How to prevent an imageboard from degrading?

So I just read this (long read, but worth it): shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html - it makes some interesting points. I disagree with some of his stuff regarding anonymity, but in brief, here's the relevant points I agree with:
1) Nature abhors a vacuum. If you/whoever running a site doesn't address site culture, something else will, probably in a way you won't like.
2) Not everybody cares about your site equally. It's important to make sure the people who do care have a way to make themselves known and deal with vandals and others trying to change your site's culture.
3) Barriers to participation increase discussion quality. Seen this one myself a lot.

So for the imageboard software I'm developing (github.com/DangerOnTheRanger/maniwani), I think enshrining "lurk more" into practice by allowing browsing without signing up but requiring a sign-up to post (nobody still sees usernames in public, no email necessary, and there are still no tripcodes) and subsequent no-posting lurk period proportional to the size of the site before posting is allowed automatically throws up a reasonable barrier to entry. Requiring new users to lurk longer as the site grows prevents huge groups of new users from invading the site and not integrating. It also sidesteps how easily circumvented IP bans are by banning usernames.

Also: Some percentage of the site's oldest users get invited to a governance board (both a group and an actual /vip/-esque board that everyone can see but only they can post to) who then elect a group of moderators to oversee the rest of the site for a short period before elections are run again. Nobody knows who the moderators are except the site admin, but the actions the mods take (bans, locking, moving, etc.) can be seen by general governing board, who can undo/veto actions if enough of them are in agreement. Barring certain things like DMCA takedowns and CP, ideally the entirety of the moderator's actions would be public.
What do you think, Jow Forums?

Attached: 1538839971323.gif (170x200, 41K)

>How to prevent an imageboard from degrading?
You don't.
You accelerate the process and then create the next platform in time. For example, look at Jow Forums and 4channel.

If you want to have a interesting conversation with someone go to college and find friends. Don't go to some Bhutanese shrimp cooking forum

Moderation kills chan culture you stupid leddit newfag. This site is built on ban evasion.
You can't force a board to have a great culture, culture can only grow organically when like minded people find each other. Normans will go away when they see the stuff on there doesn't interests them and everybody is calling them faggots for their retardation. The actual issue is actually finding smart and knowledgeable people to post, ie see all the dead boards like lainchan and /tech/. And if we removed all the consumerist cancer and mental illness from Jow Forums it'd be a pretty dead board too.

well smart people either don't have time for that or killed themselves

Take your bullshit censoring fucking rules elsewhere cunt.
Other than stopping illegal posts everything and every discussion should be started and ended organically.
Let nature take its course. It will correct itself when spam users occur.
Also
Get off that moral pedestal once in a while. Although the governing body is interesting but if it gets corrupted like it is now then it will be even worse.

You actually find some experienced devs and people from the semiconductor industry on here surprisingly enough. I guess they just don't want to make accounts to post on some cucked php forum.

That's the thing, I've had good interesting conversations here, but especially on smaller boards. I want to preserve that as the site grows.
>Moderation kills chan culture
Jow Forums's moderated too, but the moderators are picked by hiroshimoot and we have no say in how the place is run and no real retaliatory options left to us besides packing up and leaving. Is that really better?
>You can't force a board to have a great culture, culture can only grow organically when like minded people find each other.
Exactly. What I want is an environment that actively encourages those people to stay and post, which will snowball and bring in more like-minded people. Letting the cancer run too freely will have the opposite effect and scare those same people off.

Where did I mention censorship? Isn't letting the userbase essentially form its own moderation team that decides what goes the exact opposite?

Jow Forums only thrives because literally anyone can post easily
A board with anonymnity that requires you to sign up just seems like it's pulling itself in two different directions, and could potentially be more cancerous than anything else with the insular elitism that comes with gated communites combined with the lack of responsbility of anonymous posting

What if some sjws make up a governing body on a politically charged board like his or pol?

>Jow Forums's moderated too, but the moderators are picked by hiroshimoot and we have no say in how the place is run and no real retaliatory options left to us besides packing up and leaving. Is that really better?
A reddit system where anyone can create and moderate their own board would unironically be far better than this broken system boards nobody cares about, mods who don't care about boards and different social groups being lumped in together where they really shouldn't be (why do programmers have to share a board with consumer electronics enthusiasts?)

