Talk:Encyclopedia Dramatica/Archive 21

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Edit request from TeleComNasSprVen, 13 June 2011

{{edit protected}}

Can an administrator please categorize Encyclopædia Dramatica by putting {{R from move}}{{R from diacritic}} all on one line directly after #REDIRECT [[Encyclopedia Dramatica]]? Thanks,

:| TelCoNaSpVe :| 05:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Done. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

January 23, 2011, shutdown

http://gawker.com/5741193/the-drama-with-encyclopedia-dramatica – Should we incorporate any material from this article into the article? We deemed the event insignificant at the time the article was published, but now we have hindsight, so we may now view the event reported as being significant. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:40, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I dont think so, between DDoS attacks and temporary offline periods that ED had its day It doesnt seem significant at all. That date just happens to be the last offline period beofre the finally pulling the plug. Unless there is a source that indicates it was more than just that I dont see the point. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 13:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The shutdown was meant to be permanent. The Gawker article was a part of the cover-up. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I dont follow.... what cover up? The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 14:30, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, could Michael expand on this? Although there were signs of internal difficulties at ED early in 2011, this is news and would need a further explanation.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 14:39, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

"I made a front end configuration mistake" = Lie. Sherrod wanted to end ED in January, and she wanted ED to end quietly, since she doesn't take pressure well. She didn't want to give a warning, but someone didn't realized that Sherrod wanted everyone hush-hust and posted the "RIP" tweet. This generated a lot of a attention and pressure Sherrod couldn't handle, so Sherrod restored ED and pretended that it was an accident or joke. Sherrod learned from this mistake and created that "Hang in there" message that replaced ED from April 10 to April 14. She wanted a few days where she wouldn't be in the spotlight. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

To quote 4chan.... Sauce? The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 14:59, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Michael knows what's what at ED. It seems likely that Sherrod DeGrippo was getting tired of ED in early 2011, the other main speculation is that the site was losing money heavily.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 15:02, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

unfortunatley we cant add it to the article as its textbook WP:OR with out a source! The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 15:11, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I never intended for my testimony to be used as a source. I'm just saying why the January 23 incident is significant enough to include in the article. Also note that the first OhInternet blog entry was made on January 24, 2011 (the very next day). OhInternet began with that incident, so we should note that something happened on that day in the article. We'll only use what's written in the Gawker article. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: Just to clarify, what happened on January 23 wasn't the average DDoS attack or temporary shutdown. This is perhaps the only period of downtime worth mentioning in the article. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:58, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh Interesting. :) Badmachine (talk) 01:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Are there any objections to my latest comments in this section? Silence equals consent. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 20:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

the edit article page isn't there

WTF????????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Betryur92 (talk • contribs) 18:38, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

It isn't present on Wikipedia because the page has been protected, something that also occurs on ED itself.Jasper Deng (talk) 18:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Media acknowledgement of encyclopediadramatica.ch

• Anonymous DDoSed by mutineer – CRN Australia
• Lulz Security: The Cheshire cat of the Internet – OWNI
• Les LulzSec, gentils loleurs ou dangereux hackers? – 20minutes

The last two link to encyclopediadramatica.ch, so I hope that the concerns about the first source not mentioning the domain name is settled. Conti removed the information about Ryan and .ch because "We can't turn a claim starting with 'Anonymous members claim' into fact." Is there a reason to believe that these members are lying? Ryan is the owner of .ch. I can verify it, and it says so on his .ch userpage. You can read about him in reliable sources. Is there any reason to believe that Darren Pauli didn't check the facts or reviewed Anonymous' claims?

If consensus permits, I would like to reinstate Silver_seren's revision and add mention of the encyclopediadramatica.ch domain name. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 01:18, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank god there was finally something, so we can end all of this bickering. Make sure you just add back what I said (maybe say "a Swiss-based mirror at encyclopediadramatica.ch created by...") and the domain name and that's it. We'll just have to make sure to police it after this so that it doesn't become bloated somehow with more information without any further references being added that are actually discussing details about it. Silverseren^C 11:12, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

ch is not swiss-based, the site's ip resolves to cloudflare in palo alto california. if your argument is that a site's tld determines where a site is based, and that must be mentioned wherever the site is, then you have a lot of edits ahead of you. i'll go ahead and add "libyan-based url shortening service" to bit.ly H644444 (talk) 20:12, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

"Is there a reason to believe that these members are lying?" Yes, there is. Remember Joseph Evers? If we have reliable sources mentioning ED.ch, we can mention it here as well. But anything that begins with "ED members say.." should not be treated as fact. Not to mention that "Some dude called Ryan, which may or may not be his actual name, owns the new site" is not a very useful piece of information to have. --Conti|✉ 11:26, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

If it'll help, he's Ryan Cleary, not "some guy". There's plenty of online sources that use his full name. Joesph Evers was a joke, but Ryan is real. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Fool me once.. Though in this case I don't see any reasons to doubt the name, some proper sources would still be nice. --Conti|✉ 13:45, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

http://au.linkedin.com/in/dpauli – Are you doubting Pauli's credentials and experience? I see a "proper" source here. The bar you're setting for this article is outrageously high. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:25, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

ED members certainly managed to fool experienced journalists before, haven't they? I'm not saying this is what happened here, I'm saying we should keep this in mind and take everything coming from ED with a large grain of salt. Hell, the article by Pauli itself states that "It is not known if the details are accurate", so we surely need better sources than that if we want to write that these details are accurate, right? --Conti|✉ 18:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

