I figured since the threads about the English *chans on the English *chans' own fora usually create drama, flamewars and trolling since the respective community usually gets defensive about "its own site", this could be a good place to talk about them, even though the board is losely associated with WAKAchan.
Don't let that bother you, though. This board and the idea for it have been older than WAKAchan. It won't really matter where you are coming from or if you even want to talk about an English *chan (4chan, iichan, 5chan, fchan, 0chan, etc.) at all or rather about a Japanese, Chinese or Taiwanese *chan, imageboard or whatever. Rational arguments above usernames and community cliques!
This thread should just serve the use to make a few remarks about a particular imageboard site / community, how they relate to each other, what differences, opportunities, etc. there could be, both from a technical standpoint as well as from a "sociological" standpoint, if you want to talk about that. And of course, there's more...
Please try to refrain from trolling this thread too much. Also, please don't pay any trolls herein too much attention, i.e. don't feed them. Let's keep this civil, everyone!
Apparently, .jp IPs are unbanned from 4chan now, but only on /b/.
Something I suggested a long time ago but admins were too lazy to do back then.
Sounds like it could be good.
>This whole attention whoring lately is a disgrace to the whole point behind anonymous imgboard software. Not to say that I hate all people who post with names & tripcodes, but it's done to death on 4chan now.
People can use it however they want, how is that a disgrace? If I have a phpbb site where guests can comment and you aren't allowed to register, is that a disgrace to normal forums? If I pound a screw into a board with a hammer, is that a disgrace to the hammer?
> Futaba's cons are also solely about the users - doujinshi artists, cosplayers, and so on, not about the staff.
How is a staff member not as important as a doujin artist?
> popularity is only dependent on how good you are at what you do.
Apparently they aren't good at coming to meetups, then.
>>102
You might want to read this thread on the many nifty special features of 4chan:
http://wakaba.c3.cx/sup/kareha.pl/1125697859
I link most of them to incessant faggotry that is going on over there.
> How is a staff member not as important as a doujin artist?
Staff members are important in providing a working environment for the users.
If they do that, that's good work and users should be grateful for it.
On the other hand, a site that is almost entirely based on user contributions would not be anything without its users contributing. Valuing mod choices with stickies, wordfilters, etc. are more about putting staff members' opinions and preferences over user preferences than about simply providing a working environment.
Also, after seeing the Otakon footage you cannot deny that the staff was mostly celebrating itself.
> How is a staff member not as important as a doujin artist?
Which is more important, the people who build and run a museum, or the artists who display their works there? Or, if that sounds too pretentious o you, substitute pretty much anything for "museum".
I do a bunch of admin work, and I don't think that's anything but the internet equivalent of manual labor. I also do translations, and I think that's a whole lot more important, even if I am just working with things created by others.
Of course the users are more important than the admins. People who run sites are worthy of praise for putting in the effort, but really, we're exchangable. Doesn't matter if it's me doing it, or somebody else. If we do our work well, we stay out of the way of the users as far as possible. It's the users who make the board and the community.
>>104
The horror! Someone can implement features they want in software!
Sure, wordfilters are dumb. Allyson's birthday thread sticky was dumb. You don't like them? Don't go to the site. Even without them 4chan would still be the mod show.
>>106
It wasn't just about the mods though. People also asked about Cracky-chan and Era had her time in the lime-light. They provide content, but could easily be replaced with any other non-hideous girl. I agree that people being popular because they are mods or friends of mods can be bad depending on the community that you want.
I'm also not sure how the doujin artists fit into it. They aren't really anonymous, even if they don't use a name/tripcode. How does that mess with the idea of everyone being anonymous? Same applies with cosplayers and anyone else, at least partially.
> You don't like them? Don't go to the site.
Shittiest argument on the internet ever, next to "I doubt you can do better so you have no place criticizing!"
> They aren't really anonymous, even if they don't use a name/tripcode.
Why not? Because people recognize their style?
> Also, more artists would leave identifiers on their work.
what
Relevant:
http://www.wakachan.org/os/res/11548.html#11616
> The woman is 東京カステラ(Tokyo-Castella), an net-idol.