>Jow Forums's moderated too, but the moderators are picked by hiroshimoot
The moderation is really lax, slow and easily circumvented.
>we have no say in how the place is run and no real retaliatory options left to us besides packing up and leaving
>we
There is no "we". You appointing your friends as mods wouln't be any better than whoever hiro chooses. Other than range banning ips to make you buy a pass they really haven't done anything wrong.
>Letting the cancer run too freely will have the opposite effect and scare those same people off.
Except the cancer makes it seem like a faster and more popular board, so it doesn't put off people as long as it is contained in their own threads. If Jow Forums actually had strict moderation it'd be a lot less fun.

cripplechan works that way. you are free to go there, but it's not that great. there just isn't enough people to have an active board with very specific content

I have no interest in going to a board for gaymergaters, and I'm not surprised it's dead because it was only popular for that reason
There's probably enough people on Jow Forums to do it
Slower boards could exist with real discussion about things people care about
Instead we have /po/ - Papercraft

What I want is a good signal-to-noise ratio, the kind you only find on much smaller image/textboards. I think preserving that ratio as much as possible as a site grows is worth looking into, and in that sense I hesitate to say Jow Forums is thriving. There's less good OC posted on here than there used to be, for sure. I don't think taking 10 seconds to type in a username and password in the registration field and then lurking for a day or two (something already ingrained into chan culture) would inspire any sort of elitism, either.
Lack of responsibility is something I'd like to address, though. With bans tied to usernames there's much bigger potential consequences for doing something stupid, plus it completely sidesteps the issues that IP bans have with VPNs and dynamic IPs.

The way I see it working would be that the initial site culture would scare that type off (the snowball effect I mentioned earlier) + the site admin can remove moderators/governing board members if they step outside the bounds of the base rules of the site.
Infinity does this and I've thought off and on about implementing it. Letting users create boards at random can really fragment a site though; I'd prefer to just listen/watch more closely and create a separate /programming/ board or whatever as the need arises.

>The moderation is really lax, slow and easily circumvented.
This is a bad thing for serious discussions. Fun for memeing though. Depends on what you're looking for.
>You appointing your friends as mods wouln't be any better than whoever hiro chooses.
I'm saying I wouldn't appoint anyone and would be pretty hands-off except for bad cases like the SJW situation I mentioned above. That's the point of the election process, and I think it'd lead to a mod team much more in tune with the rest of the userbase.

>1) Nature abhors a vacuum. If you/whoever running a site doesn't address site culture, something else will, probably in a way you won't like.
>2) Not everybody cares about your site equally. It's important to make sure the people who do care have a way to make themselves known and deal with vandals and others trying to change your site's culture.
>3) Barriers to participation increase discussion quality. Seen this one myself a lot.

Reddit follows these and you know the end result. Circle-jerking and mods who think they are gods.

Fact is that imageboards are meant to be Wild Wests meant for varying degrees of funposting. Just make a regular forum if you can't accept this.

Attached: 1542134469538.jpg (1920x1200, 983K)

Small chans die even without registration
Any barrier to participation is only making things worse for your site
All you need is good moderation, because your chan won't be big enough that the mods don't read all the posts anyway
I don't really think the chan format needs to be modified at all to create a good small site, the problems that manifest in large places like this don't really appear, all you need is a culture or topic that makes people stick around on your site instead of Jow Forums

>I want to have serious discussions
Get real, do you know where you are? Imageboards are made for memeing. And yet Jow Forums is as good as it gets without going to PC places like leddit, freenode and mailing lists, which are probably better for discussions about obscure topics. All alternative chans are evem shittier than 4channel at obscure topics because there just isn't enough people.

>Moderation kills chan culture you stupid leddit newfag.
Disagree.

There's smaller niche chans that have a strong chan culture while still having moderation to keep the filth out and keep the boards from becoming like all the Jow Forums blue boards have become (Jow Forums colonies)

The number of comfy boards with good discussion I've come across lead me to believe that imageboards could do better on the whole. I think (as the original article I linked sorta pointed out) places getting crappier as they get bigger is a symptom and not the root cause, and I'd like to experiment with the formula to find out if anything can be done about that.