"It is not known if the details are accurate" refers to Ryan's alleged dox. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 20:08, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Isn't his name part of that, or has it been published elsewhere beforehand? I honestly don't know. --Conti|✉ 20:14, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

No, his name been published before – as early as 2008. His real name hasn't appeared in reliable sources until recently, but I don't believe that you have any reason to doubt the validity of his name. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 00:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good enough for me. --Conti|✉ 00:34, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Plus, the whole point of demanding reliable sources for information is that we trust those sources to do their jobs. Assuming that a journalist didn't do their job is just as much OR as posting unsourced info. zorblek (talk) 01:16, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

This is getting somewhat off-topic, but no, that's not correct. Nothing in the world forces us to use reliable sources in our articles, most especially when we know they're wrong (not saying this is the case here). --Conti|✉ 12:34, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. "Reliable sources" are often unreliable, which is why I get annoyed with people who are absolute sticklers for them. They don't mean as much as many people would like to believe that they do. But yes, off topic. Sorry :P zorblek (talk) 08:06, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not really following this article at all, as I don't even like them. However I'd like to add that I'm not into these people. I'm also not sure why people discuss ED anyway. The place most likely wasn't sold - I think it was closed by the host. Seriously, they've been reported tons of times by me now and other people wrote to them, so they just went and got a new host that hides their actual host through some sort of caching / reverse proxy thing. I really don't see the point in mentioning them anyway. They just do things like hacking servers and making pages about people because they NEED that sort of attention to get by in life. Don't feed the trolls, they will get hunger pains, and they'll starve themselves to death. It's why free speech and the internet don't mix too well. 92.235.168.144 (talk) 18:32, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

At this point I think there is a pretty clear consensus to include mention of the .ch mirror, but no consensus so far on including a hot link. Are there any objections to making an addition on that basis? Polyquest (talk) 04:53, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I would support this as a workable compromise solution.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:52, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll leave it to wiser minds whether policy permits an actual link, but it seems pretty clear to me that there should at least be a mention of the URL. Avoiding it will just make the article less clear. zorblek (talk) 08:06, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I've added a mention of the CH site. Is the way I added it all right? I am not entirely sold on characterizing it as a fork but I can't think of a better term. Polyquest (talk) 01:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Well at least it mentions the fact that mirrors were spawned after ED went inactive. --♣thayora♣ 01:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with that language either, but it's a lot better than nothing. zorblek (talk) 06:23, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

The "swiss-based" part should probably go, since the website is as much Swiss-based as last.fm is Micronesia-based. --Conti|✉ 10:29, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I second that. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 11:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

We linked to the old domain name.. of course we should link to the new domain name. The only thing different is the end of the URL. Nevard (talk) 07:05, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

No, the difference is a complete copyright violation and increased amounts of attack pages against both Wikipedia editors and against underage children. The link to ED in the first place was reluctant and, after much debate, it was decided that just a link once here, because it was the main subject of the article, would be appropriate. Ed.ch is not the main subject of the article and violates even more rules than ED did, so we have absolutely no reason to link to it. Silverseren^C 07:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's sad that it's your opinion it's a copyright violation, but all we have are a bunch of sources that say it is the revived ED. It's not like linking to Wikipedia Review, which is the case on that article for some disgusting reason. Nevard (talk) 07:33, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Ryan Cleary

I'm wondering to what extent Ryan Cleary should be mentioned in the article. He has been identified in several sources as the person behind encyclopediadramatica.ch ([1], [2]). I've noticed that references to Ryan has been removed from the article at least twice ([3], [4]). Given his arrest and all the headlines he's generating, this seems too important to leave out. If anything, Ryan played a larger role on EncyclopediaDramatica.ch than he did in LulzSec. Ryan wasn't even a member of LulzSec; Ryan was just playing host to a VIP. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 03:35, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I think, since sources do relate his name to ED.ch, we should include his name as the "former Anonymous member" that created it. I see no reason not to include his name. And, I guess...wikilink it to that Lulzsec section, since he doesn't have a separate article on him yet? Silverseren^C 04:42, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that is a good solution for now, the story is still evolving fairly quickly. Maybe this association with Lulzsec will attract enough media attention to flesh out the article. Polyquest (talk) 06:26, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure. The media seems to be more interested in Ryan's lifestyle. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 10:48, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

They are also stupid and in blinders, many journalists evidently read the site (ED) but it seems there is an editorial stupidity (in the press) and determination (in 'reliable' blogs) to not mention new ED. This sec thing started blowing up a couple of months ago, BTW at least until a few hours ago the Daily Mail had the most interesting articles so far on very recent events (and even a little balance).Borgmcklorg (talk) 12:00, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I reinserted Ryan's name into the article. The arrest wasn't connected to encyclopediadramatica.ch, so I left that out. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 02:44, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Restoration

The website is back up, so I believe it's time to modify and cleanup the whole page. How it happened, though I do not know & not too interested in checking the sources on the entire shut-down-and-then-restore story right now anyway. • GunMetal Angel 00:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

www.encyclopediadramatica.com is still redirecting to Oh Internet for me. Are you seeing something different? Silverseren^C 02:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

www.encyclopediadramatica.ch/ unless this is an archive or mirror site, this is what came up as ED • GunMetal Angel 02:16, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

It is a mirror site. This has already been extensively discussed on this talk page and the .ch site is mentioned in the "Oh Internet and alternative forks" section, if you look at the last sentence in that section. Both Oh Internet and ED.ch are separate sites, so are in a subsection. The site that was ED was shut down and is gone, and the URL was redirected to Oh Internet. Silverseren^C 02:46, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

