User:Hiphopintel/Hiphopintel

HipHopIntel (Hip Hop Intelligence) is an online Internet reference site whose content is written by users. Most entries featured on HipHopIntel are for people that enjoy hip hop and urban lifestyle. The site has mainstream relevance for parents, media, educators, entertainment, and other segments in society that are eager to better understand and leverage the power of hip hop for their own projects, education, and purposes.

The reference site was founded by John Arnold and Edwina Martin-Arnold and went online on February 14,2007. HipHopIntel includes a network of reference sites that are focused on capturing, preserving, and socializing Hip Hop Culture across the web. HipHopIntel believes there are hip hop words, milestones, events, rules, and other expressions being woven into the fabric of just about every nation on the planet. HipHopIntel's hope is to work closely with the worldwide hip hop community to collect and turn fragmented information into hip hop intelligence that everyone can share and use to better understand the power of the hip hop movement. In the process of organizing the information the site wants to honor the Hip Hop pioneers as well as recognize the current HipHopreneurs that are moving the culture forward today.

HipHopIntel also contains an urban & hip hop people search (HipHopFaces.com), hip hop dictionary (HipHopDictionary.com), hip hop almanac (HipHopAlmanac.com), hip hop thesaurus (HipHopThesaurus.com), and hip hop rule book (HipHopRuleBook.com). The site allows you to navigate by new, popular, video, chronological, and local content. There is also an easy search interface to find hip hop reference content by keyword. According to the site's more info index, there are several new features in development that include a hip hop news line for user contributed news, a hip hop local guide for event listings, a hip hop world record offering, and a hip hop predictions section. Most of the content entries have an urban edge and flare.

HipHopIntel is built on user contributions, but unlike Wikipedia and some other open source products, each definition stands alone without further refinement. The only form of communal interaction is voting which can identify definitions as popular (Cracks) or unpopular (Wacks), so HipHopIntel does not purport to be authoritative or balanced. Despite its low signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. an abundance of graffiti), HipHopIntel could be a valuable resource for those looking for information on cutting edge of hip hop information, content, slang, and urban lifestyle.

Quality control
The quality control system reduces the number of hateful and personal definitions. HipHopIntel allows racial and sexual slurs because such terms are part of hip hop slang and urban lifestyle. The About Us page states upfront that hip hop culture comes with a special edge to it and it is not fo' erbody. Entries can document and chronicle discrimination but not endorse it. The quality control process is in its first iteration. A user can submit a complaint for content to be removed. Under the current reviewing system, definitions with more accept votes (Cracks) than reject votes (Wacks) appear on the site.

Profile & Social Network
HipHopIntel provides its registered members with a MyHipHopIntel feature that allows users to see all of their contributed content, manage their profile & photos, and connected relationships in a single area. Members can invite friends, request new member connections, and more. HipHopIntel also provides a scoring system to that shows its members how they are contributing to the overall success of HipHopIntel network.

Local Content
HipHopIntel provides an interesting view of local content across the world. The site requests that users input their content by city, state, zip, and country. There is also a unique option for tagging content by 'hood, set, or claim. For example, it may be interesting to users be able to see what hip hop words, milestones, or rules are considered relevant for the Bronx, NY, Seattle, WA, or Japan.