UPDATE: They’ve apparently reached their donation goal..I’m not sure how they’re working that stuff now. This post is a probably a bit outdated.
From an official ED sysop (DrunkenLazyBastard):
Hey folks, I’m an ED Sysop. I figured I’d give you the low down on what’s happening to set the record straight.
Our current problem with money arose from several factors. First and foremost our previous ad company dropped us because of some of the more risque articles.
In the past it generated enough ad revenue to allow us to more or less break even.
We were forced to switch to a shittier ad company (I’m sure you’ve noticed the annoying ads with sound by now) which hardly pays anything.
Secondly, we were the subject of an extensive denial of service attack which ran up our bills and pissed off our host to the point that they nullrouted our server for a day or so.The bottom line is GirlVinyl and Joseph Evers (the owners of the site) have been paying a lot of money out of pocket for the last few months to keep the site afloat, and they just are not able to continue funding it on their own.
Hope that clears some things up, if you have any questions you can leave me a note on my ED user talk page.
cheers
-DLB
PS: we use one of the largest 3rd party companies that deals with online purchases, so at no point do we actually see your info. Hey, we may be trolls hackers and other assorted malcontents, but screwing your own user base is a really dumb idea
Also to explain everyone else’s worries over PayPal and such:
PPS: we’re not using paypal because paypal haets us.They don’t do biz with offensive or pornographic sites, a catagory under which we (proudly) fall under.
-DLB
The reason there’s no news on the ED blog is because the password has been lost and it’s not been retrieved. Once they get it I’m sure it’ll be your one-stop-shop for news.
DONATE to keep it alive! And to keep me from searing your eyes with any more bold text!
Original scare follows…
..or is it? I have to really wonder if this is just a convenient phishing scam, check the screenshot:
Donations? or Scam?
Just happened to see this today while wanting to reread one of my favorite articles (“Wapanese”, if you’re curious)
I would be more inclined to donate (I wouldn’t actually donate but I would consider it more) if it didn’t look so damn cheap. I understand if you’re hacked you have to rush stuff but it just gives off an air of…”I b stealun ya’z monies”
I guess that’s been proven false before though, I mean sometimes people trust the fake sites because they look better than the real ones.
I really do hope they’re not dying, they are an awesome site. I hope too that it’s not a hack. BUT either way I have to admit I don’t feel much pity for them. Wikipedia’s free without ads, why can’t they be? At the very least get rid of those ones that pop up before your page loads or while it loads.
I’m not downplaying the importance of donating to your favorite sites. It is important, especially if you want them to continue without ads and whatnot. It’s just that you should always be 2000% sure you know where your money and info is going.
Even if this is real (and the more this continues the more I doubt it), it could be done sooo much more elegantly. Don’t beg your users for money. Put a link on the pages like Wikipedia does or something..I will give them credit for only selecting an amount you want to donate, it seems a bit more secure but..something still seems amiss. Probably the fact it resembles all those other hacked sites, piss-poor formatting with big bold text.
Lastly, “been attacked and ran out of ads and money”? What…? They want me to donate when they’ve been attacked? How did they run out of money? How did they run out of ads? (there’s no shortage of those online 
)
Be wary about donating. Especially because this time they aren’t using PayPal. According to everyone down there in le comments, that’s the only money-handling system ED has used for donations.
There’s no news on their blog, there hasn’t been since late 2007. The mystery continues. Scooby Doo, where are you? Somebody from ED say something please!
Coincidentally, 4-chan is down as well (even the status page). Related? Probably not. Interesting? Yes, considering how ED has heapfuls of articles about 4chan and its memes.
Yea, that looks a bit odd; I wouldn’t trust it.
Btw, what browser is that? Is it FF just with Japanese?
Yes tis.
I was about to read the part of memes on Encyclopedia Dramatica and then, this happened.
I was worried, but after a couple of seconds, I thought the same as you, it looks odd, maybe it can be a joke or they have been hacked? because that doesn’t look ANYTHING like the ED front page or something.
Then I tried to donate the five dollars, and then it sends you to ED (now it looks like ED actually) but I didn’t finish the process.
What can be happening? I’m agree with you, I hope they’re not closing or anything.
Well I was too scared to try
It looks like what’s happened is they’ve been hacked and the hackers are trying to make it look like ED did this.
Why would it look like the real ED once you got into it? I mean if they were hacked why not just show that page in the first place and put a notice at the top or something.
I don’t think ED did this. Or rather I don’t think they’re asking for donations. They probably did get hacked.
It’s legit… most likely. I donated (which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do) and the payment went to EDRAMA LLC, which is the “company” that owns ED.