You say that as if it's self-evident and everybody knows it, but clearly a lot of people are either confused or disagree because they keep coming and changing the page. Sure, some of those edits are by trolls from ED, but a lot of them are good-faith edits like Gunmetal Angel's. This article needs to either a) recognize ED.ch as the obvious successor to ED.com (my preferred solution) or b) at the very least provide a very good explanation of why it is a completely separate and non-notable site (and I'm looking to you, Silver seren, to write that explanation, because you're the one who's the most adamant about the distinction). Otherwise people are going to keep coming to this page and wondering why it talks about Encyclopedia Dramatica as if it's dead when it appears to be very much alive and functional, and they will try to fix what appears to be an obvious oversight. zorblek (talk) 05:26, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, since it's been quite a while and there's been a lot of debate, I think maybe I should restate my overall position. (I know I've said most of this before, and I'm not trying to belabor my points; I just want to clearly lay out what I think in one place.) Here are my thoughts:

• Encyclopedia Dramatica was and is a notable topic, and deserves an accurate (and therefore up-to-date) article.
• Encyclopedia Dramatica's notability comes from its content. If it weren't informative/entertaining/incredibly offensive, no one would care about it and there would be no Wikipedia article.
• That content has been moved from one domain to another. Furthermore, a sizable portion of the community that created and updated that content has also moved to the new domain and continues to "improve" that content (those quotation marks mean maximum sarcasm).
• ED continues to be notable at the new domain, and therefore Wikipedia should continue to cover it.
• By many (not all, but many) common-sense metrics, encyclopediadramatica.ch is Encyclopedia Dramatica. It has the same name, most of the same content (obviously this changes over time, but it was originally exactly the same text), and a great deal of the same user base (and by user base, I don't just mean editors, but also readers, people like GunMetal Angel who search for "Encyclopedia Dramatica" and go to ED.ch because it's the only site with that name that comes up).
• The reliable sources that support the assertion that ED.ch is the Encyclopedia Dramatica are indirect and therefore fairly weak. However, the sources that would contradict that assertion are just as weak. As ED doesn't get media attention very frequently, there is unlikely to be a reliable source that resolves this point beyond a shadow of a doubt any time soon.
• An awful lot of people seem to regard ED.ch to be a continuation of the same site. I can only speak for myself in that regard, but judging by the comments here and the continual attempts by many different people to edit the page to refer to ED in the present tense, I suspect that I am not alone. Meanwhile, there are only a few of people who consider it to be completely separate site (Silver seren is by far the most vocal, but I think there are a couple of others).
• Common sense indicates that if a majority of people think the article needs to be changed, then there is something wrong with the article. Either it should be changed to refer to ED in the present tense, or it should be changed to do an adequate job of explaining why that is unnecessary.
• I don't think that an argument can be made that will convince a majority that ED.ch is a completely separate entity. We've argued about this for months now, and it doesn't look like any minds have been changed on that point (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Therefore, the second option I mentioned above is probably not viable.
• There are a two other alternatives that I can think of, neither of which seem viable to me:

1. We can leave the article as it is, which is untenable because it's insufficiently clear and informative, and people will keep wanting to change it.
2. We can change the title of the article to "encyclopediadramatica.com", which would make its current language much more accurate. However, this would be inconsistent with the names of other articles about other websites (which typically go by the name of the site, unless the name is the same as the URL). Also, it would inevitably lead to the eventual creation of an "encyclopediadramatica.ch" article (because of all that aforementioned notable content), which would of course get merged back into the original article and then we'd just be back where we started.

• Therefore: Since there are significant problems with all of the alternatives, we should edit the article to refer to Encylopedia Dramatica in the present tense, and list the .ch domain as its address. The article should definitely discuss the Sherrod DeGrippo's attempt to end the site, and the controversy that ensued. There should be a section on Oh Internet, and probably a separate section on the various archive and mirror efforts. We can cite the sources that we have now, and add better sources when they become available. Until then, we could even add citation needed templates and the like to make it absolutely clear that there are no definitive sources. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better than what we have now.
• An actual link to the new domain would probably violate Wikipedia policy. I think that policy is silly (it's not Wikipedia's job to police the internet), but that's a different argument and I don't think it matters all that much.

Editing Wikipedia necessarily requires balancing various principles. Verifiability is an important principle, but it's not the only important principle. In the absence of completely definitive sources, there needs to be some compromise, and I think the one I've laid out strikes the best balance. zorblek (talk) 07:25, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Your suggestion isn't a compromise, it's one of the two extremes in this discussion. I honestly have no idea what we should do at this point, and I'm not sure we ever had this kind of problem before. ED.com was shut down and redirected to a new site by its owners, who explicitly disapprove of ED.ch. Yet most of the user base went from ED.com to ED.ch (do we have any numbers on this, by the way? Number of edits/day on both wikis, Alexa rank, etc.?). The new ED has not, in my opinion, established any notability yet, though I'm fairly certain it will do so eventually, so I'm fine with the article as it is. Whether we should treat ED.ch as the Encyclopedia Dramatica, though, I have no idea. Maybe we should ask for a third opinion? The constant discussions between ED.ch users and anti-ED users certainly isn't going anywhere any time soon. --Conti|✉ 08:09, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, just to clarify, I'm not trying to cast my position as a compromise between other positions. I'm aware that my preferred solution is more extreme than some others. What I meant is that Wikipedia has a lot of different principles and guidelines, which sometimes (in situations like this) can conflict with each other. I think what I've laid out strikes the best balance, but obviously that's just one guy's opinion.