>all you need is a culture or topic that makes people stick around on your site instead of Jow Forums
The problem is unless the people who originally bought into that culture (the initial site adopters) have some way of maintaining that culture, it'll get inevitably lost as more and more people join the site and the initial vision is lost. This is why I proposed an enforced lurk period to mirror the assimilation you have to do with real-life immigration; it's sorta weird that you can just jump in immediately and start posting away here without learning how you're supposed to act first. "Lurk more" was sort of a way of implying you were supposed to sit back and watch for a bit, but it wasn't enforced at the site level, which I think should be changed.

>muh leftist boards
If you want that then why don't just go to leddit? And btw those obscure boards are fucking dead and full of larping teenagers

You can't control the culture of your community, you can TRY, but you end up with something that just fades into irrelevance as it fights within itself like Something Awful. The best you can do as a mod is keep the worst shit out. If your culture starts to dirft off into something different, something that you don't like anymore, there's really nothing you can do about it. If you don't follow the spirit of the people your board just turns into a ghost town

I didn't say I was leftist. I actually browse Jow Forums and agree with it most of the time, it's just tiring when you go to a blue board on Jow Forums and it's literally "Jow Forums with technology" or "Jow Forums with tv shows"

The boards I'm speaking of are mostly apolitical, not leftist. Not everything has to be politicized.

This. Attempting to enforce a strict "board culture" will lead to stagnation and user desertion because they have seen all the approved discussions already.

Attached: 1542882001526.jpg (1100x1100, 410K)

You still seem to be missing the crucial point of randomness of discussions.
See how tech discussions here turn political and they move it to pol from here and BOOM the discussion is dead. no one is interested anymore.
That's what moderators are now on this forsaken site with filters and suppressing speech.
People get uninterested when these things happen.

>How to prevent an imageboard from degrading?

Attached: geeks mops sociopaths.png (620x3300, 1.48M)

that image is pure distilled virginity

Why?

it's all butthurt nerd rage
imageboards aren't fandoms anyway, most people here are just sociopaths

Nah, OP, for the most part you cant prevent anonymous imageboards from degrading. The blessing of being (psuedo) anonymous is also the curse, particularly once the board grows large enough. The only points you mentioned that really matter for site health are the barriers to participation and posters being able to make themselves known, but that seriously ruins the point of being an anonymous imageboard. A better idea would be to keep everyone anonymous, have a banner at the top that tracks the rate of unique IPs coming in per day, and automatically shuffles the server to a new IP address once too many newfags are coming in too fast, or the site is under attack by bots. Keeps the anonymous qualities and the culture at the same time. Also never outright say where the new location is, but leave clues for those who care so they can find their way home again.

Attached: rabbitofseville.gif (390x290, 1.8M)

tl;dr- have the site evade the users instead of the users evade the bans.

That's sounds like some abstract sociology babble that's not actually true. In reality genres that actually get popular (like rap, pop, rock and so on) were a jewish invention designed to vaccum shekels from the very beginning.

>butthurt nerd rage
It calmly describes a real phenomenon.
>imageboards aren't fandoms anyway
It talks about subcultures in general, not fandoms.
>most people here are just sociopaths
Not in the sense the picture uses that word or in the literal sense.

no it's about fandoms, subcultures dont neccessarily have fanatics, there aren't really Jow Forums fanatics nor does Jow Forums generate any cultural capital anyone can take advantage of
It describes real phenomenon from the biased point of view of a snivelling nerd

I mostly agree, I think. The users are there for each other, not the site, so you can't make them necessarily act the way you want. What I do want to experiment with is giving a framework for the actually invested site users to make sure their way of life isn't stamped out by a flood of newbies who want to do things differently. In other words, I want to avoid/mitigate eternal september.
For those of you who've seen smaller chans,think about how little recourse they'd have if they experienced a mass migration from a place like here or infinity or something. Their way of doing things would be totally obliterated, and the only thing they could do would be to jump ship and move to a different site. That's the kind of situation I want to avoid. If the core users want to behave differently than the way they did when the site first came into being, that's their prerogative. But I want to protect that prerogative.

