5 ms·

Came to post this. The only redeemable value in 4chan, in my opinion, is that the fact that posts aren't archived makes for a very interesting social experiment

by 54mf 14y ago

Came to post this. The only redeemable value in 4chan, in my opinion, is that the fact that posts aren't archived makes for a very interesting social experiment. An API firehose pretty much puts an end to that.

joethompson 14y ago
There are actually plenty of third party archives for 4chan boards, some that have been running for 4+ years.
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ANTSANTS 14y ago
Selective archives (users vote to archive a thread) have been around since at least 2007: http://4chanarchive.org/ http://4chanarchive.org/ http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html Full board archives have been around for quite some time as well: http://easymodo.net/ http://easymodo.net/ (the original complete archiver, now dead) http://archive.foolz.us/ http://archive.foolz.us/ https://archive.installgentoo.net/ https://archive.installgentoo.net/ etc. I'd say the fact that your posts are most likely to be forgotten, even if it is archived, is much more of a negative aspect of the site than a positive. How many times have I spent 30 minutes on a post, only for no one to respond to it, or worse, realize that the thread 404'd? It makes you look at yourself and wonder why you bothered. Forced anonymity is the interesting part of imageboards -- the text BBS equivalents to anonymous imageboards, based off the original 2chan, manage to maintain a very similar flavor while featuring permanent archival of all posts, and enjoy longer-form discussion as a result.
- moot 14y ago
  > I'd say the fact that your posts are most likely to be forgotten, even if it is archived, is much more of a negative aspect of the site than a positive. This is the most magical aspect of 4chan, which is why I don't care for archives.
  - ANTSANTS 14y ago
    You've mentioned before that you visit 4chan every day. Do you visit any text boards? I guess it's my own fault for fighting against the nature of the site, but sometimes I try to go the extra mile and put some effort into a post, and feel like no one even notices when I do. It's very discouraging for a conversation to have long since moved on by the time you've posted, or for a person you were trying to help to have given up already and left their thread. While I like 4chan for what it is, I'm still a little bit sad that the textboards never really took off as much, and I wonder why they didn't -- anonymous somewhat-long-form discussion sounds appealing to me. I'd be right at home in a text board with a fraction of the userbase of a 4chan board and a slightly slower pace, but most of the ones I know of are practically dead at this point.
    - Variance 14y ago
      That really sounds like a job for a niche subreddit with a throwaway account, not a 4chan BBS.
      - ANTSANTS 14y ago
        I guess you kind of answered the question I had in mind. Most "western" people seem to see anonymity or even pseudoanonymity as something you use when you have something to hide, something you don't want traced back to you. Everything else, they don't seem to mind having their real name (or a pseudonym that they make little attempt to disguise) attached to. Or, on a different level, people believe that you need to have some kind of identity that you care about, a reputation that you want to uphold, to keep discussion civil and meaningful, and that this should be the key element differentiating an online community. On the other hand, the default in my mind is anonymous discussion. You only don a pseudonym or reveal your true identity when it's actually relevant to the conversation, and immediately stop when it isn't -- people usually don't care about who I am, but they might care about what I have to say. As an example of this, I've browsed Hacker News daily for over a year now, and just recently got around to creating an account. I still feel uneasy about it, even though I'm posting with nothing but a pseudonym, and not posting about anything that I would particularly care about having traced back to me. I doubt Hacker News would have the same culture if it had allowed anonymous posting, but I certainly would have started contributing much earlier if I didn't have to create a pseudo-identity to do so. It's important to note that while it might be true that Reddit serves as the West's 2chan, the two deliver markedly different experiences. 2chan being as enormous as it is (millions of posts per day) should indicate to you that there is some itch that a giant collection of anonymous textboards can scratch that Reddit can't.
deleted 14y ago
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by 54mf 14y ago

joethompson 14y ago

There are actually plenty of third party archives for 4chan boards, some that have been running for 4+ years.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ANTSANTS 14y ago

Selective archives (users vote to archive a thread) have been around since at least 2007: http://4chanarchive.org/ http://4chanarchive.org/ http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html Full board archives have been around for quite some time as well: http://easymodo.net/ http://easymodo.net/ (the original complete archiver, now dead) http://archive.foolz.us/ http://archive.foolz.us/ https://archive.installgentoo.net/ https://archive.installgentoo.net/ etc. I'd say the fact that your posts are most likely to be forgotten, even if it is archived, is much more of a negative aspect of the site than a positive. How many times have I spent 30 minutes on a post, only for no one to respond to it, or worse, realize that the thread 404'd? It makes you look at yourself and wonder why you bothered. Forced anonymity is the interesting part of imageboards -- the text BBS equivalents to anonymous imageboards, based off the original 2chan, manage to maintain a very similar flavor while featuring permanent archival of all posts, and enjoy longer-form discussion as a result.

moot 14y ago
> I'd say the fact that your posts are most likely to be forgotten, even if it is archived, is much more of a negative aspect of the site than a positive. This is the most magical aspect of 4chan, which is why I don't care for archives.
- ANTSANTS 14y ago
  You've mentioned before that you visit 4chan every day. Do you visit any text boards? I guess it's my own fault for fighting against the nature of the site, but sometimes I try to go the extra mile and put some effort into a post, and feel like no one even notices when I do. It's very discouraging for a conversation to have long since moved on by the time you've posted, or for a person you were trying to help to have given up already and left their thread. While I like 4chan for what it is, I'm still a little bit sad that the textboards never really took off as much, and I wonder why they didn't -- anonymous somewhat-long-form discussion sounds appealing to me. I'd be right at home in a text board with a fraction of the userbase of a 4chan board and a slightly slower pace, but most of the ones I know of are practically dead at this point.
  - Variance 14y ago
    That really sounds like a job for a niche subreddit with a throwaway account, not a 4chan BBS.
    - ANTSANTS 14y ago
      I guess you kind of answered the question I had in mind. Most "western" people seem to see anonymity or even pseudoanonymity as something you use when you have something to hide, something you don't want traced back to you. Everything else, they don't seem to mind having their real name (or a pseudonym that they make little attempt to disguise) attached to. Or, on a different level, people believe that you need to have some kind of identity that you care about, a reputation that you want to uphold, to keep discussion civil and meaningful, and that this should be the key element differentiating an online community. On the other hand, the default in my mind is anonymous discussion. You only don a pseudonym or reveal your true identity when it's actually relevant to the conversation, and immediately stop when it isn't -- people usually don't care about who I am, but they might care about what I have to say. As an example of this, I've browsed Hacker News daily for over a year now, and just recently got around to creating an account. I still feel uneasy about it, even though I'm posting with nothing but a pseudonym, and not posting about anything that I would particularly care about having traced back to me. I doubt Hacker News would have the same culture if it had allowed anonymous posting, but I certainly would have started contributing much earlier if I didn't have to create a pseudo-identity to do so. It's important to note that while it might be true that Reddit serves as the West's 2chan, the two deliver markedly different experiences. 2chan being as enormous as it is (millions of posts per day) should indicate to you that there is some itch that a giant collection of anonymous textboards can scratch that Reddit can't.

deleted 14y ago

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