Encyclopædia Dramatica

Encyclopedia Dramatica, also known as ED, is a reference-style parody and satire wiki that acts as a central catalog for drama, memes, and other (mostly Internet-based) people and events that its members find interesting or "lulzy".

History
Encyclopedia Dramatica (originally also known as encyclopediadramatica.com) is founded by Girlvinyl in December 2004 as a compendium of internet personalities, events and memes in response to the deletion of the Mediacrat vanity page on Wikipedia, created by LiveJournal e-celebrity Jameth (who used to be an honorary administrator on the site).

End of ED.com
In April 2011, ED.com's owners redirected encyclopediadramatica.com to a replacement site, Oh Internet, a new website dedicated to documenting Internet culture while remaining SFW (safe for work). Girlvinyl stated:

Encyclopedia Dramatica (.ch) was created by users and former administrators displeased with the move. Using data from a recent "Web Ecology Project" scrape, Google Cache, and The Wayback Machine, volunteers salvaged most of the articles and images from the original site.

In October 2013, OhInternet was closed after vandals targeted it.

ED.ch troubles and domain loss
ED.ch went offline after the site's founder, Ryan Cleary, was arrested for alleged affiliation to LulzSec, the troll hacker group, which let to an additional criminal charge of "downloading and possessing child pornography". The forums were also down after being hacked by user savetheinternet in retaliation for a massive DDoS attack on the host his own site, 4chon.net; $300 in donations were needed to revive them, which was raised within 24 hours.

In March of 2012, encyclopædiadramatica.ch suffered a brief downtime due to renewal complications with the domain registrars in Switzerland. While the database was secured, the site was not able to be accessed until encyclopediadramatica.se was purchased. Since then, encyclopædiadramatica.se is still working with the registrars to re-obtain the .ch domain.

On June 27, 2011, the ED.ch forums were hacked again, and the email addresses of every registered member were posted to Pastebin and published in a blog owned by Google and Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt entitled Encyclopedia Dramatica: There is no Joseph Evers.

Photos and personal data of some of the more prominent users were also revealed (Doxed), particularly user Zaiger. Among other things, logs from the ED IRC channel that showed users in a negative light were posted.

ED.se domain loss
On September 13, 2013, encyclopædiadramatica.se went off-line, returning a few days later under its prior Spanish based mirror domain, encyclopædiadramatica.es.

ED.es domain loss
On October 1, 2014, the encyclopediadramatica.es domain ceased functioning, and on October 6, Encyclopedia Dramatica returned to its .se domain.

ED.se/ED.rs/ED.wiki
On (date unknown), encyclopediadramatica.se switched to encyclopediadramatica.rs for yet to be stated reasons. In 2019, ED.rs' content was deleted by an ED administrator, returning back up as a static front page.

In early 2020, encyclopediadramatica.rs switched to encyclopediadramatica.wiki, under user Jacob Stellmach (Aediot) control. As of December 2020, the site is still undergoing reconstruction, trying to restore missing articles and damaged media purged in 2019.

ED.wiki and ED.online
On December 13, 2020, due to unknown reasons, Encyclopædia Dramatica now directs two different top-level domain names: the .wiki version founded in January 2020 by Stellmach and the .online version founded in December 5, 2020, by an unknown party. The domain name .xyz, created on September 2020, redirects to the .online domain.

Address changes

 * http://encyclopediadramatica.com - 2004 to 2011
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.ch - 2011 to 2012
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.se - 2012 to 2013
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.es - 2013 to 2014
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.se - 2014 to 2017
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.rs - 2017 to 2019
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.wiki - January 2020 to present
 * http://encyclopediadramatica.online - December 2020 to present

Types of content
Most ED articles avoid a "neutral point of view" and encourage sarcasm, hyperbole, and other kinds of mocking the article's subject; they are not required to be referenced or have any basis in fact. It has been compared to an internet version of a tabloid and the Devil's Dictionary. The only effective editorial requirements are that the content is legal and funny.

Article themes

 * Criticism of Wikipedia, its editors, administrators, and policies
 * The people, events, and culture of LiveJournal
 * Social and political commentary
 * Shock images
 * Weblog, forum, and MMO drama
 * Internet celebrities
 * Internet memes, including those from SomethingAwful and the various Chan image boards
 * Mocking subcultures like emo, goths, furries, and anyone the members consider to have an unwarranted case of self-importance
 * Presenting an article as encyclopedic, while delivering satirical commentary and criticism
 * Purposeful misinformation

Images
Encyclopedia Dramatica contains a large amount of pornographic and shock images, including advertisements on the sidebars that featured mostly adult content.

Drama
The most common criticism of Encyclopedia Dramatica is that its purpose of documenting drama often resulted in the promotion of drama, be it through invasions, pranks, reposting of sensitive information, or the very existence of an article on the site.

Copyright
The sensitive information that appeared in ED articles is typically gathered from long-forgotten, obscure corners of the internet, and is usually upsetting to the subject, to the point of legal threats and action. Encyclopedia Dramatica relies on the fair use exception clauses of United States copyright law as a defense. Their Arbchat procedure was the sole method of information removal and revision that does not involve the legal system.

The website states that all content contributed is irrevocably "licensed for infinite use to Encyclopedia Dramatica, in electronic and all other media."

Privacy
The site often revealed personal information about ordinary people such as names, addresses, and phone numbers if found (Doxxing).

Encyclopedia Dramatica and furry
The ED.rs site contains almost all old ED.com, ED.ch and ED.es articles documenting the furry fandom and furry-related topics. The ED.rs "FurFaggotry Portal" was once maintained by EDitors Equivamp and Notanalt, and former administrator Schnookums.

The site's material on furries is generally unflattering, and a great deal is intentionally offensive. However, not all of its editors and administrators are anti-furry, and ED claims it only makes broad generalizations of the furry fandom and portrays furries as sexual deviants because it is more humorous and interesting to read about something scandalous and shocking.

Furries are generally not picked out from editing as long as they follow the site's policies and refrain from vandalizing.. Besides criticizing the fandom in general, some furries use the site to criticize specific individuals or groups, particularly ones who they feel make furries look bad, or to make private drama very public and persistent.

The original ED.com was often used as staging ground for massive trolling or spamming crusades against a certain furry and sites deemed particularly perverted or offensive, and ED 'raids' had forced several furries to abandon accounts on Youtube and DeviantArt due to repeated spam barrages. Notable victims of this practice are InSaNe-REYNARD and Snapesnogger, both artists who were driven off DeviantArt.