> The character is made from her, and she is taken as the administrator of Futaba Channel instead of the real administrator. It is not known that who the real administrator is.
> I don't know why 東京カステラ is taken as the administrator of Futaba Channel, but there is no relation between her and Futaba Channel.
Nobody even knows who runs Futaba Channel, and people made up a cute girl as a stand-in for the mysterious admin.
>>111
I kind of like that most Futaba Channel artists don't advertise their name & sites all the time. As all anonymous contributions, it puts the focus more on the content.
Sure, it makes it difficult to track down the individual artists' sites (if they have any) , but if you know where to look, it's actually pretty easy (circle listings & stuff like that).
> it puts the focus more on the content
What focus? A picture is a picture.
I think that's taking anonymity too far. People who emblazon their work with large logos are annoying, but I'd really like it if more artists left some form of ID on the bottom. It need only be a few pixels wide. If you really must keep the focus on the image, at least use EXIF.
> but if you know where to look, it's actually pretty easy
Uh-huh.
I think 2chan has gone past normally useful anonymity and into "nobody can know my shameful internet hobby".
I think the same.
I also a theory that that's why some *chan/*ch boards like it, and come up with reasons other than that to defend it.
> I'd really like it if more artists left some form of ID on the bottom.
Well, obviously the artists themselves do not like to do that.
> Uh-huh.
It is easy. I know of several webrings and uploaders that are reserved for Futaba Channel artists and their specific websites.
> I think 2chan has gone past normally useful anonymity and into "nobody can know my shameful internet hobby".
Well, that's always been part of the whole concept. It's not like anybody has ever denied that.
>>117
If artists want anonymity, fine. However, a lot of them don't put any identifiers even when the images are completely harmless. Some of these artists put their nicks on some, but not all, images in a completely arbitrary manner.
Furthermore, nobody said they had to put their real name. A nick is... a nick.
> It is easy.
Compare:
a) Look at image.
b) Go to url in image or look up nick in google.
to
a) Look at image.
b) Notice unique features.
c) Go to some ring website(s).
d) Surf around for a while, hoping you'll find the same style.
One takes ten seconds. The other might take hours (or never) if you're unlucky.
>>118
You don't get it. Signing a picture changes the picture a lot. For example, there was this beautiful painting of an apple in my art studio made with three strokes (hard to explain in words), and after a few months the guy decided he needed to put his name on it as well. Now you can notice about twenty strokes, and it looks very different. Even in a complicated picture, adding words to it makes people look at the words to read them.
Steganography needs more love.
>>118
The second method only takes two hours for the first time,
after that you have the website bookmarked and the images archived
in a folder with the artist's nickname.
Also, while searching, you find a lot of other artists you also wanted
to find before.
> Furthermore, nobody said they had to put their real name. A nick is... a nick.
... and a nick is a name is a nick is a name and "anonymous" merely means "nameless".
>>123
Maybe less than two hours... I just overtook that estimate from you, it's really probably much less than that.
And yes, I can find unknown targets pretty fast.
Artists also link each other all the time, that also helps.
Though I do admit it would take me more than ten seconds.
But not longer than half an hour.
I would rather know the artist's website now than waste 10 seconds or 2 hours looking for it.
>>123
I can't read? What are you talking about? You told artists to sign their work and I said there are good reasons not to.
I didn't say they should sign. Here's what I said:
Signatures are identifiers, but the opposite isn't necessarily true. Furthermore, I also mentioned the use of EXIF (>>114).
Actually, I don't like signatures as identifiers anyway, because they're often hard to read.
Speaking as a sometimes (all right, seldom) artist, I think a lot of artists really don't care about any of this. What they want to do, is to draw pictures and show them to people and hopefully people will like what they see, and that's what it's all about. You're asking for signatures or IDs for the reason of organizing and collecting. An artist might really not care about that, and might even find it somewhat creepy.
> and that's what it's all about
You might want to add: Get others to participate (a strong point of Futaba Channel artists' community).
