Encyclopedia Dramatica is Gone: What Happened? (UPDATE)
Encyclopedia Dramatica, the Wikipedia-esque site associated with Internet pranksters Anonymous, seems to be gone. The Twitter and Facebook pages of E.D. suggest that it's over for good. Where did it go? And why is it gone? 
As a commenter on the Daily Wh.at put it, "I have a PhD in Internet, and I call trolling." A quick scan of 4chan's /b/ board, awkwardly conducted in a public coffeeshop, shows that the anonymous /b/ people are talking about it:
And according to a /b/ user in Florida we just spoke to, the rumor on the boards is that Encyclopedia Dramatica ran out of funds. He doubts that it's just a troll; apparently "there had been rumors about them being low on funds. I mean that many pages with so many uploads is bound to cost a lot."
So the Wikipedia of offensive memes is gone for now. It's unclear what kind of agenda whoever removed it has, or whether this means more nefarious troll-related things are coming. If you have any details on what happened to ED, get at us.
Update: Encyclopedia Dramatica is...back? That was easy. But, they've put up a post soliciting money from users, supporting our source's theory that the problem was funds. Then again -- why go away at all, if you were only to come right back? Strange.
They also just tweeted this:
Update: Gawker's Adrian Chen, who spoke to ED's founder, confirms that it was actually just a technical error that put the site out of commission for a while. How...anticlimactic.
via @mattchew03
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