We start with this new VICE article, which actually isn't a hit piece:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... win-online
This is what makes ED so fascinating as a case study, a record of social media's awkward adolescence before it was marketed to more mainstream users as closely-monitored and Zuckerbergian. This is why, as a journalist, I cannot defend Encyclopaedia Dramatica, but I cannot wholly condemn it either. Without this record, writing about the history of internet culture would often be impossible.
That's basically what I was saying years ago. I said, over and over, that ED could not be simply dismissed as a "troll haven" because it still held some of the only remaining traces of ugly Wikipedia squabbles from the early years. Not to mention ancient Livejournal crap and assorted long-deleted idiocy from DeviantArt, 4chan, YouTube, Something Awful, Twitter, FB etc. No one listened to me.
I'd post this on Wikipediocracy and rub their noses in it but they are so far gone up their own asses they'd probably delete it and pretend it didn't happen......and that is why ED is a "necessary evil". The web today is chopped up into creepy little empires that censor themselves constantly. It needs a "sort-of neutral archive" (and I don't mean the Internet Archive). As you know, WO people accused me of "evil" for daring to update some of ED's badly dated Wikipedia content. I don't see THEM doing much to document WP history anywhere--all they seem to want is to get back into Wikipedia to diddle it like a giant clit.
Not that any of this matters--ED will probably go under thanks to the lawsuit (and Zaiger's chronic inability to pay the bills for whatever reason). Many of the admins have been doxxed by pissed-off nerds in the past few years; they can't hide anymore. It is possible to be dickish to people, but you have to document it and be ready to defend it. That was why I rewrote their miserable FBI article with "actual facts". It's easier to mock power abusers that way. The facts are plenty bad enough. (Go ahead, ask some FBI employees about Ted Gunderson. I can almost guarantee they will change the subject.)