I was about to donate, but I’m not going to. They never specify WHAT 3rd party thing is handling their donations, it just redirects to “https://orderpage.ic3.com/hop/orderform.jsp” but there is no actual ic3.com or any logo on the page to suggest what 3rd party site is protecting our financial information. Sorry ED but unless you can give me proof that this is actually going through a reputable 3rd party site then I’m calling bullshit.
Good to know lol-cats-suck (they do btw
) I’m not trying to say that it is a scam or is bad to donate to them, but it could be handled oh so much better.
It seems that if they wanted your money they’d do it much more suavely, like Wikipedia does with the link at the top of articles.
I have trouble seeing what makes them so desperate as to take down the entire front page..If they were actually hacked just put up a notice until it was fixed and then ask for donations. That way we’ll know it’s legitimate.
If they had really been attacked then would they beg for money? That seems…counterintuitive to common sense.
At lolcats-suck: I’m not worried about the donation itself, I’m more worried about what happens to your credit card information once you donate. Is it going through a trust worthy site to be encrypted and locked away? Or is it going into a log file on some hacker’s computer?
It just so happens that 4chan is down (and the status page as well, which is meant to be up even if 4chan is down.)
To anyone thinking of donating: Encyclopedia Dramatica used to use Paypal. I wouldn’t trust anything else, and even then, with the page like that…I’d still not donate. Keep a close eye on your credit card activity.
Interestingly that counter on the page does increase… so maybe they aren’t crappin’ us.
Though hackers are good at stuff like that so.. :/
Even if it is real I still stand that this could be dealt with better. Encyclopedia Dramatica isn’t the pinnacle of professionalism (that’s a lot of the humor), but when it comes to serious business like this it needs to attempt to be.
But are they seriously gonna keep the page like that until they get 5000 smackaroos?
As time is passing, I’m thinking more and more that they’ve been hacked. Why? because all those lack of professionalism with the donation process.
Maybe those hackers are part of the people who hates and want to see Encyclopedia Dramatica out of their lives. Perhaps they’re trying , with this, to make people donate and after that, blame Encyclopedia Dramatica for bad use of their information.
Furthermore, how you can explain that they’re using such low “way” to ask their users money? I’m agree with other comments. Personally I belive that if ED needs money, the can use other ways and not to use a single page that DOESN’T ALLOW TO NAVIGATE ITS CONTENT. It has no logic.
That’s just a thought.
To users of credit card, keep an eye on your counts.
@Lerato
That’s pretty much what I’m thinking. They’ve been hacked and they can’t do anything about it and it’s making ED look bad.
Nice art on DeviantArt btw
@Jamey
Yep, 4chan is borked. I just checked and it so is not working. But.. are they related? I guess that could explain the many many ED articles about 4chan but :/
Could this be *gasp* the Great Internet Crash of 2007? Except in 2008 of course.
Ah, Atylmo, thanks a lot for your comment! *bows*
Muchas gracias señor!
I hope they solve this problem soon. A boring day without ED is a REALLY boring day.
I was about to donate, then I decided to check out that third party site – since it does look very cheap. I found nothing on ic3.com, however… ic3.gov is the website for the “internet police”.
ED has had a donate button for ages, and apparently they’ve used paypal. They would never put up such a cheap looking page. This is either a massive troll, or they’ve been hacked. But if they had been hacked, the problem should’ve been solved by now I think.
@Lerato And it’s also a *gasp* productive one. Can’t have that can we?
Like I said though I don’t know it’s been hacked, but something seems waaaay off. Hopefully nobody will kill me if I’m wrong.
But I agree wholeheartedly with what you said, “they shouldn’t block the content”.
@legne
Now that’s what I call irony! (or was it on purpose-ony?) I agree, how in the world could it take this long to fix if it was a hack? There are thousands of users on there, surely somebody would know what to do.
Frankly I hope it is a hack, sort of. At least then we’d know that ED was still sane. As sane as ED can be anyway.
Well everyone it wasn’t a scam. But it WAS a good lesson in Web design
Hey folks, I’m an ED Sysop. I figured I’d give you the low down on what’s happening to set the record straight.
Our current problem with money arose from several factors. First and foremost our previous ad company dropped us because of some of the more risque articles.
In the past it generated enough ad revenue to allow us to more or less break even.
We were forced to switch to a shittier ad company (I’m sure you’ve noticed the annoying ads with sound by now) which hardly pays anything.
Secondly, we were the subject of an extensive denial of service attack which ran up our bills and pissed off our host to the point that they nullrouted our server for a day or so.
