As additional insight into the phenomenon that is ek$i sözlük, it should be noted that the noder, SSG, is none other than the founder of the captioned site.
Ek$i sözlük has become an icon insofar as Turkish Internet users are concerned. It is a site built up by user contribution, not that dissimilar to this one. Founded in early 1999, it is said to have been inspired by Everything and various other user-based sites. It's a subdomain of http://www.sourtimes.org and can be directly reached at http://sozluk.sourtimes.org. Members from all over the world log on to remind themselves of the whiff of their way of life back home, while those who dwell in Turkey are communified by way thereof. This, in fact, has become its raison d'etre, with information having taken a back seat as its objective. What is known on E2 as nodermeets are organized regularly with at least a few taking place on a given weekend in various Turkish cities.
Although there isn't anything akin to the Cool User Picks section, there are recurring entry titles to which additions are regularly made. To translate a few:
How it differs
The divide between E2 and ES as an information database is quite wide, especially with respect to content. If you refresh the website at five minute intervals via the "today" button, you will notice that entries pour in by the tens. On average, the today list will contain over 2000 entries at the end of a given day, with quite a number of them being posted under specific entries as people seem to feel obliged to comment on anything and everything. Daily events, all sorts of GTKYN's which are referred to as UKTE's and whatnot are strewn across this junkyard of a site.
Factual is dead, long live the elite who love to muck about.
It is hard to imagine the site being any different, and, admittedly, it is the most fun a Turk can have online. Indeed, Turks like to socialize through all available mediums without having constraints placed upon them. People who cannot afford to feed their kids somehow manage to afford and subscribe to cellular phones; Turkish ISP's are notorious on Internet Relay Chat for being banned from a variety of servers, etc. Ek$i sözlük will probably evolve in some way or another, but it will essentially remain as it is, with UKTE's making up the majority of WU's/entries.
SSG recently undertook to publish a sizeable portion of the site in book form. Some now view prospective future publications as a motivating element while posting entries. This may be the sole moderating force since ek$i sözlük users (a.k.a. susers) do not enjoy the privilege of up/downvoting entries, which, given the barrage of daily yacking, would not be feasible anyway.
The site is currently rumoured to be nearing three million entries.
I also used to contribute to this site. But the dubious moderators one day deemed, without reason, that I should be locked out. I did, however, leave my mark: http://sozluk.sourtimes.org/show.asp?t=frank+n+furter
Update:SSG has very recently taken pity on me and reinstated my user status.
Following the posting of the above node ek$i sözlük did indeed get its very own voting system. In contrast to our Voting/Experience System, ES's voting widget involves a three-tier panel below all entries comprised of buttons labelled as follows:
- "$ukela"
The word itself is derived from the chocolate spread "Chokella" and is the basically the equivalent of an upvote.
- "öeehh"
It is my understanding that this doesn't really do anything except maybe wipe out both a $ukela and a cok kotu vote.
- "cok kotu"
The dreaded downvote.
Although this voting system is in place, it does not in any way lead to the nuking of entries. It is merely a yardstick by which each user can measure others' positive/negative feedback.