Why would it have to be that authoritarian? There's plenty of room for all kind of discussion even with moderation. What I want to get rid of is stuff the users themselves don't want on the site, at least within reason - there would be a kind of a constitution or set of base rules that would put limits on how far the mods could go. So things like on-topic posts would be protected, but maybe something like posts with only a reaction image might be banned, maybe only on certain boards. Who knows.
Yeah, I like this. Small boards only have fanatics and geeks. I want to find a way to prevent mops from running the place.
It's a blessing and a curse, so I outlined a compromise. Signing up and enforcing a lurking period (maybe on a per-board basis, only post in boards you've lurked in) but keeping everyone anonymous is the closest thing to the best of both worlds, I think. You stay anonymous to everyone, but there's some pressure on you to not act totally stupid lest you your username be banned and you're forced to lurk again.

>What I do want to experiment with is giving a framework for the actually invested site users to make sure their way of life isn't stamped out by a flood of newbies who want to do things differently. In other words, I want to avoid/mitigate eternal september.
thats exactly what I'm saying you can't stop
Your community either grows or it stagnates and dies
That's just how communities work

>What I want to get rid of is stuff the users themselves don't want on the site, at least within reason - there would be a kind of a constitution or set of base rules that would put limits on how far the mods could go. So things like on-topic posts would be protected, but maybe something like posts with only a reaction image might be banned, maybe only on certain boards. Who knows.

Uhh so just rules?

Nobody will ever use your shitty weeb python board, so your opinion doesn't really matter.

I see you plan to have automatic per-thread IDs. On a slow-moving board with few threads are as bad as global IDs. They diminish the benefits of anonymity, encouraging posters to bring up shit the same ID posted earlier.

I like the idea of replacing IP tracking. It is becoming increasingly useless. Long enforced lurking after registration will be a problem if you introduce it from the start. It will likely keep your board dead. Strictly for bans it's better to automatically create disposable IDs that take a short time to activate (e.g., 1-24 hours). This way a ban will hurt and force the poster to cool down.

>I like the idea of replacing IP tracking
you never replace IP tracking
you need it anywhere to ban spammers (who will wait out the 24 hour period)

>Also: Some percentage of the site's oldest users get invited to a governance board
>then elect a group of moderators to oversee the rest of the site for a short period
Power structures are a guaranteed way to kill social media.
Don't bring old world wisdom into the digital world, that's stupid.

>elect a group of moderators
lmao
no board should never not be a dictatorship

>look at retarded opinion
>see name
it all makes sense. you are right china man

An anonymous website that requires you to sign up sounds like a bizarre idea destined for failure. There is no way to force a sites culture to not be shit, stuff like lainchan try and those sites just die.
Also I actually installed and ran maniwani the other day and it seemed pretty cool. I think you should have it enlarge images when you click on them instead of opening them in a new tab though. I might play around with the source and see if I add anything useful. I was thinking about adding that feature and something to change the theme/colors of everything.

That way of thinking is killing Jow Forums, reddit, and has already killed digg and an untold number forms across the internet.
It's fucking stupid.

how is it killing Jow Forums?

And I'm saying it's possible to grow while not deviating from that original culture. The way basically all sites since the beginning of time have allowed a new incoming user to have essentially the same level of voice governing-wise as someone who has been on the place for years and years is not something any functioning real-world government does - you can't just waltz into a country and vote for stuff; you have to go through a stringent vetting process and make sure you know how the country you're immigrating into actually works and what it expects from you. On a much smaller scale, I want to implement something like that.
Constitution sounds cooler. Also from a terminology perspective I think it nicely handles the idea that some elected sets of moderators might function in practice a little differently from other ones. But yeah, just a base set of rules with some wiggle room.
Hey, thanks for the feedback. I see your point, though I think with discussion being spread among enough on-topic threads + enough users the problem will solve itself. I also don't intend to enforce a lurking period at the very start, but I want to start planning for it/coding it now. I like your disposable ID idea, but at the same time I think having elected moderators requires knowing who your oldest users are, which requires keeping semi-permanent anonymous IDs.

Someone's got to run the place. From the perspective of a user, I'd much rather someone outside the site admin's cabal had a say in things. Remember, I never said everyone gets a vote, but having accountability + transparency and a course of action for bad/rogue mods is a big deal, I think.
Hey, thanks for trying it out. I agree with the image thing, but had forgotten about it + been working on some other stuff. If you add anything, feel free to send a PR my way.