The bottom line is GirlVinyl and Joseph Evers (the owners of the site) have been paying a lot of money out of pocket for the last few months to keep the site afloat, and they just are not able to continue funding it on their own.
Hope that clears some things up, if you have any questions you can leave me a note on my ED user talk page.
cheers
-DLB
PS: we use one of the largest 3rd party companies that deals with online purchases, so at no point do we actually see your info. Hey, we may be trolls hackers and other assorted malcontents, but screwing your own user base is a really dumb idea
Thanks very much DrunkenLazyBastard. I sincerely apologize if I had given a negative impression of the site or any of your members. I was just confused and in times like this I’d rather be too cautious than not enough.
I didn’t mean to say that your donation page looked bad or anything either, so please don’t take my comments to heart. It’s just that it did look like something had gone wrong. I’m a paranoid person anyway
We really do appreciate the info. If there’s anything I can do to help (I can’t donate though, I’m only a high school student, no credit card, etc
) lemme know.
I really do hope you manage to keep the site up. It’s superbly entertaining. Good luck! And even if you do need to take it down again we’ll know it’s for real. So our fears are neutralized, feel free to do what you need.
(actually keep screwing up, this post got me mad traffic mwahaha)
PPS: we’re not using paypal because paypal haets us.They don’t do biz with offensive or pornographic sites, a catagory under which we (proudly) fall under.
-DLB
re:atylmo
lol it’s alright. The ad page was cobbled together quickly and with minimal effort. I’m not surprised some people thought it was a scam/hoax/hack etc.
I’m trying to remember who has the damn password for our blog, that shit hasn’t been updated in ages and right now would be as good a time as any
So you changed? Everyone else said you used PayPal.. I don’t know, I just discovered ED fairly recently. Honestly I barely understand what it’s about.
Apparently PayPal isn’t EDPal is it..shame really. I don’t find it offensive at all ^^. Even though I fit like all the stereotypes it’s hilarious.
Once again I can’t apologize enough if I made the situation look worse than it was. Sorry sorry sorry. Sorry. Sorry infinity! sorry.
atylmo:
nah you didn’t it’s all good. honestly the situation is pretty grim right now, we’re doing what we can behind the scenes to get this thing under control.
also: we haven’t used paypal in over a year at least, they dropped us a long while ago.
Get the damn password man!
It’s…kinda important. Yeah.
I figured that’s what had happened, like I said “I understand that when you get hacked you have to rush stuff”
although you weren’t actually hacked.
I don’t (totally) hate ads. It’s just that…it’s hard to balance them you know? I find it hard to believe that any ad agency could get away with those..things. They have SOUND and don’t pay crap.That’s the most unbalanced thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like a taxi that charges fare just to sit in, let alone go anywhere. It’s unfair to you and obnoxious to viewers. I guess I didn’t realize that people wouldn’t put ads on there for you due to the content. Sorryz.
Oh well at least this restores my faith that ad companies have morals.
I think the person with the password is a Sysop who dropped off the face of the earth a few months ago. lol.
Oh hey, if it isn’t too much to ask would you mind making a note in your post of my comment explaining the situation? Since your blog is one of the first hits google gets when searching for ED it might help clear things up for some people
hmm… can I do anything? I’m willing to try to help. I can’t crack the password though. Don’t even go thar.
See this is why you need to be prepared ;P So a random blogger doesn’t come along and make y’all look bad.
Oh sure. I didn’t realize I was that high up.
“See this is why you need to be prepared ;P So a random blogger doesn’t come along and make y’all look bad.”
lol, I don’t think there is anything that could make us look worse than how most people already see us.
Thanks for hookin’ it up.
Vou are very velcome. I’m here to help. Lemme know if there’s more I can do.
I don’t see the site as bad at all. Arguably I’m not most people but eh it’s all in good spirits.
Danke, you’re fealty is much appreciated. If you ever need to call in a favor let me know.
As for the site being bad, I think the majority of ‘average’ people would find it offensive. Although that is part of the fun, the people behind the scenes are a rather diverse group of individuals, many of whom mock themselves or personal interests they hold for the sake of the lulz, which to an outsider would appear to be racist/sexist/homophobic etc. In reality we’re just doing it for shits and giggles.
We’re not doing too bad as far as traffic goes. Our current Alexa ranking is 3,939, which is our place in terms of most visited sites on the internet out of tens of millions of pages.
Same here, like I said I guess I fit a lot of the stereotypes but it’s damn funny regardless. I mean obviously I can see why people would be offended, and I admittedly was a bit at first, but once I learned to take it for what it was it was just so good. People need ta loosen up a bit.
