for the imageboard users...

[von]

Long story short; I'm just coming into my own with PHP and wrote a kusaba-ish imageboard for a "hello world" program. I kinda wanna use this script to power my very own widdle chan, but I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of topics. Of all the niche markets a chan exists for currently (from tantacle porn to freight trains) no board currently serves as a sort of "discordiaChan"...tl;dr, what would you guys suggest for board topics on an explicitly discordian imageboard?

[Pæs]

Who is your target audience?

[von]

Well, I did say "discordian" board, but I guess that is a bit vague. Meh, I'm looking for an audience that falls into the range of 16-30 year olds that have an intrest in technology, science, the humanities, "secret knowledge" (like how to lockpick etc...not old world mysticism), and have at least a fleeting knowledge of discordian philosophy as well as some technical knowledge. Current users of imageboards are not nessisarily targeted, as my systems only borrowings from chan software is the facts of no user registration and optional image posting

[Triple Zero]

Didn't Cram link to some guy that made a Discordian imageboard a while back? I think it was someone of the PDX occult/esozone people, not sure.

BTW I never quite understood the appeals of these imageboards over regular forums? What's the advantage?

Anonymity? Because you can enable guest posting at a regular forum too.

[Telarus]

Didn't Cram link to some guy that made a Discordian imageboard a while back? I think it was someone of the PDX occult/esozone people, not sure.

BTW I never quite understood the appeals of these imageboards over regular forums? What's the advantage?

Anonymity? Because you can enable guest posting at a regular forum too.

Yup. Chaoflux runs ran ChaosNeverDied.com. It seems like there's a Japanese Dating Spam Blog squating on the domain now tho.

I tried to get into the image-board thing when Chaoflux was running one... but chan-style discussions don't go anywhere....

[von]

Well, the appeal of imageboards isn't anonimity per se, but rather the lack of required user registration. The theory is, when a user is forced to explicitly "sign" up for something, this wastes precious time. This wasted time is something that a child or useless internet addict would have no qualms about wasting, but only a minority of so called "experts" and people with "lives" would appearently have enough time in their busy lives to fill out a registration form. Essentially, the idea is that user registration attracts internet addicts and other people without the ability to generate valid content whillst driving away a large number of "people who know what they're talking about". Now then, for those of you who say that "imageboard discussions go nowhere", I'm going to assume that you've only used giant, cancerous chans like 4chan. Smaller, well managed forums like 7chan actually have conversation flows that greatly resemble that of a western forum, albeit without such things as social hiearchy among board users and other small things that arise out of having named accounts with statistics

[Pæs]

I don't think that deciding on a technology and trying to figure out how to apply it to your own purposes is as useful an approach as working out what your needs are and developing the technology from there.

I've considered starting a 23chan in the past but couldn't really see any benefits over PD so dropped the idea there.

[Triple Zero]

Well, the appeal of imageboards isn't anonimity per se, but rather the lack of required user registration. The theory is, when a user is forced to explicitly "sign" up for something, this wastes precious time. This wasted time is something that a child or useless internet addict would have no qualms about wasting, but only a minority of so called "experts" and people with "lives" would appearently have enough time in their busy lives to fill out a registration form. Essentially, the idea is that user registration attracts internet addicts and other people without the ability to generate valid content whillst driving away a large number of "people who know what they're talking about".

Okay, that's interesting. Two questions:

1. still doesn't explain the advantage over a regular forum with guest posting enabled.

2. how do you deal with spambots?

My guesses at answers:
1. going with your idea of "no internet addicts", it's probably even easier than a normal forum because users don't even need to know BBcode to post images, as every post is just that, an image + text.
2. a CAPTCHA would be my best bet. Though it's a losing battle, even ReCAPTCHA has been broken to somewhere between 10-40% accuracy (which is more than enough).

BTW I'm not trying to get at you or anything, just interested why these imageboards still are relatively popular, even though they seem really ... "clunky".

3. One more question One thing that always confuses me about imageboards is that threads fall off the end when they get too old, and 4chan/b/ goes so fast that it's pretty hard to even catch a conversation before it disappears, if you want to track a convo, you're pretty much forced to keep it in a separate tab, because you're probably not going to find it again in the thread list. However, that kind of breaks the "easy to use for non-internet addicts" advantage. And then there's the "sage" thing, which is done because threads also get killed when they reach a certain length, IIRC. Which I can imagine there can be all sorts of good reasons for, but I guess what really confuses me is the transient nature of the threads. What's that good for?

Now then, for those of you who say that "imageboard discussions go nowhere", I'm going to assume that you've only used giant, cancerous chans like 4chan. Smaller, well managed forums like 7chan actually have conversation flows that greatly resemble that of a western forum, albeit without such things as social hiearchy among board users and other small things that arise out of having named accounts with statistics

... but 7chan is western At least, they speak English on 7chan.org. Anyway, I'm not saying the discussions don't go anywhere, I'm just wondering why I'd pick to use one over the other.

