Encyclopædia Dramatica

Encyclopædia Dramatica
Author(s)	Owners: ? Site Founder: Girlvinyl (.com original), Ryan Cleary (.ch remake), Jacob Stellmach (.wiki version), MarioMario456 (.top & .win version), GirlOnInternet (.wtf & .gay version), Aifoxhi (.cm & .cc version) Admins: ?
Website	https://encyclopediadramatica.online
Status	Online
Launch date	December 2004
Genre	Multimedia archive
Rating(s)

Original ED.com logo

ED's logo after Girlvinyl's reign

ED.wiki's alt site logo

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) was originally 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:

Shock for shock’s sake is old at this point and we’re looking forward to the future and how things are evolving … when you put user experience first, the language becomes highly important and that’s what we’ve done.

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.

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, was redirected to the .online domain until it went offline. .online suddenly went offline on May 6, 2024.

ED.top and ED.win

On May 18, 2024, Encyclopædia Dramatica returned under the TLD of .top after being down for 10-11 days. The wiki was under new management of a user named MarioMario456 Not too long after returning however, MarioMario456 had to delete some of the pages due to complaints from Namecheap, ED's registrar at the time. On June 8, 2024, .top was taken offline by Namecheap because ED's content violates their ToU. People speculated that it would be a month before ED comes back online. The wiki came back on July 8, 2024 under ED.win after a month of waiting for Namecheap to open up access to the domain. ED.win remains online to this day.

edramatica.com/ED.wtf/ED.gay

While MarioMario456 was waiting for Namecheap to unlock the .top domain so he could move to another registrar, a few members from the ED forum (notably GirlOnInternet) took matters into their own hands and attempted to revive ED. Once .top went offline, they immediately registered edramatica.com. However, it wouldn't be long before their registrar, easyDNS took edramatica.com offline after only 9 days. Immediately afterwards, ED.wtf was registered, however it didn't last even a day before it was taken down. The reason .wtf was taken down is unknown, but it can be speculated that their registrar took it offline. Around a day later after that happened, ED.gay was registered and still remains online to this day.

ED.cm and ED.cc

While ED.wtf was down, a member of the ED discord named Aifoxhi wanted to revive ED under her regime. Her way of doing this was by registering two domains, ED.cm and ED.cc. Both were almost immediately taken down by their registrars (CAMOO Hosting for .cm, Njalla for .cc) due to having offensive content. After this, ED.gay took its place.

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 - 2020 to 2021
• http://encyclopediadramatica.online - 2020 to 2024
• http://encyclopediadramatica.top - May 2024 to June 2024
• http://encyclopediadramatica.wtf - June 2024
• http://edramatica.com - June 2024
• http://encyclopediadramatica.cc - June 2024
• http://encyclopediadramatica.cm - June 2024
• http://encyclopediadramatica.gay - June 2024 - Present
• http://encyclopediadramatica.win - July 2024 - Present

Types of content

Ae-tan, ED Mascot.

Most ED articles avoid a "neutral point of view" and encourage sarcasm, hyperbole, and other kinds of mocking of 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 comprehensive, 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.

Controversy

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

"ED edits", as posted on the ED website (as of June 4, 2023)

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.

"ED edits"

An "ED edit" is a form of vandalism suggested by Encyclopædia Dramatica for use against Wikifur, the furry wiki. EDitors are instructed to make small runs of actual valid edits on the wiki while inserting nonsense/vandalism alongside it, (example of valid data alongside vandal links) and/or adding information that appeared valid enough to leave alone initially (example of initial valid data alongside vandal links added later).

Vandal EDitors and editors have ever since created single, tiny "ED edits" that were quickly deleted, or have actually spent time creating a large number of changes that were actually initially "helpful", just to have a single/couple nonsense/vandal added to the effort that made to whole job suspect, and most of the time, prone to have it all deleted (edit history of the article "Primate", often hit by multiple "ED edits"), (ANON IP spending way too much time on a vandal run).

It is personally up to valid editors and curators to rescue any found useful info that could be added back to the targeted article, or to be used to create new ones ("Bovine", an initially vandalized/suspect article that ended up becoming a large, informative, full one).

See also

• Encyclopedia Dramatica on Wikipedia

External links

Flayrah has a related story:

Encyclopædia Dramatica lets Swiss office lapse, loses domain

• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.online) forum
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.online) on Twitter
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.online) on Discord
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.online) on Telegram
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.online) on IRC
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.rs) on Tumblr
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.online) on Reddit
• Encyclopædia Dramatica (.wiki) on Pinterest (abandoned)