Yeah I check Alexa a lot. I’m not even in the top million
I don’t deserve it though, I gots no contents! I ain’t doin’ too bad, out of tens of millions of pages I’m at 7,933,445. The problem is I rarely have interesting stuff to say. Heck you all screwing up gave me the highest 2 days of pageviews I’ve ever had 
“Shits and giggles” is my phavorite phrase btw. It’s hilarious.
Yeah…my first instinct was ’scam.’ My second instinct was, ‘wow, ED finally got hacked…I wonder how many EDiots are going to fall for this and get swindled out of their credit card info?’
To be honest, a tiny bit of healthy paranoia doesn’t hurt. Isn’t it interesting how there weren’t any massive “omg help us we’re about to go under” messages on ED recently, and then suddenly, it’s a bandwidth emergency?
I’m not buying it.
I BET IT WAS THE $CIENTOLOGISTS FAIR GAMING ANONYMOUS FOR THE PROTESTS AND THHINGS BUT WE ARE LEGION WE DO NOT FORGIVE THEY WILL SUFFER FOR ATTACKING OUT BASES
Maybe ED should sell accounts for 10bux, so they could pay for servers AND hookers & blow.
At least now we won’t have Girlvinyl’s fat girl angle shots and ass-kissing articles. The self-satisfaction hanging in the air was making me lightheaded.
All the butthurts are going to have a butthurt party if something doesn’t happen.
[...] Re: Encyclopedia Dramatica is gone forever Encyclopedia Dramatica is dying! atylmo’s Blog [...]
girlvinyl is morbidly obese. maybe if she spent less money on food, she’d be able to keep things running.
i like ED, but im not donating twice is 6 months for questionable reasons.
especially when girlvinyl hasnt so much as gone on a diet. geez.
I’d pay ten bucks to stick it to the scientologists.
[admin edit: Fixed URL]
Seems that IC3.COM has the same registrant than
http://cybersource.com …
Registrant:
CYBERSOURCE CORP.
Blake Burke
1295 Charleston Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
US
Email: kdiekmann@cybersource.com
i do not know them…
ED is having trouble? Now that is fucking hillarious! This is lulz.
@Accipiter..
that was my thought exactly, because it was silent, no news of upcoming donation plans or anything, and then all of a sudden *WHAM*
That’s what made me so suspicious.
Wow I had no idea people saw ED as being that bad.. The incoming links seem to be really rude toward them.
If I knew that I wouldn’t've helped ^^ Ok nah, I’m all for promoting people to donate.
Still..
“Maybe ED should sell accounts for 10bux, so they could pay for servers AND hookers & blow.”
Fuck that noise, the last thing we want to do is act like that greedy jew lowtax at SA.
I actually tried to donate, as ED is one of my favorite sites. I used the credit card with the lowest credit limit just in case, but after entering my details, it said I had entered an invalid payment method. How is that even possible when you select your payment method from their site? So, it’s either a scam or just terribly implemented. I honestly don’t mind donating to keep them up. I tried, folks, and it wouldn’t let me.
Very interesting ED Fan. As I was just telling one of my friends “Just because it isn’t a hack doesn’t mean it’s not a scam”
I don’t mind supporting them either but even in their dire time of need more effort needs to be put into this.
I still get the air of “Give me yo monay!” from them somewhat. It’s cobbled together just to get some moolah, nothing more. Oh well I think they’ve pretty much finally screwed over when they blocked the content again.
I’m sorry DrunkenLazyBastard
Are you sure you didn’t enter in some detail incorrectly? We’ve had no issues with other people. donating.
Good.Im part of the cause to dispose of that offensive site
I have to admit, I don’t really hate the site; it could be better-managed though. It may be contrived but I found genuine humor goodness here and there.
There is a such thing as net neutrality.. and we all need to laugh at ourselves eventually. It’s not any different than you complaining about the site; you’re discriminating against the discriminators.
It’s even like the sarcasm on ED always says: “the internet is for serious business!”.. It can be but it hardly ever is. Might as well have fun with it. they’re not doing anything wrong.. everybody knows it’s meant to be humorous. It’s not like they’re lying about people behind their backs and claiming it to be the truth. The only thing they’re doing is thinking out loud,
I’m not standing up for the site, and granted I don’t know the people behind it. It is quite poorly managed, but hey, it’s just a big, offensive blog in wiki form. Who doesn’t think some of the things they say?
They have been shut down.
I see it VERY difficult for you to prove that you are not a serious White Suprematist website. You invariably speak very negatively against blacks & Jews and show no sympathy whatever about 9/11 and the Holocaust.