Reception
The website received mainstream media attention after Jason Fortuny used Encyclopædia Dramatica to post photographs, e-mails and phone numbers from 176 responses to a Craigslist advertisement he posted in 2006, in which he posed as a woman seeking sexual encounters with dominant men. The incident was addressed in a blog hosted at Wired News, where the blogger proposes that Encyclopædia Dramatica may be the "world's lamest wiki".
In 2006, "a well-known band of trolls" emailed Encyclopædia Dramatica's creator, DeGrippo, demanding edits to the protected (i.e. locked) article describing them. After she refused to do so, the trolls ordered taxis, pizzas, escort services and sent death threats and threats of rape to DeGrippo's apartment.
Encyclopædia Dramatica became a "favourite target for critics, who accuse Anonymous of propagating hate," for allowing alleged members of the group to sometimes use the website as a platform. Through this association, Encyclopædia Dramatica received incidental coverage when actions by members of Anonymous led to the arrest of an alleged pedophile, when they demonstrated against Scientology in London; when a member of the group broke into the e-mail account of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and when a member of Anonymous claimed credit for an attack on the virtual Second Life headquarters of former presidential candidate John Edwards. The convergence of Encyclopædia Dramatica with the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology was noted by technology journalist Julian Dibbell.
On December 16, 2008, Encyclopædia Dramatica won the People's Choice Winners category for favorite wiki in Mashable's 2nd Annual Open Web Awards, with wikiHow as the runner-up and Wikipedia coming in 3rd.
In December 2008, a message on Encyclopædia Dramatica asked for donations and claimed that the website was under attack and had lost its advertisers.
In January 2010, the Encyclopædia Dramatica article Aboriginal was removed from the search engine results of Google Australia, after a lawyer filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission saying its content was racist. A search on terms related to the article produced a message that one of the results has been removed after a legal request relating to Australia's Racial Discrimination Act (RDA). The publicity surrounding this served to raise the profile of the site. In March 2010, it was reported that the Australian Human Rights Commission had notified the site by e-mail that according to Australian law, the article Aboriginal could be in breach of Sections 18C and 18D of its RDA.
In late August 2010, activist Daniel Brandt requested the deletion of an article about him from Encyclopedia Dramatica, and Brandt came to believe that Sherrod DeGrippo chose to ignore his request. As a result, Brandt aided a friend of his in starting a blog that was critical of Encyclopedia Dramatica. The blog hosted the personal information of staff members from encyclopediadramatica.com, and its anonymous publisher asserted that the blog was run by a watchdog group focused on "the misdeeds of the people associated with the old and new Encyclopedia Dramatica." The site's maintainer also claimed to have consoled and advised some people who felt that they had been harmed by ED. EncyclopediaDramatica.ch accused Brandt of authoring the blog. Brandt denied operating the blog and insisted that he was only a "researcher and advisor" for those managing the blog, whose identity was not known to him. Garrett E. Moore described it as a "stalker blog" and contended that Brandt had pressured DeGrippo into closing EncyclopediaDramatica.com, although DeGrippo has not confirmed such claims. In May 2011, Moore published Brandt's contact information on an IRC channel, and Brandt began to receive email spam. Brandt responded by contacting the workplace of Moore's fiancée. According to a sysop from encyclopediadramatica.ch, a complaint was lodged, and it resulted in the temporary removal of encyclopediadramatica.ch's article on Daniel Brandt.
Read more about this topic: Sherrod De Grippo
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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