Screenshot of the main page |
|
| URL | http://www.eksisozluk.com/ |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Registration | Required |
| Available language(s) | Turkish |
| Owner | Sedat Kapanoğlu |
| Created by | Sedat Kapanoğlu and Murat Arslan |
| Launched | 15 February 1999 |
| Current status | Active |
Ekşi Sözlük (Turkish pronunciation: [ecˈʃi søzˈlyc]), or "Ek$i Sözlük" (English: Sour Dictionary) is a collaborative hypertext 'dictionary' based on the concept of Web sites built up on user contribution. [1] However Ekşi Sözlük is not a dictionary in the strict sense; users are not required to write correct information. Ekşi Sözlük is mainly used for entertainment purposes, not for information purposes and founders already pronounce that everything written in the site might be wrong. It is currently one of the biggest online communities in Turkey with over 400,000 registered users.[2] As an online public sphere, Eksi Sozluk is not only utilized by thousands for information sharing on various topics ranging from scientific subjects to everyday life issues, but also used as a virtual socio-political community to communicate disputed political contents and to share personal views. [3]
The website's founder is Sedat Kapanoğlu. He founded the website for communicating with his friends in 1999. Ekşi Sözlük has been successful, many other websites that use this concept has emerged, like İtü Sözlük in Turkish. [4]
Enrollment periods to the dictionary and the criteria of acceptance are changeable.[5] Eksi Sozluk doesn’t accept new authors regularly; there are specific times in which new authors are accepted. There is a waiting period for new members, who want to become author, in which they have to post at least 10 entries. All entries are inspected according to the dictionary rules and their quality, and if they are found good enough, the new user becomes an author. However, this process might take from months to years.
Newcomer, Newcomer awaiting approval, Registered reader, Praetors, Hacivat are some of the user roles in Eksi Sozluk.[6]
Since there are no restrictions on entries, moderators and informers are responsible for catching and deleting any inappropriate entry. Informers are usually the older generation authors who report any bad content to moderators for examination. If the moderators find the entries inappropriate, they are deleted.
Site statistics[7] are updated on daily basis. There are 300 to 400 daily posts on average for each author. More than half of the authors are at the age of 18-25 and the number of male users is more than two times of those females.