Encyclopedia Dramatica

About:

Encyclopedia Dramatica (or ED, for short) is an internet-culture based wiki created in late 2004 dedicated to documenting and categorizing internet memes and other cultural phenomenon. It is famous for having NSFW content that is largely uncensored. Originally hosted at encyclopediadramatica.com, it was turned into a “safe for work” Semantic Mediawiki OhInternet.

Most of the articles were salvaged from the website and are available for download ^[6], and a new wiki EncyclopediaDramatica.se^[7] (previously EncyclopediaDramatica.ch) has been set up containing most of the old articles, and is constantly being updated with new articles.

Origin:

Girlvinyl created LJ Drama to document controversies and flame wars occurring in the Livejournal community. Eventually LJ Drama expanded into ED covering the internet as a whole.

Relating to Internet Censorship:

ED brought internet censorship to the forefront of internet discussion when the page for “Aborigines” was removed from the Google search engine, prompting heavy criticism from supporters of Net Neutrality.

Controversy

Many critics of ED have expressed concern over the site, and it’s content. In 2010, an article on Australian Aboriginals was put in the media spotlight when it was removed from the Australian-localized Google’s search results^[9] after a complaint by the Australian Human Rights Commission ^[10].

In 2013, a game called “Bullet To the Head of The NRA” was created by an ED forums member, and posted on the website. The game was the the subject of scutiny from various media souces such as The Blaze^[11], and Shawn Hannity^[12].

Oh Internet

On April 10th, 2011, ED was taken down and given a front page with a cat saying “hang in there!” with a field to enter your email address for updates. It linked to the OhInternet blog ^[1] that had several interviews and posts on various Internet culture related topics.

The ED_Official Twitter account ^[2] tweeted the following on April 13th, 2011, “Update on downtime. Move and new installs done by Friday morning. Hang in there. Check the blog ^[1] & follow @O_Internet.” (The “ED_Official” account is no longer active, and ED now tweets updates from @ED_Updates.)

On April 14th, 2011, ED.com began redirecting to the OhInternet main page ^[3], and described itself as a Semantic Mediawiki ^[4] that would cover everything about the Internet:

OhInternet covers anything related to internet culture from people to memes to websites and more. Our aim is to be a complete guide to the internet’s past, present and future and we want you to participate.

Operation Restoration/ED.se

After OhInternet was created, some fans of Encyclopedia Dramatica were not pleased with it. The OhInternet facebook page was flooded with porn^[13] by some who were angry with the replacement. IRC network AnonOps opened a channel called “#OpSaveED”^[14] to organize those who wished to recreate the site (Encyclopedia Dramatica.) AnonOps and Anonymous launched “Operation Restoration,”^[15] an operation devoted to restoring ED by using backups from various sources such as backups/archives made by “Web Ecology Project”^[16], “ArchiveTeam”^[17] and Google Cached versions of the website. An url, “encyclopediadramatica.ch,” was bought^[18] by those involved in “Operation Restoration,” which was used^[19] to host the restored/mirrored ED. Later, after a DNS Block due to the operators of encyclopediadramatica.ch not keeping an address in Switzerland^[20], the domain was changed to encyclopediadramatica.se.

External References