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Imageboard

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An imageboard is an online bulletin board system that revolves around the posting of images. Imageboards are often a host to both original artwork and images taken from other websites. Popular imageboards can be hit with bandwidth consumption reaching up to two terabytes per month.

Characteristics of imageboards

Most imageboards allow anonymous posting and use the 2ch system of tripcodes instead of registration. When posting, a user can put in their name and email for identification, or post anonymously. The only unique identifier is the tripcode system. When posting, if a user puts the # symbol followed by a string of characters, 4chan will encrypt that string to create a unique tripcode. For example, lol#internet becomes lol!AvT/zSkROU when posted on the American 4chan. If a user wants to reply to a thread but not bump it, they can put the phrase "sage" in the email field. It is considered polite to sage when replying to your own thread. Imageboards with discussion forums usually have a 2ch-like system which also allows anonymous posting.

The most popular imageboards in the United States revolve around Japanese culture such as anime. In Japan, where imageboards are common, topics vary widely, including trains and news.

List of Imageboard software

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 image boards 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.

For the full article, see Futaba Channel.

4chan

4chan (YO-tsu-ba) is an English language version of the infamous Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel. It was based off of Futaba Channel, which was discovered by the anime fans at the Something Awful Forums. It was originally meant for Something Awful members only, but because of its anonymous nature it attracted anime fans from around the world. On 4chan, many pictures from around the world, mostly from anime and manga are posted and critiqued.

Due to bandwidth concern and growing international leeching, Japanese users cannot access the site without permission. So far, it has been shut down due to lack of funding or hosting 4 times. On August 11, 2004, 4chan returned for the fifth time, under new management. The site had previously died on June 20, 2004, after several hacking attacks, lack of funding caused by a PayPal lockout, and lack of motivation from the site founder, moot.

On December 24, 2004, the site team launched world4ch, a discussion board modeled after 2ch and powered by Shii's new board software.

Site Description

The site is divided into discussion boards, image and upload boards, and oekaki boards. To date, there are 20 different image boards, with topics ranging from anime to weapons to real and animated pornography. There are also 6 discussion boards, 2 oekaki boards, and one flash upload board.

Because 4chan is a free service and uses so much bandwidth, there is often a problem with financing. moot and the mods will sometimes request donations. There has been a perpetual issue with finding a online payment service. Paypal was used, but then the owner of 5chan reported the account and froze it. Recently, the service Yowcow also shut down 4chan's account with no reason given. Often, the problem is the lolicon and shotacon boards, because their content violates the Terms and Conditions of the service. Recently, another futaba site called not4chan took over these boards, in the hope of creating a workaround of the Terms and Conditions agreement.

Flamewars are common on the many boards that 4chan has. Often, the original offence is small, but the responses are designed to draw criticism, which in turn draws criticism of the criticizers, and so on, until the original point is forgotten. The random board (/b/) also is infamous for the holding of theme days, when themed pornography is posted in large floods, i.e. Furry Friday. Memes are also a large part of the 4chan environment, with the random board generating at least one a month. Some famous ones include Pedobear, a pedophilic bear brought over from futuba; Happy Negro, a perverted porn actor inserted into all sorts of pictures; and teh rei, a reference to Rei's rabid fans.

iichan

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. The iichan community created 4-ch.net as their discussion board, which is now being used by WAKAchan as its discussion board.

On 24 October 2004 iichan was shut down due to lack of funding. Wakachan is currently used in its place. According to its administrator, "Thock", it will be revived eventually.

iichan created memes of its own, including Wakaba-chan, the Wakaba frog, and Kareha-sama, who were mascots/memes for the message board software used by iichan. Born in the iichan oekaki boards, they are entirely unrelated to the other *chans and are some of the few genuine non-photoshoped art-based memes that english-speaking image boards 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. The demand of "$540", often quoted in discussions about 5chan, is the amount Thock, iichan's owner, lost due to PayPal locking his acount.

WAKAchan

WAKAchan is unique for being a network of imageboards and discussion boards rather than a central server. This approach fosters stronger community involvement as well as assists in the distribution of costs for the large bandwidths that imageboards require. It was set up as a replacement for iichan when iichan shut down.

5chan

5chan was another imageboard, notable for its non-anonymous discussion and image boards (all posts on the imageboards required a "Hentaikey" account; the discussion boards required registration). It had roughly 40 different subcategories, most of which were for pornography. It was shut down on 6 August 2004 due to a personal conflict between its administrator, "Zabadab", and the maintainers of iichan. On 17 September 2004, it was revived for a short period of time, but on 23 October it was shut down permanently because of a misunderstanding between "Zabadab" and his web host, Hentai Key. Compounded, it lasted about three months.

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