I think that the article as it currently exists is confusing and probably a bit misleading. I'm willing to accept inadequate sourcing in the short-term to remedy that. zorblek (talk) 05:43, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

My god, did I spark up one helluva discussion. I came here only yesterday just assuming the website was back in running, but after seeing all these comments and suggestions, might as well just state what I believe on this. To start things off I just have to say; we obviously all know this page was created years ago by the basis for the .com domain, but upon the fact that it redirects now to a totally different site (Oh Internet) of which doesn't even maintain an article, this reverts the suggestions back to reestablishing the page into the mirror website hence the fact that the Google search will bring you to the .ch site and a Wikipedia page saying it's gone both on the same result page, which wouldn't make clinical sense to many without extended research, why not answer what's causing their heads to scratch on this very article along with Oh Internet's explanation? The .ch site is what everyone wants to see when looking for ED, and being evident of the constant "0MG!!1111 ED G0T DELEEETED!!!1111!??" flaming, not many are favorable of Oh Internet. I also have to take Conti's words into a colored view as well; keeping in mind that a debate such as thing is something that has probably never occurred on Wikipedia before of which the content of the article is literally splitting into two different halves. Similar occurrences of debated content have happened, however. This ordeal is reminiscent of a debate that happened on The Devil Wears Prada (band) a few years ago in the sense that while knowing that the band is a Christian band, we asked each other "should it be stated that they're a religious band in the lead or follow Wikipedia's instance on generality and not have this in the lead at all?" until deciding that while to not call them a "Christian metalcore band" for alternative reasons, we mentioned the fact that they are a Christian group into the following sentence in the lead which still remains on the current revision of the page to this day as you may notice. My suggestion here is to go with both: have the Oh Internet site and .ch as the prime attention on this page, even have them mentioned in the first two or three sentences if it has to be that way. Although I wouldn't be doubtful if this all leads to a huge redesign of the entire article. • GunMetal Angel 13:45, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

The difference between the original ED is the difference between Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Yes, those countries were made the same general people (content in the case of these website) and were called "Russia" ("Encyclopedia Dramatica" in our case) by themselves and others, but they were controlled by different administrations. Perhaps we should start the article this way:

Encyclopedia Dramatica is the title processed by to two websites building a satirical encyclopedia on Internet culture. The original (encyclopediadramatica.com) was started by Sherrod DeGrippo in December 2004 and was closed in April 2011. After its closure, its content was forked and continues to be built at encyclopediadramatica.ch. […]

I used "forked" here instead of "mirrored" for accuracy, since mirrors don't build new communities or develop new content. A mirror generally something that provides accessibility to content / software in case the original becomes temporary unavailable or is blocked in a certain country (eg. China, Iran). Forks, on the other hand, continue development and build communities, and some forks (eg. Foswiki) are created when the developmental community becomes satisfied with the direction of the original project. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:55, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I still hold with that we have no reliable sources saying that it is a continuation of ED or the successor. We have sources saying that it is a mirror/fork site and that's what we say in the article. Saying that it is a version of ED in the lede isn't going to be reflected in the text, since we have no sources saying that. For that matter, what about the other forks of ED that were made, such as the one at lurkmoarpedia and others? We shouldn't give preference to this one just because they figured out an illegal way to get the same name. Silverseren^C 04:14, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

The other forks don't exist anymore, not one of them. The entire community is at encyclopediadramatica.ch now. You are taking your ownership of this article to an extreme. Anyone else agree? I don't edit here much but I am on Wikipedia every day. I have been a member of Wikipedia since before I was a member of Encyclopedia Dramatica. What this guy is doing is wrong. He is purposefully excluding relevant information from this article because of an obvious dislike for the site. Wikipedia is supposed to be NPOV. Anyone can keep almost anything out of any article if they spew enough of the hundreds/thousands of Wikipedia policies on the talk page. He is perverting the system for his own obvious agenda and it is wrong. Let the relevant information in and focus your energies on creating the most informative article you can. --Zaiger (talk) 19:34, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow, just...wow. If you have a problem with my editing, then take it to WP:DRN. But attacking me on the talk page isn't going to get you anywhere. First off, you clearly don't understand how WP:OWN works. If I was applying ownership to the article, then I would be reverting every edit made to the page and staying out of discussions. Instead, i'm extremely active in any discussion related to this and trying to get a neutral consensus. I'm holding ED.ch to the same standards that we hold anything else on this encyclopedia. If those standards are too high for the information you are trying to add due to a lack of reliable sources actually saying the information you're trying to add, that isn't my or any of our problem. Wikipedia is a tertiary source that is meant to reflect information compiled in secondary sources in relation to primary sources, exactly how every encyclopedia works. Because of this, information is obviously going to be behind what is actually going on, because we have to wait until secondary sources cover the subject. Demanding that something be changed right now because that's the way it is right now is useless, because that isn't how we do things here. You can cry WP:OWN all you want, but the numerous editors that have reverted you and others shows that I am not a solitary person trying to hold up this standard. Silverseren^C 04:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Can we try to keep ad-hominem attacks out of this? Obviously I disagree with Silver seren about what should be done with the article (and probably about a lot of other things), but I see no evidence of him being out to get ED. He just has a very different idea of how Wikipedia should work. I do agree with Zaiger's other statement above, though. None of the other continuations (or forks or whatever) show any signs of activity. People coming to this article aren't coming to it to learn about the disposition of a particular website or URL (at least, not just that). They're looking for information on the reference work that goes by the name "Encyclopedia Dramatica". There's currently really only one place that fits the bill.