If people advertise their own sites or deviantart pages or whatever all the time, that potentially drives away participation from the place where the art is posted to.
> You're asking for signatures or IDs
I'm asking for IDs so I can track down the artist.
You have to be kidding if you think artists don't like that.
>>132
I think anonymous imgboards simply aren't the place for you to track down artists, then.
>>133
As if a lot of the artists are posting the images there themselves.
I think you're overobsessed with anonymity.
>>134
We're still talking about Futaba Channel, right? Because yes, on the 自作絵 boards most artists post their own stuff, same goes for the oekaki boards there.
I think you're overobsessed with names.
As far as I can tell, most boards everywhere over there are the largest copyright infringement the world has ever seen. Other than a few oekaki boards, most of what I see definitely isn't original. Nobody cares, but all that those CGs definitely aren't being posted by artists.
In short, they're just like here: copying material from other boards, copying it from artist websites, copying it from artist CDs, copying it from games, etc.
> I think you're overobsessed with names.
I'm not the person insisting we should all be a certain way. Unlike someone else, I actually add qualifiers to what I say.
> Other than a few oekaki boards, most of what I see definitely isn't original
Care to point out how you come to that conclusion for the 自作絵 boards? Because only those and the oekaki boards are supposed to be for original art. Of course everything else is a repost from somewhere else (well, maybe save for the neta board and all the photoshops everywhere else). It's not like you just discovered something outstanding or even something that would be relevant to the discussion...
> Unlike someone else, I actually add qualifiers to what I say.
I have no idea who or what you are talking about.
> Because only those and the oekaki boards are supposed to be for original art.
I knooooow, isn't that just convenient?
What about all the others? I wasn't just taking about oekakis, you realize? No, I was talking about the people whom everyone else rip off. You know, co2a, Carnelian, Walpurgisnacht, Yukirin, Mogudan, Taka Tony, Yumenosuke, Arche de Noe, Aoi Nananse, Errors, Fomalhaut, INO, Suigun, Norizou, etc, etc, etc, and a massive number of professionals whose name I still don't know, yet recognize their art (guess why?).
>>140
Then I was mistaken, I thought we were talking about people who contribute anonymously to anonymous imgboards and assumed the artists refered to in this discussion were also the anonymous contributors.
Because, yknow, Japanese artists in general often not signing their works does not have much to do with the topic of this thread (imageboards).
I think you're just upset because you can't set up your DAM properly!
I'd use that as an argument against them (you can't use them for information you only have vague information about), but I'll be nice.
> can't set up your DAM properly
That's partly it, although to be honest, I'm using it less recently. You're right about it being a PITA.
4chan has an official blog now:
Welcome to the blogosphere
(・∀・) LOL ｡･ﾟ･(ﾉ∀`)･ﾟ･｡ ｡ﾟ(ﾟ^∀^ﾟ)ﾟ｡
Quit whining you punk nigger bitch.
With this thread being over a year old, how would any of you consider the past year or so to have been for imageboard communities? Imageboards seem to have gotten more popular--and in turn experienced a large change in the demographic. In particular, lot of people have surprisingly started forming 4chan "subcultures" on certain registration-based communities like GaiaOnline, DeviantArt (before a controversy with some mods started), and SheezyArt (which is said to be modded by "/b/tards..."). Am I just full of it, or what?
>>149
4chan has certainly become a lot more popular. There was massive attendance for its panel at Otakon and its Alexa rankings now rival Futaba's. Slang like weeaboo and gar have started slowly seeping into the general anime online fanbase. On the other hand, for many outsiders the site as a whole is branded as the cesspool that is /b/.
The downtimes this year have also resulted in small diasporas to other image boards. Interestingly, not as many came to iichan, which was the original refuge during the 4th and 5th closings. I don't know how many of those retained the users when 4chan went back up.
I agree. The intent to try and capitalize upon and push said popularity higher is causing problems, I think. The more the site is made to appeal to a broader, more general audience, the worse it will become.
