Conservapedia/Encyclopedia Dramatica

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Encyclopædia Dramatica (ED) is a satirical wiki intended to poke fun at the Internet. It was launched on December 9, 2004. It parodies both Conservapedia and Wikipedia, as well as parodying both conservatism and liberalism. ED was founded due to anti-Internet bias in Wikipedia, and in a similar way Conservapedia was founded due to liberal bias in Wikipedia. The site contains large quantities of internet shock images and obscene language.

The Encyclopedia Dramatica userbase contains both liberal and conservative members. Many users come from LiveJournal, a blogging website that contains various communities, some of which are liberal, and others are conservative. Many editors also come from YouTube, which has been considered to have an all-around liberal bias by some conservatives. ED, unlike Uncyclopedia, does not derive humor from fictional locations and nonsense, but instead from satire of various topics, often relating to Internet culture, especially that of sites such as YouTube, deviantART, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia.

Notable mentions

The Washington Post mentioned ED due to a LiveJournal hacking incident in which ED was involved. The Guardian also mentioned it.

The most noteworthy mentions were in relation to an Internet privacy violator named Jason Fortuny, who set up a Craigslist experiment in which he posted the names of real people to ED in September 2006. This gave the site worldwide coverage, most notably in MSNBC News and the technology news website Slashdot.

Liberal Bias Concerning Objects of Satire

Encyclopedia Dramatica has noticeably less biting satire when liberal sacred cows like the evolutionary position are written about. Considering such evolutionist follies as Nebraska man, Haeckel's embryos and Flipperpithecus, the absence of biting satire concerning errant positions liberals hold dear is quite noticeable in Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Allegations of harassment

Controversy has arisen among Wikipedia admins who claimed that there are harassment and privacy violations against these admins on the site, as with MONGO. This led to an ArbCom case in October 2006, which has caused links to the site to be barred from Wikipedia. Encyclopedia Dramatica was found to be an "outing and attack site", and any Wikipedian whose conduct assisted the ED editors in compiling and publicizing such information "acted contrary to the best interests of the Wikipedia community."

The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee did not realize that Wikipedia's article on ED (later deleted) had at one time contained a picture of Encyclopedia Dramatica's founder for several months in 2005, which led various WP admins to engage in harassment against this person. The founder was harassed on Uncyclopedia as well.

On August 2005 the picture and name of the founder, as well as the ED logo, led to a DMCA request against both Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia. Another user who had claimed to be harassed by ED DMCAed them in June 2006.

Demise and revival

The website Encyclopædia Dramatica ceased operating in 2011. There was no large public outcry in the Anglosphere for its return as it did not provide much value. On April 14, 2011 the URL was changed to a redirect to a site named Oh Internet, claiming to be a cleaned up version of Encyclopaedia Dramatica with removed trashy and foul portions. [1] Attempts to clean up the site have failed, though, as a vast majority of editors shunned the clean replacement and immediately created several forks. These forks have combined into one.