Qdb.us
QDB.us is the URL that points to an IRC quote database that has been growing in popularity since the Bash.org moderator strike ended somewhere around the end of the summer of 2004.
However, the site had been created long before the strike even began, modeled after http://www.digdug.cx/quotes.html. The site endorses anti-censorship policies and politics. It is one of the only quote databases to feature Google advertisements.
In early January 2005, qdb.us suffered from long periods of downtime. During the first stage of this downtime, the homepage was accessible, but the database contained errors. During the second stage, visitors of qdb.us were only able to see a test page generated by the web server. Finally the complete site and database was restored and brought back online in February 2005. In a note on the homepage, the administrators stated that the site would, from then on, be more stable, but did not explain the incident.
Features, characteristics and points of criticism
- Batch voting (a user can vote on all quotes on a particular page at once)
- A selection of worst quotes
- A quote can be seen during all stages: pending, approval, and rejected
- Ability to vote on quotes before being they are approved or rejected
- Ability to set one's preferences to a cookie
- Special preferences, such as changing fonts for some aspects of the quotes, hiding already voted-on quotes, reversing the radio buttons
- Google advertisements
- The top list only shows the Top 50 quotes. Some view this as a losing factor versus Bash.org's Top 200 list.
- Quote scores are displayed with two numbers, the first being the quote's absolute score, and the second being the total number of votes. This feature is disliked by some, as when a quote is voted down, the first number decreases while the second increases. However, a quote's score is not a fraction, and a disparity between a quote's absolute score and number of votes merely indicates how many people disliked the quote.
- Lack of popularity. Bash.org is more well-known and consequently gets more quotes.