>subcultures dont neccessarily have fanatics
Some participants in a subculture are really into it and create and curate content for it because they are. That's all it really means.
>nor does Jow Forums generate any cultural capital anyone can take advantage of
You couldn't be more wrong. If you don't understand what cultural capital Jow Forums has created and how it's been used by outsiders and hanger-ons, no point to continue. Lurk more.
>It describes real phenomenon from the biased point of view of a snivelling nerd
So, basically, it's right but you don't like it when high-effort early adopters and creators complain about normalfags?

Attached: ebaumsworld.gif (950x534, 95K)

yeah guys let Jow Forums grow ORGANICALLY just like we let niggers and jews ORGANICALLY invade our homelands
also im scared of getting banned for posting brappppp and plebbit humor :DDDD

Attached: snacks.jpg (288x175, 16K)

>And I'm saying it's possible to grow while not deviating from that original culture.
It's not
You may remain stagnant or stable for a time but it's always grow or die
The old users run out of shit to talk about if you don't let new users in
And no internet forums are democratic so I don't know where your idea that new users get to rule the site comes from
I've run enough forums and communities to know
If Jow Forums tried to enforce 'old Jow Forums' on us it wouldn't work, the place would slowly die, the spirit is gone and it wouldn't have stayed even if Jow Forums didn't grow

Technological decisions and moderation shape website culture, especially when it grows. Jow Forums's culture was shaped by its moderation.
>(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
showed what shouldn't be done.

>You couldn't be more wrong. If you don't understand what cultural capital Jow Forums has created and how it's been used by outsiders and hanger-ons, no point to continue

It's true. Where would society be if we didn't have terms like "cuck" and "normalfag" and "creepshaming"? Jow Forums is like the Shakespeare of the 21st century.

Any consensus-based governing bodies are very vulnerable to SJWs. Don't do consensus. Always have one person is charge. If they're bad, replace them.

This screams retardation.

A comunity founded because you hate the way a community works is just a circlejerk. What do you have to offer that Jow Forums doesnt? What topics can i discuss there? You do now is newfags like you the ones that make threads right? Oldfarts have nothing to talk about or the creativity to entertain.

Anyone would rather meet real people and make friends rather than dropping anonymous coments that anyone can steal and use as their own on a blog or youtube video.

Jow Forums has always been shit, but is a place to mess around and express freely without caring about anything.
Kill yourself hotel dusk baby.

>Always have one person is charge. If they're bad, replace them.
You might want to think about that sentence a little bit more

>Imageboards are made for memeing.
Is an opinion that makes imageboards shit.

>So, basically, it's right but you don't like it when high-effort early adopters and creators complain about normalfags?
I don't like it when socially dysfunctional people promote an embarrassingly distorted view of the world.
A fandom has a hierarchy of creators and consumers
A social subculture like Jow Forums just has different levels of contributors. Its value is in the gathering of people, not the consumation of whatever is being produced by the people at the top
I suppose exploitable cultural capital exists and has been taken advantage of on Jow Forums but the whole "mops vs geeks" cringefest does not apply. People come here to engage in discussion not consume the creation of others

Consensus based government doesnt wor...
>If they're bad, replace them.

I mean in early 2000's most of the memes originated from here.

You didn't understand. A board owner should organize his moderation team in a hierarchical fashion.

I'm not saying new users aren't let in, I'm saying that there needs to be a process showing them how they're expected to behave. Else what happens in terms of culture is a total supplanting of what the site originally stood for simply by throwing enough new people at it, which is what I was talking about in terms of voice. That's why all that keeps a lot of smaller chans the way they are is obscurity, it's a really fragile thing. I think it should be possible to bring new users into the fold while telling them, hey, here you're expected to do XYZ things, but beyond that do as you like. Culture can still evolve that way while staying true to its roots.

Maybe imageboards are a shit concept in itself.
Maybe humanity loves to swim in retardation.

