10% of people posting is actually exactly what you should expect in a thriving community. Several studies of web communities have confirmed the "90:9:1" ratio of Lurkers:Contributors:Creators. Lurkers just read. Contributors will respond. Creators will initiate.
See the wikipedia article at [1] but there are also (I think) several old USENET studies and corporate email list studies which confirm this that I didn't notice in the footnotes of wikipedia.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
Should I even try to understand this?
I'll attempt to explain some of the jargon.
The part about "proud to call ourselves /v/irgins and /k/ommandos" refers to the nicknames that people on various boards (topic-specific forums within 4chan) have invented to call themselves, as a kind of in-joke. For example, "/v/" is shorthand for the video games board (because its URL is http://boards.4chan.org/v/), so people on the board extend that and call themselves "/v/irgins" (because that's much more amusing than "/v/ideogamers").
When he says "sage is now invisible", "sage" means the feature that lets you write a comment that doesn't bump that thread to the top of the board. People use "sage" in order to write comments like "this post is terrible" without promoting that post. See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sage or http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sage for more explanation.
"/q/ will be retired and replaced" - this was a board that moot had set up for talking about 4chan itself (asking him questions, providing feedback, etc).
"Post timers" prevent you from writing tons of comments in rapid sequence, which is usually spammy/abusive behavior.
<3 from /mu/!
Is this true m00t?
Also the introduction of some of those boards was simply to get shitposts out of other boards (e.g. /soc/ was created to cleanup /b/ and /r9k/). Worked great.
However, I have to disagree with the sage thing. While originally the term was used to not bump a thread (implying that your own post was not worthy of bumping a thread back to the front page), in the last five years (and before that, to some extent) it HAS been used as a way to 'down vote' a thread.
Sage as a method of downvoting a thread is insane and encourages even more shitposting. 4chan actually does have a "karma" that manifests in the way of replies to your posts/threads. So when you reply to a thread using sage as a downvote, you encourage the poster by giving him replies. Using sage is just a flag to the other guy that his post is irritating enough for you to sage it.
This used to be a huge problem when it was popular to post troll pony threads on macho boards like /v/, /sp/, or /fit/. What would happen is there would be 10 replies in the first minute, all sages, calling the OP a retard and reminding everyone to sage and report the thread. These replies would just feed him, to which he would reply to the sages and egg people on even more - to which he would receive even more replies.
The only acceptable analogue to "downvoting" on 4chan is to not reply to the thread. Nothing can dissuade a shitposter more than having put some effort into writing a good baity OP post, and not getting a single reply before the janitors delete it.
If you're determined enough to sage bomb the thread to image limit, especially now that there's a captcha, sorta, but not really.
Also cheers to moot. I've noticed the improvement in moderation first hand recently, even getting banned myself, whereas previously that board felt like it had zero mods.
So, using sage as a way to 'downvote' is just a way of adding towards the thread limit without bumping the thread. It's a round-about way to do it though (vs. direct downvoting).
"sage" originates from 2chan (aka Futaba Channel), which was the inspiration for 4chan. 'sage' is short for sageru.
Right, and he just fixed that problem.
Board | Action | Length | Post | Reason | Time
/b/ | Ban | 3 days | View | Global 15 - Pony/Ponies Outside of /mlp/ | 34 minutes ago
Wat? I thought /b/ was pretty much anything goes. How times change.
This might be interesting.
I mean I guess that was stuff that was banned from 4chan... I don't know what I was expecting
Related, one of the funniest bans I've ever seen.
4chan, in comparison, has always been organic from day 1.
You could make a case for slashdot or wikipedia or google, but IMO all have changed substantially in the last decade.
I don't think this behavior changed recently (if ever). People would frequently reply elsewhere in the thread to warn people that they are dead.
It would be interesting to see a post or an article comparing and contrasting the different methodologies between the two sites.
Shadow bans were created originally to deal with trolls. People deliberately posting garbage. It is counter productive to use shadow bans on contributing people who happened to break an unspoken rule like "don't criticize pg".
Each thread can have x posts before new posts no longer bump it. If you sage, you are using up that thread's available space (1/x worth) without bumping. Although this doesn't "downvote" in the sense that the thread is penalized/lowered, it "downvotes" because it takes up thread space with no benefit to the thread. Not to mention, sageing is a way to express your dissatisfaction with the thread, which I think was always the point (rather than trying to actually hurt the thread).
I'll always view 4chan as a website who refused to grow up and expand, because it is afraid to since it might lose its very special flavor by doing so.
It seems anonymity is quite hard to implement and make us of properly.
A highlight (besides all the "ponies outside of /mlp/" ones):
"I cant get banned, im 17 and my birthday is tomorrow. Suck it m00t." -- Ban, 90 days, "Underage User"
<3 from /g/
>Global 2 - Underage User
Why not ban the shitposters and not the underage users.
