Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Encyclopedia Dramatica deletes racist articles

Encyclopedia Dramatica, a wiki website dedicated to the documenting internet culture and internet humor, has recently deleted two articles, "Jews" and "Niggers". This comes as a shock to most users, as the site has been built upon its irreverent and alway vicious view of everything, ranging from criticizing Wikipedia, 4chan, pop culture and every race and religion. Upon inquiring about the deletions on the forums by making a thread, the thread was somewhat predictably locked


Meanwhile, ED begs for donations, stating:

"It’s controversial, uncensored and an amazing repository of internet history. In order to stay that way, we need a little help."



Users have reported being banned for protesting the deletion of their beloved controversial articles on the wiki, mirroring the unheard of banhammers on /b/ for posting racism, as I covered in my previous post. The Jews page redirects to an innocuous "Happy Hanukkah" image, and has been locked from edits, and the niggers article has been fully deleted. 

The website's tongue-in-cheek style of writing made fun of just about every topic it ever covered, and race certainly was no exception. But a few days after 4chan deletes entire boards for racism and systematically bans users for racism on /b/, Encyclopedia Dramatica censors itself, and this raises questions as to how they are related. Both are hubs of internet culture and memes, and both have been notorious for their offensive and uncensored content. Could this be related? Is ED trying to become Dramaticabook to compete with Chanbook? ED seems to have a related "safe for work" spinoff wiki called "whatport80.com". It is possible that the owner has taken a profitability lesson in mainstreaming from 4chan, and wants to hump on the same train. What do you think? Tell me rumors/conspiracies/ideas in comments.

You can see links the previous state of the pages for "Jews" here: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20100102012844/http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Jews

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