New users essentially means new culture and new ways of acting. If you expect every new user to conform completely, your influx of new users is VERY small. I think a community can stay true to its roots, if it's founded on very strong roots, which internet communities generally aren't

If you think internet memes are culturally significant in any way then you need to turn off your computer, go outside, breathe in some fresh air, and then throw yourself in front of a truck.

Jesus Christ the number of kekistanis seething ITT.

The SJW playbook relies upon being able to shame and force out the existing powers that be through group strength. I don't think that would work in a system where you're not even a valid candidate for moderator unless you're one of the oldest x% users on the site to begin with, that sort of patience is not something I think the average SJW possesses. Additionally, I wouldn't be entirely hands-off, if a mod stepped out of line, I would step in and permaban their ID. There would be an extra incentive not for anyone to pull a stunt like that since a permanent ban like that on their ID would mean it would most likely take a very long time (probably a year at least) to have an ID old enough for mod eligibility.
Right, I think a sweet spot has to be hit in terms of freedom versus conformity for the sake of growth. I also agree that a strong foundation is necessary, which is why I'm discussing this stuff now before throwing up a public instance (hopefully I'll get around to that in mid-December).

>turn off your computer
Its 2018 gramps.

Some items that you may want to consider:

-Force per-thread auto-generated user-IDs, to prevent shilling and self-replies
-Governance rights should be based on quality of contribution, not length-of-stay. Otherwise, any retard just lurk long enough.
-If the mods do not understand the board culture, then you have failed in your duty in recruiting mods. Users need to be able to give you feedback directly, bypassing the mods.
-Equally importantly: If the users do not understand the board culture, then the mods have failed their duty in moderation conversation.

I like your idea of forcing users to lurk moar. We need that here on Jow Forums.

A strong foundation means culture, not technology, the kind of board you use is irrelevant
Cripplechan was doomed to fail because the only reason people went there was because of Gamergate
Why would people visit your chan?

I am glad you gave me a substantial reply, but I think you are making a distinction without sufficient difference. Jow Forums culture has different levels of contributors, as you said. People come to Jow Forums for quality content and discussion. It is clear that the majority of these people doesn't create or post quality content or add interesting opinions to the discussion. Low-effort posters come because of the OC and high-effort posters, but if they post enough they eventually crowd them out. They are consumers, because while they are present and say things their output has low or negative value. This is not different in principle from geeks vs MOPs.

They are culturally significant. It's like prices. If enough people want to pay $1000 for garbage, then garbage is worth $1000.

>Force per-thread auto-generated user-IDs, to prevent shilling and self-replies
Already actually implemented that one. It's something I like and something people have been asking for since I originally made a feature request thread back in May. Pic related is from my test instance, for example. At some point everyone will have cute auto-generated anime avatars to go along with their hexadecimal ID, too.
>Governance rights should be based on quality of contribution, not length-of-stay. Otherwise, any retard just lurk long enough.
I like this one, but how would you measure quality of contribution? Also, who measures quality of contribution? Is this some kind of community vote system, or is the site admin picking and choosing?
>If the mods do not understand the board culture, then you have failed in your duty in recruiting mods. Users need to be able to give you feedback directly, bypassing the mods.
>Equally importantly: If the users do not understand the board culture, then the mods have failed their duty in moderation conversation.
Yeah, I agree with these. I intend on having a /meta/ board of some kind where everyone can discuss the state of the rules/moderation and stuff.

I think it partially has to do with technology since the technology can allow you to enforce the culture in certain ways (like the enforced lurking, for example) but I get your point. Right now I think the main draw to mine, besides a drastically-improved UI/UX and more open development process, would be the small-chan feel where everyone is relatively civil despite being anonymous, and consequently a focus on constructive efforts and discussions and a decreased emphasis on screwing around. I think this would lead to a place (relatively) full of projects like subbing/scanlation and a lively programming subculture, and I've thought about allowing for a free shared server-side sandbox for people who have been around a while.

Attached: Screenshot_2018-11-23 Maniwani - Saber general .png (1588x899, 252K)

>unless you're one of the oldest x% users on the site to begin with
If Jow Forums operated by this rule, its oldest users would be from SA.

I used to make OC for Jow Forums, ten years ago. I don't any more because of the culture shift. OC on Jow Forums is now wojak edits. It's not a case of creators vs consumers, the entire tone of the board just shifted.