BTW, as you may or may not have noticed, I removed postcounts and replaced them with nonsense for that very reason. There's still a very rough indication of postcount with the Known/Known&Noted/Outlandish/Deserved it titles [though don't ask me at which postcount you get which one, and I'm an admin], and you can still see the exact post count on someone's profile page, but we decided on keeping it mostly out of sight was indeed desirable.

The only reason that I look, is when I look for either "Known" or "Known & Noted" (the two "youngest" titles) when I'm wondering "is this a new person, or did someone change their screenname and avatar again?" -- because accounts aren't strictly "named" here, either. Only the login-name is fixed (duh), but that one is never displayed.

Oh, and another thing, is this imageboard already online/hosted somewhere? And this is your first PHP project, you say? If you like, you can PM me the address and I can do a rough pen-test for XSS (javascript injection), CSRF and SQL injection before you open it up to the public.
Because the big problem about PHP is that while it's easy and allows you to very rapidly develop something that basically does the trick, it is much much harder to do the same without leaving any gaping security holes.

Speaking of PMs, do image boards support PMs in some sense? I guess it's not really possible, right?

I don't think that deciding on a technology and trying to figure out how to apply it to your own purposes is as useful an approach as working out what your needs are and developing the technology from there.

I agree, but his "purposes" weren't to create a new Discordian hangout, but was to learn PHP by coding an imageboard. Now he has an imageboard and is trying to decide what to use it for

Explanation: Some people write code for fun (I know I do). Maybe compare it to a guy that enjoys fixing bikes from junkyard bike parts. He doesn't build his fifth bike out of some need for yet another bike either.

[von]

Your further questions make me realise that I gravitate to imageboards just based on personal preference. When it comes down to it chans and western boards (by western board I'm refering to systems like phpbb and other "regular" forums...appearently, the futaba style imageboard, which is the most popular variety, was invented by a japanese...hence chans are "not western") accomplish 90% of the same thing in slightly different ways. Imageboards accomplish things in a manner which is intentionally transient and spontaneous whereas western boards appear to focus on longstanding information archiving. Regardless, you made me realise that no chan I've ever seen can produce something anything like PMs. This is very interesting, but I've never though about that untill you made your offer to pentest for me. (My isp went out of business, so untill I replace them, the site is offline...I will pm you when it goes up should the offer stand)...had you made that offer in a chan, the only way to start our collaboration would be if one of us divulged something like an email, or a facebook etc...publicly on the board. Obviously, this could present the issue of trolls spamming your email or just derailing the project by acting like the intended recipient. A brief, more secure, "here's a way to contact me" system does need to be implemented, and I think I could very easily get that done. Thanks for the inadvertant inspiration.

[Pæs]

I agree, but his "purposes" weren't to create a new Discordian hangout, but was to learn PHP by coding an imageboard. Now he has an imageboard and is trying to decide what to use it for

Explanation: Some people write code for fun (I know I do). Maybe compare it to a guy that enjoys fixing bikes from junkyard bike parts. He doesn't build his fifth bike out of some need for yet another bike either.

Very good point.

[Cramulus]

IMO the difference between an image board and a "western style" board (to use your vocab) is the degree of investment.

Imageboards are good for low-investment conversations - you can say whatever, because your post isn't going to come back and bite you in the ass. Nor will it make anybody think you're cool. It's communication purely for communication's sake. This predisposes that medium towards really short-term rewards - funny images, troll one-liners, and honest anonymous disclosures ("I can tell this secret because you don't know who I am").

One of the things which motivates people to post high quality content (whether that's a long post that's enjoyable to read, or just a well-thought-out reply) is the trading of social currency- credibility being the main type. People with a post history can accumulate and spend credibility like currency - this doesn't take place on an anonymous board.

Community is really hard to build without being able to invest social currency. It's hard to invest in another's life if you never know who you're talking to. My theory is that on an imageboard, community gets built by experiencing common reference points. In-jokes, and stuff like that. The common reference points are all shared experiences. Whereas on a western-style board the reference points can be more personal (like, the old timers here will all remember when RWHN had his daughter), and this gives the sense of "knowing" somebody.

That's not to say one kind of board is better than the other, it's just that different mediums predispose certain types of communication.

[von]

Huh...never though of it that way. See, most of the arguments I've read posit the western "social currency" as something to be abolished because it leads to "unfree social hiearchies"...seeing it as a motivation for quality posting has never crossed my mind, but it very well explains the poor signal to noise ratio on certain chans.
This whole thread is really getting me thinking about things...does anyone know of a good book that could sort of serve as an "internet sociology 101"?