I disagree with the statement "we have to wait until secondary sources cover the subject". Ideally, yes, all information ought to be attributed eventually. But it isn't an absolute, ironclad requirement that a reliable secondary source exist before a piece of information gets added to the site. That's why we have citation needed templates and the like. Especially in situations like this where you have a notable topic that only gets mainstream media coverage infrequently, it's hardly unheard-of to compromise by including what primary and less-reliable sources there are and adding reliable secondary sources as they become available. Does anyone believe that there won't eventually be specific mention of ED.ch by a reliable source? That's part of why I keep coming back to my statement that ED's content is what matters. ED has received coverage in the past primarily because of its content. That content is not different enough in its new incarnation to suppose that it won't continue to get coverage for the same reasons.

I don't think that every article needs to be continually updated in every tiny detail, but when changes occur that dramatically affect the accuracy or usefulness of an article, I think it's reasonable to prioritize being clear and current over having bulletproof sourcing. zorblek (talk) 05:43, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

"Clear and current" is not what we are here to do (well, clear if we can). For topics that involve major world events, we only happen to be current because of the myriad of sources that are commenting on the subjects or any other popular event. But that doesn't mean that we are throwing away our sourcing priorities because of that. In fact, the only reason those types of articles are being made immediately is because of the extensive available sources for them. We have a number of articles that are out of date because of the lack of sources discussing them currently. Eventually, someone will discuss them and they can be updated, but not until then. Most encyclopedias are two to three years behind the times because of the necessity of printing new volumes. Wikipedia is far ahead of that type of mechanism with the fact that we can immediately publish information the moment reliable sources are published about it. But just because we can put out info almost immediately doesn't mean we are throwing away the standards of sourcing that every encyclopedia requires. We are meant to react to the sources that are available, not to events that occur. The entire existence of an article and its evolution hinges on what is published about it, not about what is currently happening with it. I know WP:Verifiability is a hard concept to have to abide with when things like this happen to a subject, where events change so swiftly, but we have to follow the policies that make up this encyclopedia and that requires sources defining the information that we are adding. Any original research undermines the entire purpose of Wikipedia. Silverseren^C 05:54, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

@sliverseren, I can not beleive you, you keep changing your mind over and over agiain as too why it should not be changed. Everything you say is complete bullshit.... you are just a POV troll. Enjoy your next RfA it will be sure to fail again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frigthe4 (talk • contribs) 12:53, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

ed.ch

... appears to be down right now. Anyone know what's going on? Is this related to the Ryan Cleary arrest? - Alison ^❤ 07:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Down at http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/encyclopediadramatica.ch but could be routine problems (remember what the old ed.com was like).--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 07:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

|}

Tagging of article

In order to avoid WP:DRIVEBY tagging, the tagging of an article should usually be accompanied by a description on the talk page of what the problem is, and how to go about fixing it. Without this input, the tagging is likely to be removed.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 19:24, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

• I'd suggest removing it regardless. Complaints about the POV of this article are perennial. We are constrained by the sources on ED in our characterization and focus. We can't make the article much more positive without running afoul of our other content policy. Protonk (talk) 21:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I've been WP:BOLD and removed this. Tagging is not a substitute for editing or discussion on the talk page, so specific concerns should be addressed rather than tagging the article.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 21:19, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Biased towards negative POV

I feel this article is biased, towards the editors saying how bad the overall site is. Most of the reception and a huge chunk of the introduction states the negative aspects of the site and there is hardly anything positive in it. I don't see why you deleted my template without even giving me chance to say why I did it. Does anyone agree with my claims? Or is everyone here just biased because this website was a funnier version of Wikipedia? --andy4789 ★ · (talk? contribs?) 21:25, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

See Protonk's comments above. Mainstream media sourcing about ED has traditionally been hard to find, and tends to point out - fairly enough - that the site contains material that many people would find offensive. Bias can be in the eye of the beholder, and the article is stuck with the sourcing that is given.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 21:35, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, I guess its hard to argue with that - there aren't many positive sources on this topic out there. Maybe it's just the way this article is written that could be improved. I might have a shot at cleaning it up later on, and finding some other stuff that sticks to the positive side. --andy4789 ★ · (talk? contribs?) 21:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Please do. Note that part of the reason for the immediate response you received was the periodic trickle of identical requests (from other editors) in the past. If you peek through the archives you will see many similar complaints. We just can't do much about it. As it stands the article is pretty close to the bare metal of sourcing without plagiarizing. We hew so closely to those sources because of the nature of the subject. Protonk (talk) 21:58, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

The best way for you to counter this perceived bias is to find reliable sources that are positive toward ED. Silverseren^C 21:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Here you go. --Zaiger (talk) 23:43, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Incomplete

Interesting that you disabled your rating thing on this page. ED lives and you talk about it in past tense and do not link to it at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.111.103.116 (talk) 00:32, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

mw:Article_feedback/FAQ#How_are_pages_selected_for_the_AFT.3F – "Disabled" is actually the default. The ratings feature is only enabled on about 4,000 randomly selected articles, and the Encyclopedia Dramatica article isn't one of them. The feature couldn't have been disabled on the article, since it wasn't enabled in the first place. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 01:24, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll just leave this here

This should be more than an enough to reword the article to say that ED.ch is the new home of ED and that ED is in fact alive and well. http://dailydot.com/culture/encyclopedia-dramatica-returns/ --Zaiger (talk) 23:42, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree, this should also allow the page to include sone history of .ch Kids in the sandbox (talk) 02:25, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

What is the daily dot? --Conti|✉ 02:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks like a journalism site. 174.126.213.241 (talk) 02:52, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I can't believe OI is in the external links but not .ch- What is the BS rationale for that, exactly?--68.225.194.245 (talk) 03:17, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