>the small-chan feel where everyone is relatively civil despite being anonymous, and consequently a focus on constructive efforts and discussions and a decreased emphasis on screwing around
If you tried this in 5 years ago, you might have a small community for a while before everyone got bored and came back to Jow Forums
If you do it now nobody is going to care
Also anonymous subculture lends itself terribly to group projects, I don't think your dream is gonna come true

Tohsaka > Saber

Attached: swimsuit.jpg (1920x1200, 267K)

Yeah, it'd look a lot different than it does now, for sure, and I'd be open to other qualities to determine the moderator election pool. Someone else mentioned using quality of contribution, but I'm still not sure how that would be measured.
This is what I meant when talking about preventing cultural change. It's obviously harder over the course of a decade, but by and large I think the culture shifted for the worse and I think instilling a strong sense of the existing culture in new users would go a long way towards preventing that sort of thing from happening.
Not necessarily group projects (though I think every now and then anons can come together and make something great) but people with projects of their own. A culture of scratching your own itches is something I'd like to heavily encourage.
It's hard to say nobody will care, and I want to try. If nothing else, Maniwani has taught me a lot and been good resume material.

Are you an old man with money, user?

Not trying to crush your hopes and dreams, I just ran a small chan for a few years and our one had enough of a culture to foster a small community, but I don't think one without a culture behind it would have a userbase

Don't worry about it, I'm glad you asked the question. I think it's important to know what kind of niche you're trying to fill before trying to start a new community.

Attached: 1524288687308.jpg (293x302, 28K)

If I were to make an engine I'd allow anonymous posting but with regulations - captcha, no proxies/VPN/TOR, outright ban some countries, stricter time limits. Free accounts purely for verification(they would still show up as anonymous) and lifting those restrictions, user created boards, creator selected mods for those boards. Self-moderation basically.

>user created boards, creator selected mods for those boards
Again, infinity does this but it's really hard to keep up traffic when it's all splintered across dozens if not hundreds of boards. Creator-selected mods are a decent idea though, I think.

You need something to hook your users. Novel anti-newfag measures are not enough. A board needs something to talk about. If it is not going to be as big as Jow Forums, it can benefit from a theme. What boards do you plan on having?

/anime/, /tech/, /gaming/ and /meta/ (for talking about the chan itself, rules, etc.) were the boards I wanted for sure, nothing too crazy. I was thinking about something like /life/ for comfy general discussions, but I'm not sold on that one yet. I want a slight programming/tech lean, though I'm aware lain exists. I think I can write an all-around better imageboard implementation though, which is honestly half the fun for me - I think having better features + better UI/UX will draw people in, as well.

user, that is too generic. You seem to like Saber. You posted her in this thread and the previous. Here is my $1000 (in hosting costs) idea for you: make a /fate/ board or even specific boards for some of the characters, like on Desuchan. You'll have something to attract an audience.

Attached: saber stop.png (800x600, 417K)

>You seem to like Saber.
Was it that obvious?
I sort of like the idea of more specific boards if only so I can talk about fate more often, but it seems like more specific boards would drive people away, at least initially, wouldn't it? What would someone stand to gain from a more specific board on an up-and-coming chan?

Attached: 1536593900309.jpg (800x1132, 100K)

>Was it that obvious?
Oh yes, it was.

As for more specific boards, I think there is a usefulness curve with them. Too many from the beginning, and the discussion is too dispersed to take off; too few, and there is no reason to come to your generic herewegoagainchan. You need a balance AND you need to stand out. A few boards covering something that has an existing following but no major boards about it is a way to do it.

Attached: saber raincoat.jpg (366x567, 88K)

>yet another imageboard software
Write a lynxchan plugin instead

Yeah, setting a balance is hard, though I understand why someone wouldn't want to discuss things on a generic board for the umpteenth time. Thoughts on a translation board for manga/anime/game/LN translation efforts? I want to attract that crowd at some point since they're a group of people who can generally be called upon to reliably create (semi) original content, and I don't think there's a place out there for them in general already.
I've probably gotten my foot in the door with at least one internship partially thanks to Maniwani. Also having complete control over the whole package means I can implement all sorts of neat/weird stuff like the elected moderator thing.

