Wikipedia Systems Outside Wikipedia: The Bad Webcomics Wiki

One of those lesser Wikis that isn't a Wikia site, the Bad Webcomics Wiki has been around since 2009 at it's present location, but the previous version goes back to 2008, when it was built on Wikidot (it is now a Shoutwiki site.) It was part of the "Web 2.0" lurch towards doing criticism websites of anything and everything; their wheelhouse was/is online-only comics (unless the artist works double shifts at Kinkos to pay for some crap web publisher to process their website into 10,000 softbound cartoon collections that wind up in thrift stores within a decade.) One of the better people involved in webcomic reviews at the time was John Solomon (alias; name unknown), who ran Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, and his reviews were put on BWW without his permission. The site admin (a standard non-entity called "The Luigiian") took everything Solomon down. Later they changed websites, and the entire crew running the place either changed names or found other people to do the job. And this is where Oddguy comes in.

The Encylopaedia Dramatica connection

Oddguy is an Israeli (self-proclaimed, real identity unknown), who has been editing Encyclopaedia Dramatica since 2011. His adminship of BWW is prominently displayed among the dancing Gary Busey heads on his user page. How he became the bossman of BWW is unknown because the previous version of the website's forum has been deleted. What we can say is that on the issue of Carlos Latuff, Brazilian freelance political cartoonist who is pro-Palestinian, Oddguy has repeatedly been involved with the ED article on Latuff, and he wrote about the artist on BWW. As with most of the articles on BWW, the Latuff one has not been substantially changed (excluding vandalism) in years; both the ED and BWW articles on the cartoonist are extremely negative. On the forum Oddguy admitted the following:

"It is true the review, like many of our reviews, is dated. That is because, even though we call ourselves The Bad Webcomics Wiki, we are mostly a comedy review site. This is a wiki mostly in the sense that it acts as a list and that anyone can edit it. But in most respects it is a wiki in name only."

Then why not call it the "Bad Webcomics Beatdown" and do it blog-style? Because Dramatica started off mocking Livejournal blogs, the only other viable way of presenting written information online in long form is the wiki. So BWW is marked by ED, which is the bastard son of Wikipedia, and thus Jimbo's shadow faintly hangs over the place.

But does anybody care?

Not really.....outside of TV Tropes doing a running commentary from 2009 to now, only the artists reviewed seem to notice. The only one BWW won't talk about is Dave Cheung, who got so angry at their fair review of his grossout woman-killing comic U.S. Angel Corps, he either DDOSed the site into the ground or got Wikidot to delete the review through some copyright claim, I can't remember. Now that Cheung no longer has a website for any of his comics (though they float around on porno ripper sites) he may no longer be a threat.

(Yes, John Solomon has links to the Something Awful website/messageboard. No, I did not think it was important to mention outside of the link.)