It's some sort of community-made "newspaper". Like Wikinews, in a sense, except that people write whole articles. There's another site that's a better example, but I can't think of it at the moment. The fact that the writer of that article is not listed as being a part of the editing team seems to confirm that. And the fact that it was created in 2011 2010, which apparently means very, very lately makes me suspicious. Silverseren^C 04:18, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

First off, it is not a community website, it hires writers. Also, the website was founded in 2010, not 2011. All of that was on the page that you linked. I'm sorry that you couldn't have been bothered to read a whole paragraph! Kids in the sandbox (talk) 04:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

True, I was going off of the Copyright 2011 thing. Generally, if sites are older, they'd do something like Copyright 2010-2011, but I digress. I'm still investigating the site. It seems that it has both community made news posts and news posts made by staff writers, according to Gigaom. However, without a staff writer page, it's impossible to tell who's who. But, anyways, while i'm waiting for more info, let's go on the presumption that it is reliable for now. Having this single article does not mean that the entire article should be rewritten to be ED.ch. We have far more sources saying ED is Oh Internet and we didn't turn the page into that. We're supposed to be keeping the past history here and both Oh Internet and ED.ch are new sites. No, what this means is that we need to make ED.ch its own section. Perhaps we should make it a subsection like Oh Internet and change the overall section title of "Oh Internet and alternative forks" to..."Subsequent websites" or..."Followup websites". Or something like that and give both Oh Internet and ED.ch their own sub section in there with the info. I guess we could just entirely remove the fan sites line. It seems a little unnecessary. Silverseren^C 05:04, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree, Ohi and ED.ch should be two different sections At this point I think it would be better to give Ohinternet it's own article to avoid confusion between the two sites and to keep the page focused on ED itself. Kids in the sandbox (talk) 05:18, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

The issue is, i'm not sure if there's currently enough info within the sources on Oh Internet to make it its own article. It took years for there to be enough sources and content to make an article on ED proper in the first place. If we try to split Oh Internet, it would probably only get merged back in anyways. Not to consider the fact that the current length of information about it in the article would pretty much be the same after splitting, as there still has to be a WP:SUMMARYSTYLE section left in this article and a main page link. Silverseren^C 05:21, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

True. I think it's best we focus on the news article and its inclusion. Kids in the sandbox (talk) 05:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

We have far more sources saying ED is Oh Internet -- but every single of those sources said this on the date the plug on ED was pulled out. There's no wonder the shutdown of a major site is noted; a lengtly restoration is not a single event and thus no "news".

For OI, I don't think it has earned any notability, it's a random meme site like many. It's only claim for fame is cybersquatting the domain encyclopediadramatica.com, and this might be at most mentioned in the ED article. The attempt by DeGrippo to monetize this domain name has pretty much failed.--KiloByte (talk) 19:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

So you are saying that we should stop editing this article alltogether because "ED is Oh Internet" but it isn't notable? Kids in the sandbox (talk) 20:33, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/fruzsina-eordogh/8/674/8a9 – Since there was concern about the author not being on thedailydot.com's "Who We Are" page, here's some information on the author. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 12:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Due to the lack of strong objections, I've started to incorporate material from thedailydot.com into this article. Feel free to list any concerns or objections here. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 17:11, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I've got no problem with that. I'll help out in a little bit. I've got an RSN discussion going here, but it's more about getting The Daily Dot to actually make a staff page so that we don't have future questions on the reliability of certain articles they write. Silverseren^C 20:11, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Propose seperate article for Oh Internet

Oh internet is not encyclopedia dramatica. It is not even a wiki. Oh internet redirecting to encyclopedia dramatica seems to make about as much sense as citizendium redirecting to wikipedia. Although Oh Internet is a fork of encyclopedia dramatica, is is more akin to know your meme than the original ED- an it warrants its own article on wikipedia.

Also, Encyclopedia Dramatica seems to have found a new home at a .ch, with all the original content apparently having been mirrored and a new slogan of nothing of value was lost. Although it's still early days, this definately deserves a subsection with some info on how this came about and who it is maintained by, to what extent it can be viewed as the "official" ED. All with reliable citations of course. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Veggieburgerfish (talk • contribs) 15:04, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Ohinternet is a wiki. It just has a terrible layout and about only 10 regular editors. While I support it having an article, I'm sure one of the assholes above will find some way to object. Kids in the sandbox (talk) 16:12, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Write a draft in your userspace. If it passes WP:WEB then I will support it becoming an article. LiteralKa (talk) 17:14, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I myself have no intention of writing an article for Ohinternet. It was a simple suggestion that was taken too seriously. Kids in the sandbox (talk) 17:17, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

• An article on Oh Internet would be too small and unotable. Best option is to merge any info on it into this article. Jolly Ω Janner 18:52, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

The thing is though ED.ch is a byte-for-byte the same website content for all the articles, with the same structure and format. Oh internet is actually a new website, with a new URL and a new concept. It makes no sense to have the website Oh Internet as a subsection of a different website, a website which it isn't. I don't think anyone is disputing whether Oh internet meets WP:notability, but some people seem to think it only warrants a subsection in this article, an article about a different website (?).