Attached: 1537610413604.jpg (1920x1173, 175K)

>and subsequent no-posting lurk period proportional to the size of the site before posting is allowed automatically throws up a reasonable barrier to entry
>Some percentage of the site's oldest users get invited to a governance board (both a group and an actual /vip/-esque board that everyone can see but only they can post to) who then elect a group of moderators to oversee the rest of the site for a short period before elections are run again
please make this fucking website OP, and ignore the haters. I'm itching to leave this shithole

It's super easy to set up and play with your own private instance of Maniwani right this very second if you wanna see what it looks like (download the code + 1-3 commands in Docker depending how fancy you want your setup to be), but I'm gonna try to make a public instance around mid-December, without the lurk period/governance setup and me moderating everything directly. Once the site has a bit of a small userbase (~100 users), then the lurk and election stuff will be enforced, but no sooner since otherwise it might not even establish a userbase.
I've taken a liking to Futatsu for the name of the public site, but if you have other suggestions, throw 'em at me.

Attached: 1531574512683.jpg (1024x1450, 248K)

>Thoughts on a translation board for manga/anime/game/LN translation efforts?
I think m*g*k* has a subbing general. The main question you should ask yourself is why translators would flock to your board. The best (perhaps only) way to start a translation board from stretch is to be a translator or to have translator friends. In all other cases it will be much harder. Though maybe you could bootstrap a translation board by first keeping track of and announcing new translations until a translator-sempai or two noticed you. A light novel or a /jplit/ board could be interesting, but I doubt it's viable.

s/stretch/scratch/

>Futatsu
People will think it's about futa.

>Futatsu
sounds good to me. fun to say out loud and has hidden meaning. like "IKEA".

this. look at websites like Lainchan and 420chan. they both have their own identities and branding that separate them from the rest of the imageboard clones, and their userbase is a lot more stable because of this.
i.e. Lainchan is about cyberpunk and dystopianism, 420chan focuses on drugs and wrestling. for your site to gain traction you need to have foci like these.

Branding is another good point.

The gallery mode I've already implemented was done with dump threads/scanlations in mind since thumbnails are fairly big and chronological order is preserved, but other than that, yeah, I admit I don't have anything specifically appealing to translators at the moment. Maybe some integrated tools for stuff like danbooru-style image annotations or other things like that would help, I dunno.
>tfw not a translator and not particularly chummy with any sub groups
Time to start networking, then. Could also be useful to find out what sort of tools groups would like to see in an imageboard. I also like the /jplit/ idea, kinda.
二つ is a pretty basic word and one I bet a lot of people would be familiar with already. I'm really mostly a fan of it for the play off 2ch and Yotsuba, though. I like names with built-in references like that.
Fair point. I think what I'm slowly figuring out is that I want a site built around people who make digital things, like programming projects or the translation stuff I mentioned earlier. Could be fun branching out into other digital stuff too, maybe a /writing/ or /drawing/ board would be nice, but I only see myself as a writer, so I don't know what kind of specific features artists would want in an imageboard.

/fate/ is staying around, though. Saber needs her board.

>Fair point. I think what I'm slowly figuring out is that I want a site built around people who make digital things, like programming projects or the translation stuff I mentioned earlier. Could be fun branching out into other digital stuff too, maybe a /writing/ or /drawing/ board would be nice, but I only see myself as a writer, so I don't know what kind of specific features artists would want in an imageboard.
I think I see where you're going with this. you could have boards like /3/ too which focus on using OpenGL software creatively. that could definitely work, there needs to be a non-tumblr alternative for artistic people to discuss their ideas and I'm sure there are people out there looking for something like this.

>/fate/ is staying around, though. Saber needs her board.

Attached: b2e1f4f00d1b14cecfd770fe4a8a9148345ac28d.jpg (548x365, 49K)

1. Have something to draw in people you like (and make it as boring as possible for normalfaggots (this is important. It's what killed Jow Forums. Founded on shocking stuff and counter culture, when this became tolerable by the outsider it all went to shit. Example: Jow Forums and the 2016 election. It brought the entirety of reddit here.))
2. Ban phone user-agents
3. Have some fucking moderation, for fucks sake.