|
Ekşi Sözlük is a collaborative hypertext dictionary that follows almost the same concept as Everything2 or H2G2. The site is in Turkish; the name "Ekşi Sözlük" translates to "Sour Dictionary".
History
Eksi Sozluk was founded on February 15, 1999 with no serious goal except to be an interactive raw information source. The site had no rules, no user accounts. However as the site grew popular a set of rules and moderation mechanisms had to be put in use to handle increasing number of users and entries every day. Conceptually, the site is very similar to H2G2, it has been inspired a lot by Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Currently Eksi Sozluk keeps the position of being the largest and the most popular interactive database about Turkish society. Throughout its growing popularity, it took the interest of press and has been reviewed in many newspapers and TV shows.
Stats
As of December 2004, there were 4,245,398 entries and 7.274 active writers (sozluk user: suser) in the web site. The creator of the site is "ssg". There are 7 moderators who scrutinize and, if needed, modify/delete the entries of the members.
In Ekşi Sözlük, all members are split into six different generations (so far), each signifying the registry date of a particular member. For instance, if a member registered to the site in 1999, s/he is a 1st generation writer, if in 2002, then s/he is a 4th generation writer.
Features
1. The usage of capital letters is omitted.
2. Although it is a Turkish originating site, non-Latin Turkish letters (ç, ı, ğ, ö, ş, ü) are omitted from the titles.
3. The site runs on ASP and Microsoft SQL Server with several custom extensions like near-matches finder for missing titles called "clairvoyance", a proprietary search engine called "hayvan ara".
Sub-Etha
The site features an internal web site network called Sub-Etha which is only open to site members. The sub-sites are built by independent developers and hosted on different locations. Users logged in to Eksi Sozluk can visit those sites without requiring additional member registration or log in procedure. The network include several sites like an art portal called "Sour-FX", a meeting organization and photo-album page called "SourSummitz", the "Eksi Sozluk Museum", an external entry backup facility called "SourLemonade".
Awards
Ekşi Sözlük has won Altin Orumcek Web Contest 2003 Award.
Competition
Since Ekşi Sözlük has not accepted any members for a long time, some groups decided to create similar websites to answer the needs of people who can only read but not write on Ekşi Sözlük. Zibidi Sözlük, which means "nutty dictionary" in Turkish, was the first of the several clones of Ekşi Sözlük that have been established since.
See also: Internet encyclopedia project
| 
