Susning.nu
Encyclopedia
Susning.nu was a Swedish language
wiki
, started in October 2001 by Lars Aronsson
(also the founder of Project Runeberg
). In its first three years (2001–2004), Susning.nu ran as an open wiki that anyone could edit. Susning didn't have a pronounced ambition and could perhaps be compared in scope to Everything2
; Aronsson's stated original aim for Susning was "to make it into whatever the users want it to be". As such, Susning was an encyclopedia
, a dictionary
, and a discussion forum
about any concept of interest to its users. Because of this, Susning grew and became Sweden
's biggest and the world's next biggest wiki. In April 2004, Susning had over 60,000 articles on various topics, which was more than any Swedish wiki at that time. During its first few years it was in direct competition with the Swedish Wikipedia
. However, because of the website's popularity, Susning was highly affected by vandals. In attempt at preventing vandalism, many efforts were made by Susning's founder Lars Aronsson, which were mostly unsuccessful. Users who regularly edited at Susning were called susare.
Since January 14, 2005, the Swedish Wikipedia is bigger than Susning.nu.
In August 2009, access to Susning.nu was shut down entirely. No explanation for this was ever given.
and functioned as part of his personal website. It changed to Susning.nu on September 29, and was released on October 1. During October that year, Susning.nu was indexed by the bigger web search engine
s, and the article collection firmly increased. In one year, Susning.nu grew with 10,000 articles, and more features were added. Among them were link statistics for all pages, and date searching which automatically generated dates and search-links in several languages. The first edit war broke out on July 31, 2002.
Susning used a heavily-modified version of UseModWiki
as its wiki engine. The domain name .nu
, which belongs to the 260 km² island of Niue
but which is sold primarily to foreigners, was chosen because it means "now" in Swedish (as well as Danish
and Dutch
). "Skaffa dig en Susning.nu" was the slogan
of Susning and translates to "Get a clue.now". The standard top level domain for Sweden
is .se
.
was that Susning did not have any voluntary administrators who could assist in blocking vandals; the only person who could do that on Susning was Lars Aronsson. As Susning grew, the issue with vandalism
became bigger. In December 2003, Susning was affected by a vandal who had automatized their activity through a script
. In just a few minutes, thousands of articles were deleted. Several users were forced to spend hours restoring them. The issues increased even further with vandals who added pornographic
images and made the site inaccessible. The issues with vandalism were practically going on daily. To aid removal of vandalism and discoveries of vandalism, a "karma
system" was added on February 22, 2004. The system derailed fairly soon, as the karma only could decrease. Because of this, even the most established "susare" were affected by bad karma. The karma system was shut down on March 25, 2004.
As a last attempt at preventing vandalism, the ability to see images was shut down entirely on April 5, 2004. However, a couple of days later it was possible to add images from certain chosen domain name
s. Due to a bug
in the system, there were ways to evade this, which the vandals utilised. The bug was fixed on April 15, 2004, but a few minutes later that day, all editing on Susning.nu was shut down. Aronsson announced that the editing abilities would be shut down until a solution to the vandalism issues had been found, and that a password system would be imposed. No details were given for the time being. A couple dozen of logged in "susare" had edited a fairly huge amount of articles since the password lock was imposed.
After the imposing of the password lock, Susning became a more inactive project, and a dozen users made almost all edits. In March 2004, before the password system was imposed, articles were saved approximately 36,000 times. In May, articles were saved approximately 1,600 times, which is just a few percent of the activity in March 2004. On May 11, 2004, editing on Susning.nu was temporarily opened for non-logged in users as well. But after just 18 hours, vandalism had once again become such a big problem that the ability for non-logged in editing was once again shut down. In March 2006, editing by non-logged in users was opened on Sunday afternoons between 12:00–16:00. A year later, editing between 06:00–07:00 each day was enabled as well. Overall it worked well but with a bit of vandalism. In summer 2008, the website was affected by a persistent spammer
who used proxy server
s to spam different articles with English advertisement links. In April 2009, this forced Aronsson to remove the daily editing abilities between 06:00–07:00. The editing abilities during Sunday afternoons, however, continued to be open despite returning spam attacks. In April 2009, very few users still created and edited articles on the website.
where he saved links regarding, for example, Google
and Wikipedia
.
ed by their submitters (the right to modify was said to be implicit in the site's function). This in turn meant that third parties, such as Wikipedia editors, cannot legally use Susning.nu materials contributed by others without permission. It also means that Susning.nu depended solely on Lars Aronsson's willingness to continue the project.
