Portal of Evil

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This article is about the web directory. For the Fighting Fantasy gamebook, see Portal of Evil (Fighting Fantasy).

Portal of Evil (POE) is a web directory co-founded by Chet Faliszek (of Old Man Murray) and K. Thor Jensen, and based in the Seattle area (formerly Cleveland, Ohio). Portal of Evil can be considered a spinoff of Faliszek's earlier site, Old Man Murray, as many of the staff members and early forum posters migrated from Old Man Murray's forums. Unlike more general web directories such as Yahoo! or Google Directory, POE specializes in unusual, insane, and otherwise interesting websites; its creator has described it as "Yahoo for the strange"^[1]. The site also provides popular discussion forums, for users to discuss the listed sites.

The term "evil" in the site's name is somewhat of a comic exaggeration, as the listed sites mostly comprise the uncommon sexual fetishes^[2], paranoid conspiracy theories^[3], general eccentricity (e.g. Time Cube)^[4], teenage angst^[5], and otherwise normal sites with exceedingly bad web design^[6]. Sites are nominated for inclusion by readers and selected by a team of editors, sometimes with the help of a preliminary vote open to all users.

Portal of Evil first came to nationwide attention when Faliszek exposed the spyware included with the Audio Galaxy media player ^[1] on the site. Since then, both PoE and its sister site, PoE-News, have often broken stories and drawn attention to figures that would later receive mass media attention, such as Kenneth Eng.

1 Content
2 Affiliates
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Content

Portal of Evil provides a forum for each website listed, as well as extra forums for general discussion^[7]. Forumgoers are given loose reins: as long as a thread begins on-topic, posters are generally free to move on to other topics or flame other posters. The largest flamewars tend to occur when a site's webmaster or users discover their site's listing and, offended by the comments, begin posting in its defense. In spite of Forum Posting Rule 8, which states "Play nice. This is all in fun and never taken anyone serious." [1], forum users often post comments which site owners regard as malicious.

Webmasters of listed sites often do not discover that they have been listed. This is due to the restriction placed on Portal of Evil users, informally dubbed the "Prime Directive" or "PD", which states that users of the site may not contact or communicate with the owners of listed sites in any way with the single exception of PoE's own hosted forums, under threat of banning^[8]. The reason for the Prime Directive is that any contact with the site in question could irrevocably alter it and perhaps cause it to disappear from the web altogether, denying future readers of the Portal their enjoyment.

[edit] Affiliates

Portal of Evil has spawned several related sites.

POE News is a news portal of user-submitted links to interesting and unusual articles from media outlets across the globe, somewhat like a more liberal-leaning Drudge Report. POE News also features busy discussion forums, in its case one for each news item. Recent additions to POE News include user forums, allowing registered users a place to post about personal or otherwise off-topic subjects, and two new sections for news submissions: The Buzz, covering recent journals and blogs, and POETV, covering television, movie, music, video game, and celebrity news. Another idea currently being phased in is a section where users can create discussion forums for any specific item in the same categories as POETV.

Bidboy follows on the general theme, pointing to unusual and exotic auctions on eBay.

Evil Email offers email accounts at over 100 domain names, many of them humorous or offensive.

POE Hosting offers web hosting and domain registration.

Do Not Reply is a blog run by Chet Faliszek, about the antics of spammers and spyware makers who render web/email administration difficult, and companies who thoughtlessly and very insecurely use his domain (donotreply.com) in the reply fields of internal e-mails.

POE Sports was created in 2004, and is a POE News-like site devoted to irreverent coverage of sports-related stories. The site runs a fantasy football league with a twist: the winning participant is the one that drafts the lowest-performing players (Kordell Stewart is particularly prized), with bonus points awarded for players prone to disciplinary and legal problems. While the fantasy football was popular, the discussion forums have not generated the same traffic levels as Portal of Evil or POE News.

Wicked Small Games, also created in 2004, is a site where users are encouraged to submit (mostly) free Flash or downloadable games they find interesting and/or fun, so that they can be played by, rated, and commented on by other users.

POE TV appeared in 2005; it is a website similar to Wicked Small Games where the idea is to submit and discuss video clips, most originating from Google Video or YouTube. While Wicked Small Games and POE TV have both drawn most of their user base from Portal of Evil, the discussion is somewhat more subdued since the aim of both sites is to be "safe for work".