The idea behind posting original art anonymously is that you take no claim for the creation of that art, but post it as a collective creation of anonymous as a whole. Its not supposed to be something about secrecy, its more about being realistic about how much your references are the creators as much as you are, and less egotistical about your own work.
That's why I left. I've never felt compelled to leave a site before, until 4chan. I'm not sure if it was the sheer volume of crap (noise:signal ratio), or simply that I found it to be all too boring. I don't think I'll ever know.
>The more the site is made to appeal to a broader, more general audience, the worse it will become.
Best sentence I have read this year.
Same can be applied to anything, politics, personal relationships, business practices.
I came across this little post on some site. It pretty much explains what is going on on 4chan and 4-ch, and others these days. Just substitute what you want instead of "Reddit"
<quote>
The problem with, say, Internet, in general, is that we (people who enjoy quality articles and thoughtful discussions) are always the minority. Once the words get out, the stupidity of the crowd starts to take over, and we become the second Digg (it kills me to see 'hey reddit looks like a good site i'm moving'-type comments at Digg).
Say Ubuntu or Firefox in any random discussion, no matter how irrelevant, and you always end up with +10 to +20 points. Groupthink is killing reddit. It's clear that 'wisdom of the mass' does not only fail to scale, but actually hurts us in the long run.
</quote>
http://www.crushyiffdestroy.com/show/boards <-- a furry perspective on the current rash of furry imageboards. Covers fchan, chanplz, onechan, etc. An interesting read, though you might feel dumber by the end.
on an unrelated note, I'm shocked that the so called corporate coolhunters haven't massively capitalized on the raw tap source of new material yet. If they have, than their capitalization of it has been uncommonly subtle.
>>158 I assume it's because *chans are a haven for porn and copyright infringement, and the only reason we haven't been sued to oblivion is that we aren't making any money.
Western image board don't create anything remotely "new".
>>157
the original version of that article was much better.. the writer was bullied by CYD members to take it down and revise it since his views did not reflect theirs.
>>160
as far as coolhunting goes, I was thinking about 4chan in particular. We might not appreciate it's unbridled chaos, but there is a real subculture forming that WILL be exploited by the traditional media groups that require the next big thing in youth culture to survive. First T-shirts, then maybe some stolen jokes on FOX or cartoon network. Imagine "MTVChan"
>>162
what
Anyone who tries to profit/steal memes inevitably gets raided. Take a look at what happened to chanwear... subeta...
>>163
chanwear never got raided... and subeta wasn't even a chan site.. they were just people that enjoyed the chan culture that got invaded by a bunch of idiots that thought a longcat in game item should be met with INTERNET HATE. the funny thing is.. longcat didn't even come from 4chan. it's just a bunch of 'new-age' /b/tards trying to protect their memes... EVEN WHEN THEY STOLE THE MEME IN THE FIRST PLACE (if a meme could even be stolen.)
meme (mēm) n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
wency tamo
>>162
Will never happen. Yes, people may capitalize on something such as T-shirts, but you'll never see the whole-sale attempt from any large entity (media, corporate, whatever). Even though some memetics spawned/recycled by 4chan become popular, not everything else there is on par with most people. The full package includes not only the funny cat image macros and Ledonias photoshop templates, but the gore, furries, and good old Captain Picard as well. Copyright issues are the least of anyone's worries with a hotbed of trolls who love to destroy anyone or anything they can for the amusement of it.
If a big entity wanted to tap into the potential of the *chans, they would be best to do so discreetly. Publicly suggesting that you or your company associates with something like 4chan (and thus, /b/) would pose a hell of a challenge for any PR department. Of course, since some of the memes propagate so deep into the web, you can still sell your "Rickroll" T-shirts without needing to know where it came from so long as people are willing to pay for it.
>>167
Seems to me this is sort of what Gaia is doing. Present a nice package of memes without the "eww /b/" stuff, and make people pay.
does anyone know what happened to rechan.da.ru? most of the site was made of failure, but the anonymous core utils thread on /prog/ was pretty cool...
where the hell am I
bump
>>171
It was crap, and using a textboard as a source code repository is amazingly dumb.
please came to my HP http://ameblo.jp/anakin12/
>>173
there wasn't enough code yet to make setting up a source code repository worth it
>>175
Nevertheless, you have to agree that copy-and-paste is about the least efficient way to distribute code.