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
, started in October 2001 by Lars Aronsson
Lars Aronsson
Lars Erik Aronsson is a Swedish programmer and consultant, and the founder of two Swedish web sites: the free electronic book archive Project Runeberg and the Swedish language wiki Susning.nu....
(also the founder of Project Runeberg
Project Runeberg
Project Runeberg is an initiative patterned after Project Gutenberg that publishes freely available electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries...
). In its first three years (2001–2004), Susning.nu ran as an open wiki that anyone could edit. Susning didn't have a pronounced ambition and could perhaps be compared in scope to Everything2
Everything2
Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
; Aronsson's stated original aim for Susning was "to make it into whatever the users want it to be". As such, Susning was an encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....
, a dictionary
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
, and a discussion forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
about any concept of interest to its users. Because of this, Susning grew and became Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
's biggest and the world's next biggest wiki. In April 2004, Susning had over 60,000 articles on various topics, which was more than any Swedish wiki at that time. During its first few years it was in direct competition with the Swedish Wikipedia
Swedish Wikipedia
The Swedish Wikipedia is the Swedish language edition of Wikipedia. It was the third edition of Wikipedia, started in May 2001 alongside German Wikipedia, after English Wikipedia and Catalan Wikipedia...
. However, because of the website's popularity, Susning was highly affected by vandals. In attempt at preventing vandalism, many efforts were made by Susning's founder Lars Aronsson, which were mostly unsuccessful. Users who regularly edited at Susning were called susare.
Since January 14, 2005, the Swedish Wikipedia is bigger than Susning.nu.
In August 2009, access to Susning.nu was shut down entirely. No explanation for this was ever given.
Susning starts
Susning.nu was started on August 31, 2001, by Lars AronssonLars Aronsson
Lars Erik Aronsson is a Swedish programmer and consultant, and the founder of two Swedish web sites: the free electronic book archive Project Runeberg and the Swedish language wiki Susning.nu....
and functioned as part of his personal website. It changed to Susning.nu on September 29, and was released on October 1. During October that year, Susning.nu was indexed by the bigger web search engine
Web search engine
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...
s, and the article collection firmly increased. In one year, Susning.nu grew with 10,000 articles, and more features were added. Among them were link statistics for all pages, and date searching which automatically generated dates and search-links in several languages. The first edit war broke out on July 31, 2002.
Susning used a heavily-modified version of UseModWiki
UseModWiki
UseModWiki is a wiki engine written in the Perl programming language. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Pages in UseModWiki are stored in ordinary files, not in a relational database. Something similar to the interface can be seen in MediaWiki with the classic skin.- History...
as its wiki engine. The domain name .nu
.nu
.nu is the Internet country code top-level domain assigned to the island state of Niue. It was one of the first ccTLDs to be marketed to the Internet at large as an alternative to the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org...
, which belongs to the 260 km² island of Niue
Niue
Niue , is an island country in the South Pacific Ocean. It is commonly known as the "Rock of Polynesia", and inhabitants of the island call it "the Rock" for short. Niue is northeast of New Zealand in a triangle between Tonga to the southwest, the Samoas to the northwest, and the Cook Islands to...
but which is sold primarily to foreigners, was chosen because it means "now" in Swedish (as well as Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
). "Skaffa dig en Susning.nu" was the slogan
Slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...
of Susning and translates to "Get a clue.now". The standard top level domain for Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
is .se
.se
.se is the Internet country code top-level domain for Sweden . The top domain is operated by .SE , but domains must be registered through one of the approved registrars. .SE is a foundation and is managed on the basis of its charter of foundation and its statutes...
.
