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>moot
>Dec 23, 2002
>Let's have a showdown
>Note: In an effort to make this post more worth-while, I've updated it for the first time in over two years. If you don't see something important/useful here, feel free to PM me with suggestions. Thanks!
>What is 4chan?
>Wikipedia posted:
>4chan (Japanese: Yotsuba, lit. "four leaves" Channel) is an English language imageboard, based on the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel. On 4chan, many pictures (generally related to anime and manga) are posted and discussed.
>4chan was founded as a project by "moot", a user of the ADTRW board on the Something Awful forums. This forum contributed to 4chan's initial userbase; however, the site soon attracted anime fans from around the world and has grown greatly since its creation.
>The site is divided into discussion boards, image and upload boards, and drawing boards. Currently, there are 35 different image boards, with topics ranging from anime, weapons and photography to real and animated pornography. Eight of these (TRIAL BOARDS LISTED HERE) were "trial boards" until very recently, when all but Sports were upgraded to permanent boards, with Sports being discarded. [1] The site's other boards include an oekaki board, an Artwork/Critique board, an upload board that is used for the uploading and discussion of Flash movies,and 19 text-based discussion boards. The discussion boards were once hosted on a separate site called "world4ch" (pronounced world four channel) until they were integrated into 4chan using the subdomain dis.4chan.org. The discussion boards were initially created by 4chan's administrators and hosted on world4ch as an homage to the defunct world2ch, which itself was a site created during as an earlier attempt to create an English version of 2channel, the Japanese site which started the entire anonymous BBS phenomenon.
>moot posted:
>I started 4chan when I was very bored, in need of porno, and wanted a cool email address (especially because I couldn't register pant.su ). The immediate result was a cool 2chan clone that provided me with all such things, but a few unwanted side effects, the predominant one being ANIMU OTAKU KAWAII BAKA NEKOS-TAN-^__^-PYO-NYOs. Said people are complete wastes of human life and made running the site hell not only for me, but the original users (RH), and people like C_V and shut who tried to help with the burden. The end result was the site dying multiple times, with its final (READ: IT NEVER DIES) death on June 20th, 2004.
>If you still don't understand what the site is, refer to the SAclopedia entry, 4chan FAQ (which is extremely outdated), or Wikipedia's full 4chan & Imageboard article(s).
>Why does this thread exist?
>4chan was founded in ADTRW. The entire history of the website is chronicled in some 2,800+ posts here. The feedback I've received from this thread over the past three years has allowed me to build the site into what it is today (a meme-factory/internet cesspool). Actually, 4chan now stands as one of the largest communities on the 'net. How it continues to support itself still baffles people to this day!
>4chan sucks, what are some other imageboards?
>These days, tons of boards exist to cater to a bunch of niche interests that 4chan doesn't. Here are some of the more popular ones:
>2ch - Not to be confused with 2chan. It's mostly discussion boards. OH THE JAPANESE ^_^.
>2chan - What 4chan was modeled after. 2chan's image boards can be considered the "Second Coming of Christ", or likened to an abortion.
>4chan - It's just "o-kay".
>7chan - All I've ever seen people do at 7chan is talk about 4chan
>8chan - <3 W.T. Snacks
>WTFux - cho0b started this. A lot of people "camwhore" here.
>iichan/wakachan - iichan was founded as a replacement for 4chan, and wakachan as a replacement for iichan. I tend to affectionately refer to iichan as "Sling-chan" because he's the only person I ever see posting there
>All of those boards suck too! How can I create my own imageboard?
>A lot of public software now exists to allow easy creation of English Futaba-style imageboards; the most popular being Wakaba. 4chan runs an extremely customized software that is not available for download. It's based on thatdog's Futallaby, which was created from Futaba.
>An important note for people coming here from 4chan!
>Being a meme-slinging retard on The Something Awful Forums will probably result in you being probated and/or banned. While 4chan and SA are similar in that they are both communities, the actual communities themselves differ greatly. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the SA forum rules before posting in this thread.
>Now for a cool quote from October 1st, 2003:
>quote:
><mrpeabody> you're gonna get swamped
><moot> with pedo and dix
><[SA]Marshall_Ban> did someone say pedo?
>PS: Three years running and I still <3 Archo !