Well, maybe not. Posting the source in JPEG files would be dumber, but still.
>>176
it's not any worse than sending code in the body of an email, and people have been doing that for years and still do it all the time.
sure, it's inefficient, but apparently it works well enough for a lot of people.
>We'll be back at http://rechan.eu.org/ once everything is set up and the DNS propagates. Check back around April 14th.
Word of wisdom: do not use www.000webhost.com, they terminated the account for "abuse" with no warning whatsoever, and of course they've refused to tell me what exactly happened. My best guess is they totally freaked at the fact that the site was apparently getting 15000+ unique hits per day (that must've been a lot of lurkers...)
4chan's /prog/ has a repository, it's not as if we need it... yet.
We're back, and I also decided to write my own lightweight textboard script in the time span of 14 hours. It's called "REchan r3" and is based on design principles from Kareha, Futaba, and Shiichan. Get it here:
Not everything has been implemented, but most of it has.
>>181
Wait a few hours for DNS propagation, or if you're really impatient, add the IP to your local HOSTS file -- it's at 209.51.196.242.
Have any of you guys considered NOT just stealing 4chan's old page layout?
>>184
DNS has updated at the central servers, maybe it's just your ISP caching an old IP. Also it's just rechan.eu.org, no www.
oniichan@osaka:~$ dig @4.2.2.1 rechan.eu.org
; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> rechan.eu.org
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 53393
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;rechan.eu.org. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
rechan.eu.org. 2423 IN A 209.51.196.242
Figured it out:
# nc rechan.eu.org 80
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: rechan.eu.org
HTTP/1.0 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:49:14 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://byet.org/web/index.html
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Expires: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:49:14 GMT
Content-Length: 214
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
X-Cache: MISS from web5.byetcluster.com
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from web5.byetcluster.com:80
Via: 1.0 web5.byetcluster.com:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE19)
Connection: close
...
$ nc rechan.eu.org 80
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: rechan.eu.org
User-Agent: Mozilla
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
...
It's user-agent fuckery.
>>179
i dunno, i think it's okay to start on a free host as long as you can find something if it gets popular. that way if it doesn't work and you stop caring you haven't spent anything.
that's how fchan started out, and just about when it was pushing the bandwidth limits some dude offered to host it. which was nice. (god knows how it lasted so long on a host that disallowed pornography, but there you go)
There was talk of creating a distributed imageboard system using many dozens of free hosting accounts. Unfortunately I haven't seen anything develop from that.
>>192 that was what wakachan used to be waaaaaaay back when iichan died the first time. We moved away from it pretty quickly though because of how shitty free hosts really are!
Its a process, let it be
Staying fragmented leads to all sorts of infighting like to see one mongo chan, a collection of all the other chans, to be created
However this gives any attacker, be he legal (cia) or not (hired gun), access to bring down ALL the chans
Staying fragmented allows imageboards some degree of freedom and safety, at least until the average joe catches up
Then we have to change tactics again
>>194
You are aware that r4 was an interim solution and not intended for any serious use,right? r4 is no more. There is no r5 either, I abandoned the one-script-per-board idea and went for something more like Shiichan. REchan now uses s0 script.
where can i get Overmind BBS 1.0??
>>197
Jesus Christ. The first post on that board was CP. Looks like the mods aren't planning on deleting it either, they just added a red "user was banned" message. (I think that's what it said anyway, I can't read their moonspeak.)
now it's gone....several weeks later :(
have to lol as it's Swedish (flagfox detects it). I swore their laws were stricter or enforced more...eh
go to http://www.2ch.us/ for a good list
It's probably a proprietary closed source script like 4chan's yotsuba script. It kinda acts like it to when you click someone's post number to quote them, it doesn't automatically bring you back up to the post box like wakaba and kusaba and it's clones do.
Wonder if it has stickies and other stuff like 4chan's script does. Also, what language is it programed in? PHP?