To me it seems that the only sensible options, are either to rename the ED article oh internet, and start from scratch with a small section about what it used to be (which seems a little non-neutral to me), or to create a new article about Oh internet, and keep the the ED article in the past tense, with the content as it is now. To me this seems the far superior option, as both Encyclopedia Dramatica and Oh internet warrant content on wikipedia, yet either one as the "main" article belittles the other one, and seems to violate NPOV to me. Even a little stub about oh internet with a reliable citation sows the seed for it to grow into a fully fledged article. Veggieburgerfish (talk) 11:22, 30 July 2011 (UTC)--

EDIT: I suppose we could rename the current article Oh Internet and Encyclopedia Dramatica- but that seems a little backwards to me. Also, no idea what I was doing using butchered HTML tags instead of wikitext

Except that ED.ch is proven to be a copyright violation, from the successful DMCA notice a week or so ago, when hosting had to be changed, if you remember. Any change in this article to say that ED.ch is Encyclopedia Dramatica would then be upholding this violation, which would be against Wikipedia policies and potentially hold Wikipedia partially liable in terms of the violation. Which is exactly why we don't link to copyvio content as it is. Silverseren^C 22:28, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Oh really? And where are you getting this from? I believe the copyright violation was over hosting Sherrod's SSN. Mwalimu1 (talk) 20:29, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Pay him no mind; Seren is mad because ed.ch currently has an article on him, so opinions given on this subject should be taken with a grain of salt. The original ED abandoned it's former we presence and became a cheezbuger clone, while the original now runs at the ch address. A lot of people are getting themselves too worked up over the simple reality of the current situation. Tarc (talk) 03:50, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

After looking over the article, I'm going to have to agree that this could be a possible COI, seeing as his viewpoint of the subject is going to be very biased. The quotes the article lists also show blatant NPOV violations, however they were off-site. Should we take this up at ANI? Mwalimu1 (talk) 05:45, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

At the moment, neither Oh Internet nor ed.ch meets WP:WEB, as there is not enough sourcing for standalone articles. This has led to a less than ideal situation where this article is titled as Encyclopedia Dramatica, even though the website no longer exists.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:27, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but I was talking about issues with Silver seren editing this page. He obviously is going to have issues with a site that has an attack article on him, as well as his off site "attacks" (if that's what you would call them). Mwalimu1 (talk) 15:45, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

The creation of the article on myself was already discussed on ANI, as it was made in response to me being involved in this article as it was. My editing has not changed since then. I have always been adamant about the use of reliable sources in this article and once one was found, the Daily Dot article, I was fine with expansion of material. Furthermore, if you're going to raise COI issues about me, then you'll need to do so for the ED.ch admins and members that are involved on this talk page. And I don't think you want to give them the idea that all they have to do is create ED.ch articles on the people involved in this talk page in order to get them kicked out so they can own it. That's not a very good precedent. Silverseren^C 20:02, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

ED.ch infobox

If you're going to have one for that section, then you also need to put one up for Oh Internet. Really though, I don't think we should have either of them. They're too large and mess up the formatting of the page. Silverseren^C 00:00, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

This can tie in with people debating whether or not OhInternet should have its own article. --♣thayora♣ 00:07, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

There's not enough information or sources for Oh Internet or ED.ch to give either of them a separate article. That may change in the future, but right now, it's not enough. And it doesn't change the fact that the infobox for the ED.ch section extends almost entirely into the reception section and just looks bad. Silverseren^C 00:21, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

That is true. As of now, OhInternet is mainly known for replacing ED. Beyond that, nobody cares that it catalogues internet drama/etc. However, like Kid in the Sandbox said, OhInternet having its own article would clear the confusion between it and ED. I do not believe that ED.ch deserves its own article, having its own section in this article is enough. Isn't there an alternative to the infobox, or does it have to be that template? --♣thayora♣ 00:29, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I like how an infobox organizes information and makes it easier to find. OhInternet is only relevant to this article's subject in that it's a part of why the original ED died. Most of the information that would be included in an OhInternet infobox would be irrelevant to this article's subject, with the site owner basically being the only relevant bit. In addition, hosting a .com infobox while not hosting a .ch infobox will upset .ch fans. They'll jump to conclusions (ie. accuse us of bias) and attempt to turn the .com infobox into a .ch infobox. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 00:57, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I completely disagree. The difference in information between the ED and the ED.ch box are logo, slogan (slightly), owner, created by, launched, and Alexa rate. This exact information is what would also be different in the Oh Internet infobox. Just making one for ED.ch is favoring them and is a non-neutral action. They are both as important as the other and the addition of an infobox for one necessitates one for the other. Think of them as divergent evolution strands. We need to treat them equally in relation to the sources and in their formatting. Overemphasizing one is non-neutral. Silverseren^C 01:28, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a subtle bias by having an infobox for ed.ch, but not Oh Internet.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 04:57, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I was saying. And I know that this likely wasn't intended by adding it, but that is the impression that the readers are going to get from the article. Silverseren^C 05:04, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• For now, i've gone ahead and added an infobox for Oh Internet. It still looks horrible with both of them there, but whatever. If any of the information is wrong in the infobox, feel free to correct it. As i'm not sure if DeGrippo is both the owner and creator. Oh, and does Oh Internet have a slogan? Silverseren^C 20:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
• The article is about ED, not OhInternet. I am reverting the OhInternet infobox as a bad-faith edit. --Zaiger (talk) 20:57, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• Then the infobox for ED.ch should be removed as well and then we'd be good, format would be all better. Silverseren^C 22:22, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• So it's format over information? --♣thayora♣ 22:26, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• The information in this case should be stated in a prose format. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't believe adding other infoboxes in an article fits in with the WP:MOS. It really shouldn't be difficult, if the info is included in sources, to just write it into the paragraph. Silverseren^C 22:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• Putting it as its own section sounds fine enough (with the necessary info there and so on), but if one has an infobox then there's no reason the other one shouldn't. -HerroLink 05:29, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Infoboxes are usually only in the top right hand corner of the page, and putting them in other parts of the article looks clunky. It would be better to stick to prose information as far as possible in the main body of the text.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:14, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. One article, one infobox. This "I can have my own in a sub-section" movement got a bit out of hand, it seems. Tarc (talk) 03:51, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