[Triple Zero]

Well, this thread certainly has taken a turn for the interesting

I will pm you when it goes up should the offer stand

Sure thing, depends on whether I have some time and energy, but pentesting is a fun puzzle

had you made that offer in a chan, the only way to start our collaboration would be if one of us divulged something like an email, or a facebook etc...publicly on the board. Obviously, this could present the issue of trolls spamming your email or just derailing the project by acting like the intended recipient. A brief, more secure, "here's a way to contact me" system does need to be implemented, and I think I could very easily get that done.

something with an assymetric cipher (public/private key, digital signature kind of thing) would be an option to get it done via traditional imageboard text, I suppose. however, that's also kind of complex.

there's probably easier ways such as a feature like "send a message that will only show to the poster of comment X" that will automatically be signed with "from the poster of comment Y" (where the PM sender can specify both comments X and Y, with the restriction that they indeed posted comment Y but not X).

This whole thread is really getting me thinking about things...does anyone know of a good book that could sort of serve as an "internet sociology 101"?

don't know about a book, but there's certainly been some previous discussions touching this subject. finding them is another problem though (our search function is broken due to server load), though it's a safe starting bet that Cramulus would be involved in those discussions, so maybe look there

the only book I can think of right now is "Art of Memetics" (google it, free PDF download from their site), it covers a fairly broad range of subjects (connecting memetics with a relatively clear-headed version of occult, egregores, sigils, kind of thing--very interesting read), but it might serve as additional inspiration.

[von]

Well, I actually drafted a roughly working version of the pm system. Ok, because there aren't traditional user accounts on an imageboard, the only way to ostentiably ban an unruly user is by identifying them by their IP and then using that to block them (personally, my script uses .htaccess denys  and serves a custom 403 page that says essentially "you've been banned; contact ban appeals to plea your case"). So, each post already has an IP tied to it (based on the contents of php's $_SERVER[REMOTE_ADDR] superglobal). I have it now so that each post displays a "send pm" button that takes the user to a page where said user may enter a brief text message to the user via a form. The form submits not only the text message, but also the timestamp of the post and the intended recipient's IP. (These three values are inserted into a sql table with a column for each datum) The way a user views his PMs is via a php script which gets the users IP and then queries sql to show all messages where the IP field of the sql row=the user's IP. To ensure that users with dynamic public IPs don't end up seeing one another's messages, the system is set to delete any post older than a given amount of time (my test version is set to two hours). With the whole idea of "message from author of post X" I think that's a bit of overkill. As has been highly stated in this thread, chans present highly transient data. PMs are no different. My reason for implementing this is for situations where two or more users are talking about, say a project (I'd say this is a good example of such a thread) and they want to move things beyond the transient realm of the chan. User "a" makes a post directed to user "b" on the board that is something along the lines of "hey that's a great idea; let's get together and work on this, I just sent you my a link to my facebook in a PM". User "b" would hopefully check his PMs, see the only likely post containing a facebook URL from the past two hours and things would move beyond the transient scope of the board. It does have severe vulnerabilities, and I think that requiring users to authenticate by both a tripcode (the closest thing a chan has to a user account..if your unfamiliar, all I can say is google it...my expalination would be too longwinded and I'm posting from a shit phone) AND an IP, but that whole side of things will have to wait untill later tonight when I start working on things again.
Anyway, the whole "memetic egregore" concept of old mysticism is something I'm relatively familiar with and actually consiter to be a major aspect of my worldview...but I haven't thought to use it outside of defining things like gods, corporate persons and standalone complexies like the infamous "anonymous". It could be because I use chans moreso than western boards, but it definitely is good food for thought.

[Cramulus]

Huh...never though of it that way. See, most of the arguments I've read posit the western "social currency" as something to be abolished because it leads to "unfree social hiearchies"...

it's a double edged sword


reputation leads to cliques, and authority
but it also facilitates organization and group identity

Anonymity is also restrictive, but in different ways. For example, anonymity makes trolling really easy. People may not post certain types of things because it's so easy to get something like a "GTFO" response. Anonymity makes it easier to shit on people, and that does have an effect on what types of things people communicate.

Another thing is that in an anonymous environment, the people who post the most have an advantage because they can present themselves as the consensus.

So, there's no best medium, just different types. You have to gauge what kind of egregore you want to breed and find the type of medium that best supports it.

Anyway, the whole "memetic egregore" concept of old mysticism is something I'm relatively familiar with and actually consiter to be a major aspect of my worldview...but I haven't thought to use it outside of defining things like gods, corporate persons and standalone complexies like the infamous "anonymous". It could be because I use chans moreso than western boards, but it definitely is good food for thought.

The egregore is also visible at the social level, any time there is a "group identity". Spend enough time at PD, you'll get a sense for the PD egregore -- it has a personality, territorial boundaries, certain things its fascinated by... We've kept it carefully pruned like a bonsai tree.

The Art of Memetics has a lot of great information about egregores and mastermind-groups and how to relate to the community organism. It's definitely a good read!