The Other Wikipedia

Whenever I hear about what a great community-edited, user-contributed site Wikipedia is, I think about the unsung site that's just as much of a success: Urban Dictionary. Where else can you find definitions for meh and cool beans and thousands of obscure sexual practices of varying degrees of debauchery?

I guess because there's a lot of vulgarities and obscenities, and because it's a commercial site, it doesn't get a lot of press. And the way that people writing definitions adopt a faux-erudite tone when writing them is a little bit annoying. But damn if Urban Dictionary isn't entertaining, and it meets a need just as neatly as Wikipedia does.

I'm Anil Dash, and I've been blogging here since 1999, writing about how culture is made. Contact me at anil@dashes.com, at +1 646 833 8659, or at anildash on Twitter or IM. Find out more »

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