An Oh Internet infobox has no business in this article. In fact any Oh Internet information has no business here. This article is named "Encyclopedia Dramatica" - "Oh Internet" should have it's own article, and only be mentioned here in connection with the temporary shut down of Encyclopedia Dramatica in April of 2011. Colonel Quaritch (talk) 23:57, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Issues with facts

Several problems with this article:

"Several mirrors of the original site have since started up,[8] including one located at encyclopediadramatica.ch." I fail to find any "mirrors" of Encyclopedia Dramatica. The link to the source does not provide any proof of that statement either. I submit to you that there are no mirrors of Encyclopedia Dramatica. Encyclopedia Dramatica closed down. Oh Internet started. The two have nothing to do with each other. Encyclopedia Dramatica was restarted with a change from .com to .ch. Other than that the content remained. It should not be categorized as a "mirror".

I also challenge the section describing "EncyclopediaDramatica.ch". What is the relevance of the lengthy explanation of alleged connections between Ryan Cleary and LulzSec and his subsequent arrest? And why is Ryan and Garrett described as hosting "forks"? Encyclopedia Dramatica is current hosted on real web servers, paid for by donations from the users of the site. And what is a fork anyway? Seems like a lot of space is used to say very little.

This article is about Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED) - Not Oh Internet. The very minute ED.com transformed into Oh Internet.com, by default it is no longer ED but rather Oh Internet, and again by default has nothing do to with ED any longer (Other than sharing a past with ED). This article is not entitled "EncyclopediaDramatica.com" and the name of this Wikipedia article does not imply any specific connection to the dot com domain from where it was born. The minute ED started redirecting to Oh Internet and it's new platform, format and content, is stopped having anything to do with the actual ED concept. I fail to see the validity of any Oh Internet content in an article specific to "Encyclopedia Dramatica", other than to document that ED was at some point directed to Oh Internet. Other than that the concept and content of Encyclopedia Dramatica has nothing to do with Oh Internet - and again, since the name of this article does not have a .com attachment, it is not specific to any specific .com, .net, .org, etc. ED version. EncyclopediaDramatica.com now redirects to Oh Internet, and it's content is not available there any longer. EncyclopediaDramatica.ch however has all of the content that defines Encyclopedia Dramatica. Encyclopedia Dramatica is a concept and a movement. It is not confined to domain names. Oh Internet is not Encyclopedia Dramatica, and should have it's own article.

All in all, this article is confusing and not very well written for non-technical people.

Colonel Quaritch (talk) 23:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Fork_(software_development) – Think of a content fork as a fork in the road. There are multiple paths for content development to follow. One faction of the community wishes to take the content in one direction, and another faction wishes to take the content in a different direction. Sherrod wished to have things one way, and the opposition that became .ch wished to go another way. I also agree that .ch shouldn't be described as a mirror. The purpose of a mirror is to increase the accessible of the main website's content in case the main website is down or blocked by China or Iran. A mirror is a snapshot (like a downloadable torrent or file); it isn't a replacement, and it doesn't start independent development. The .ch section is mostly about Ryan since there isn't much information from reliable sources to write much about anything else, unfortunately. The sources we have discuss ED.ch users and not ED.ch articles. In my opinion, the OhInternet section should only describe its relevance to ED's end, which is what's it's doing at the moment. I don't believe that that section should be explained. Perhaps that section should be renamed. I added a link to Fork_(software_development) to the article, but I don't believe that the article should be dumbed down; this isn't Simple. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 00:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Pretty much, yeah. Originally, one could have thought of ED.ch as being a mirror, because that was what it seemed to be. But it's definitely not anymore, it's just a fork. Oh Internet is also a fork, both websites are the offspring of ED after its demise. Silverseren^C 04:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Agree, the use of the word "mirror" is not ideal. A mirror usually has the official endorsement of the main site, but ed.ch is more of a content fork, even though it is hosting old material from ed.com.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 05:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that OhInternet can be described as a fork. OhInternet took a portion of ED's users; it didn't take ED's content. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 12:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Legal issues!

This page is for issues affecting the article, not of the subject matter directly. Tarc (talk) 01:36, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hi. Does anybody know how I can get in touch with the host of ED.ch? When I write to CloudFlare to make a complaint about their DMCA violation, they give up an IP address that obviously is deliberately set up to lead people adrift. I'm Peter A, an ED "victim" of sorts. Worthwhile legal info definitely needs to be added to this article once Joseph Evers locates it, as it would be very useful for those who wish to use it against ED.92.235.168.144 (talk) 15:38, 7 August 2011 (UTC) WP:NOTAFORUM. By the way, The non-existent Joseph Evers sailed off into the sunset when encyclopediadramatica.com ended in April 2011.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 15:43, 7 August 2011 (UTC) No, he didn't. He just uses a different name. We chat through email. He's kind of helping me by giving up the address of the host. In case you don't know, ED.ch do not obey the law. My only interest in ED stems from the fact I've been blessed with a page on there.92.235.168.144 (talk) You can only DMCA stuff that's copyrighted to you, the written content on articles is not yours. --♣thayora♣ 00:36, 8 August 2011 (UTC) May I ask what email you were using to contact him? Mwalimu1 (talk) 01:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)