbridge college system and small class sizes.
, as acting as a way to assuage the guilt that trolls feel for harming their victims and being confronted with evidence of this harm. By celebrating on Encyclopedia Dramatica, and archiving that which would make an individual member guilty, trolls collectively engage in a type of
mob mentality Herd mentality, mob mentality or pack mentality describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make dif ...
where the idea that "none of us is as cruel as all of us" minimizes the actions they take individually: " One cannot reason with a multitude, let alone appeal to its conscience. If any of its members are not susceptible to
reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, lang ...
or
conscience Conscience is a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual's moral philosophy or value system. Conscience stands in contrast to elicited emotion or thought due to associations based on immediate sens ...
the province of the ego ideal, and therefore of the divide that characterizes
subjectivity Subjectivity in a philosophical context has to do with a lack of objective reality. Subjectivity has been given various and ambiguous definitions by differing sources as it is not often the focal point of philosophical discourse.Bykova, Marina ...
then the trolling will proceed." On December 16, 2008, Encyclopedia Dramatica won the ''People's Choice Winners'' category for favorite wiki in
Mashable Mashable is a digital media platform, news website and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a ...
's 2nd Annual Open Web Awards, with
wikiHow wikiHow is an online wiki-style publication featuring how-to articles on a variety of topics. Founded in 2005 by Internet entrepreneur Jack Herrick, its aim is to create an extensive database of instructional content, using the wiki model of ope ...
as the runner-up and Wikipedia coming in 3rd. In December 2008, a message on Encyclopedia Dramatica asked for donations and claimed that the website was under attack and had lost its advertisers. In January 2010, the Encyclopedia Dramatica article ''Aboriginal'' was removed from the search engine results of Google Australia, after a lawyer filed a complaint with the
Australian Human Rights Commission The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but oper ...
saying its content was racist. A search on terms related to the article produced a message that one of the results has been removed after a legal request relating to Australia's Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). The publicity surrounding this served to raise the profile of the site. In March 2010, it was reported that the Australian Human Rights Commission had notified the site by e-mail that according to Australian law, the article ''Aboriginal'' could be in breach of Sections 18C and 18D of its RDA. In 2020 Canadian court heard Alek Minassian, perpetrator of the
Toronto van attack A domestic terrorist vehicle-ramming attack occurred on April 23, 2018, when a rented van was driven along Yonge Street through the North York City Centre business district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The driver, Alek Minassian, targeted ped ...
, was inspired by the ''
high score In games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points (except in game shows, where scores often are instead measured in units of currency), and events in th ...
'' article.


Lawsuits

In 2016, a
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
court determined an ED user must pay £10,000 in
libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defi ...
damages for making false statements about Samuel Collingwood Smith, a former Labour councillor. In 2017, a suit was launched against the website seeking US$750,000 for alleged
copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...
. The "life-threatening" suit is by millionaire Jonathan Monsarrat. Monsarrat's suit was dismissed in December 2017, with the judge ruling that the three-year statute of limitations for copyright infringement had expired before the lawsuit was filed.


See also

*
Kiwi Farms Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums ( ), is an Internet forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities. Their targets are often subject to organized group trolling and stalking, as well as doxx ...
*
List of Internet phenomena Social and cultural phenomena specific to the Internet include Internet memes, such as popular themes, catchphrases, images, viral videos, and jokes. When such fads and sensations occur online, they tend to grow rapidly and become more wides ...
* Lurkmore.ru *
Uncyclopedia Uncyclopedia is a satirical online encyclopedia that parodies Wikipedia. Its logo, a hollow "puzzle potato", parodies Wikipedia's globe puzzle logo, and it styles itself "the content-free encyclopedia", parodying Wikipedia's slogan of "the free ...


Footnotes


Notes


References


Further reading

*


External links

* * {{Anonymous and the Internet Critics of Wikipedia Culture jamming Internet properties established in 2004 Internet properties disestablished in 2011 Internet trolling Mass media about Internet culture MediaWiki websites Online obscenity controversies Parodies of Wikipedia American satirical websites Shock sites Wiki communities Websites with far-right material