Issues with vandalism
A significant difference to the Swedish WikipediaSwedish Wikipedia
The Swedish Wikipedia is the Swedish language edition of Wikipedia. It was the third edition of Wikipedia, started in May 2001 alongside German Wikipedia, after English Wikipedia and Catalan Wikipedia...
was that Susning did not have any voluntary administrators who could assist in blocking vandals; the only person who could do that on Susning was Lars Aronsson. As Susning grew, the issue with vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
became bigger. In December 2003, Susning was affected by a vandal who had automatized their activity through a script
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
. In just a few minutes, thousands of articles were deleted. Several users were forced to spend hours restoring them. The issues increased even further with vandals who added pornographic
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
images and made the site inaccessible. The issues with vandalism were practically going on daily. To aid removal of vandalism and discoveries of vandalism, a "karma
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
system" was added on February 22, 2004. The system derailed fairly soon, as the karma only could decrease. Because of this, even the most established "susare" were affected by bad karma. The karma system was shut down on March 25, 2004.
As a last attempt at preventing vandalism, the ability to see images was shut down entirely on April 5, 2004. However, a couple of days later it was possible to add images from certain chosen domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
s. Due to a bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
in the system, there were ways to evade this, which the vandals utilised. The bug was fixed on April 15, 2004, but a few minutes later that day, all editing on Susning.nu was shut down. Aronsson announced that the editing abilities would be shut down until a solution to the vandalism issues had been found, and that a password system would be imposed. No details were given for the time being. A couple dozen of logged in "susare" had edited a fairly huge amount of articles since the password lock was imposed.
After the imposing of the password lock, Susning became a more inactive project, and a dozen users made almost all edits. In March 2004, before the password system was imposed, articles were saved approximately 36,000 times. In May, articles were saved approximately 1,600 times, which is just a few percent of the activity in March 2004. On May 11, 2004, editing on Susning.nu was temporarily opened for non-logged in users as well. But after just 18 hours, vandalism had once again become such a big problem that the ability for non-logged in editing was once again shut down. In March 2006, editing by non-logged in users was opened on Sunday afternoons between 12:00–16:00. A year later, editing between 06:00–07:00 each day was enabled as well. Overall it worked well but with a bit of vandalism. In summer 2008, the website was affected by a persistent spammer
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
who used proxy server
Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
s to spam different articles with English advertisement links. In April 2009, this forced Aronsson to remove the daily editing abilities between 06:00–07:00. The editing abilities during Sunday afternoons, however, continued to be open despite returning spam attacks. In April 2009, very few users still created and edited articles on the website.
Opinions
An aired opinion was that Susning's status as a one-man project on the technical side was a big aberration. Some meant that divided responsibility of the site probably would've meant increased innovation tact, bigger predictability and better communication between technicians and "susare". Lars Aronsson clarified that he saw Susning.nu as his own project and that he was not interested in letting others control it. After the imposed editing on Sunday afternoons only, Aronsson himself used Susning mostly as a logbookLogbook
A logbook was originally a book for recording readings from the chip log, and is used to determine the distance a ship traveled within a certain amount of time...
where he saved links regarding, for example, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
.
Advertisement
Unlike its main competitor, the Swedish Wikipedia, Susning.nu placed advertisements on some of its articles. It also had no license agreement, which meant that the contributions remained copyrightCopyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
ed by their submitters (the right to modify was said to be implicit in the site's function). This in turn meant that third parties, such as Wikipedia editors, cannot legally use Susning.nu materials contributed by others without permission. It also means that Susning.nu depended solely on Lars Aronsson's willingness to continue the project.
Further reading
- Lars Aronsson: Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website. Experience from susning.nu's first nine months in service. Presented on November 7, 2002, at the ELPUB 2002 conference in Karlovy Vary http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/elpub02/, and printed in: João Álvaro Carvalho, Arved Hübler, Ana Alice Baptista (editors), Elpub 2002. Technology Interactions. Proceedings of the 6th International ICCC/IFIP Conference on Electronic Publishing held in Karlovy VaryKarlovy VaryKarlovy Vary is a spa city situated in western Bohemia, Czech Republic, on the confluence of the rivers Ohře and Teplá, approximately west of Prague . It is named after King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370...
, Czech RepublicCzech RepublicThe Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, 6-8 November, 2002, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, 2002, ISBN 3-89700-357-0, pages 27-37. Online copy.
External links
- Susning.nu on Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
s Wayback MachineWayback MachineThe Wayback Machine is a digital time capsule created by the Internet Archive non-profit organization, based in San Francisco, California. It is maintained with content from Alexa Internet. The service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the Archive calls a "three...