Imageboard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An imageboard is an online bulletin board system that revolves around the posting of images. Popular imageboards can be hit with bandwidth consumption reaching up to eighteen terabytes per month and beyond.
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[edit] Characteristics of imageboards
Imageboards could be most simply described as a bulletin board focused on pictures instead of text posts; they share many of the same structures, including separate forums for separate topics, as well as similar audiences. However, imageboards are much more transitory with content-on some boards (especially high-traffic ones) the thread deletion time can be as little as 10 minutes. The most popular English-language imageboards tend to revolve around Japanese culture such as CG artwork of anime. In Japan, where imageboards are many times more common, topics vary widely, including trains and news.
Imageboards are also different from online galleries in that most of the works posted are not made by the poster, but instead are taken from other online sources—galleries, other imageboards, and edited pictures. Content is rarely original to the imageboard.
Most imageboards and 2ch-style discussion boards allow (and encourage) anonymous posting and use the 2channel (2ch for short) system of tripcodes instead of registration. Anonymity is considered to be one of the advantages of an imageboard, with the logic that it discourages holding grudges and the overdevelopment of one's own self-importance, making internet trolls less likely. Some boards, notably /b/ on 4chan at various points in time, institute a ban on names altogether (known as 'forced anonymous/anonymity').
If a user wants to reply to a thread but not bump it, they can put the word "sage" (Japanese: 下げ) in the e-mail field. "Ageing" can refer to either bumping a post or putting the word "age" (Japanese: 上げ) into the email field. It is considered polite to sage when replying to your own thread, but rarely followed. Sageing is often seen as a sign of disapproval, as threads with multiple sages are more likely to be deleted automatically as they fall down the board.
The first English language imageboard was 4chan, which was founded by a small group of members of the Something Awful Forums, and has been in a state of perpetual flux since that time, due to financial, bandwidth and hosting issues. After 4chan shut down for around the third time, iichan was created to replace it. 5chan was also launched at around the same time. 4chan eventually returned, only to fail again, with iichan buckling to a lack of income at the same time. 5chan had been taken down by its webhost only a few weeks before. Both 4chan and iichan returned within the year. Today, the largest imageboards are 4chan, iichan, and 7chan, with 4chan's userbase substantially greater than either of the latter two.
In Japan, the imageboard is a much larger cultural symbol, with one guess putting the total number of posts for Futaba's five /b/ boards (four of which are no longer linked to by the main site) at over 56,000,000 and rising. 1
[edit] List of Imageboard software
- Futaba, the original board script. (Japanese)
- Futallaby, derived from Futaba, currently replaced by Wakaba (see below)
- Wakaba, backend coded from scratch in Perl.
- gazo-ch (Japanese)
- Joyful Note (Japanese)
- Thorn, a flexible new script written in PHP.
- Trevorchan, another flexible new script in PHP.
- 4chandk, yet another PHP Imageboard.
[edit] Futaba Channel
Futaba Channel (ふたば☆ちゃんねる), or "Futaba" for short, is a popular, anonymous BBS and imageboard system based in Japan. Its imageboards usually do not distinguish between pornographic and "clean" content, but there is a strict barrier between two-dimensional (drawn) and three-dimensional (CG and photographic) pictures that is heavily enforced and debated.
[edit] + Nijiura +
+ Nijiura + (＋にじうら＋), is an anonymous BBS and imageboard system based in Futaba. The title of site "Nijiura" is similar to "Nijiura Board" in Futaba, but they are different sites. So people often call the site, "++". There are known for the OS-tan imageboard. Recently, personifying for airplanes called Flight Airplanes (ふらいとエアプレインズ) is popular in the personifing board.
[edit] 4chan
4chan (Japanese: Yotsuba, lit. "four leaves") was intended to be an English language version of the famous Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel. It is by far the most popular English language imageboard website.
[edit] iichan
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| URL | iichan.org |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Imageboard/TextBBS |
| Registration | No |
| Owner | "Blackmage" |
| Created by | "Thock" |
| Launched | Current incarnation, 2005 |
| Current status | Up |
iichan (formerly idlechan) was a replacement for 4chan when 4chan shut down, but when 4chan was revived iichan stayed up. It developed its own following of a small group of people who preferred iichan's slow pace and other differences from 4chan.
On 24 October 2004, iichan was closed due to lack of funds and "Wakachan", a distributed network over many servers, was set up in its place. Wakachan is notable for providing many boards that cater to niche interests, such as maids and miko. On 16 April 2005 Wakachan was merged into a newly revived iichan.
iichan has created memes of its own, including Wakaba-chan, the Wakaba frog, and Kareha-sama, who were mascots/memes for the Wakaba imageboard and Kareha message board software used by iichan. Born in the iichan oekaki boards, they are entirely unrelated to the other imageboards and are some of the few genuine non-photoshopped art-based memes that English-speaking imageboards have created. Tophat or the monocle dog was also developed on iichan's oekaki boards. This cartoon-style dog says "Pip Pip" on his morning constitutionals. Also, the demand of "$540", often quoted in discussions about 5chan, is the amount Thock (iichan's owner) lost due to PayPal locking his account.
A few members of iichan have banded together to form iitran, a small, loosely organized manga scanlation and anime fansub group, focusing on the works of Kaoru Mori. Their current projects are the ongoing Emma manga and anime, and Maid In Akihabara.
[edit] 420chan
420chan is run by a Canadian citizen named Aubrey Cottle (aka Kirtaner). 420chan's Invasion board (/i/) has been involved in bandwidth-leeching attacks against targets such as the website of white supremacist radio host Hal Turner.
[edit] Notes and references
"How Do I Copied Japan" Peril asian american journal (a detailed history)
[edit] External links
- Overchan (a directory of English-language imageboards)
- Metachan A competitive directory of imageboard sites
- Overchan V.2 (an imageboard portal)
- The Society for the Study of Modern Image Board Culture
