4chan/Chronicle/qa

History of 4chan's /qa/ - Question & Answer board

>why am I writing this

Personal endearment.

>but why?

Arguably the most revisioned board history on the site, with years worth of accumulated misinformation and disinformation. I'd rather this not continue.

>well then, what is it?

An offtopic & meta community composed of posters from disparate origins that died prematurely due to aggression from off-site cliques. Then it became something else entirely.

Symbols

‼ Attested on archives, citation pending.

☼ Unverified aka "i'm the primary source", no primary evidence.

► Source is exclusively anon testimony, no primary evidence.

♫ --> gsg, Infinity's intl, other infinity players, /jp/ spin offers, and many, many more.

/qa/ Historiographic Summary

Breakdown of periods & core points

Meta Period (2015/01-2016/09)

• Stragglers from moot's big AMA stream reminisce on nostalgic memories and ponder what to do with the board. The /qa/ charter gets drafted.
• Within a couple months the honeymoon period ends and the board slows down, most posters leave
• /qa/ coalesces into a small collection of meta aficionados, karens crying to the mods and anons looking for an off-topic board that wouldn't get swarmed with weirdos and porn. Most generals get created.

Off-Topic Period (2016/09-2017/05)

• Sweeping site changes on 4chan's 13th birthday, Hiroyuki's fearmongering, the 2016 US election, the firing of Anonymous-San, a badly timed April's Fool joke and finally the listing of /qa/ cause a massive increase in activity causing generalized chaos and destabilizing regular threads.. By 2017, the forum registers on the map of multiple off-site cliques whose origins lie between disparate board cliques, chatgroups formed out of generals and the /jp/ Spin Off webring. They discover that /qa/ is, moderation wise, an off-topic SFW board; Raids and angry protests ensue.

Great weeb-frog War (2017/06-2019/09)

• No-fun-allowed rejects from the spinoffs determine to turn /qa/ into their homeboard by aggressively botting up the place and gaslighing all passerby. They are resisted by an equally intense group of locals who adopt /pol/'s smug frogs as their callsign.; This years long flamewar practically depopulates the board., deteriorating in quality and quantity until both sides were reduced to a couple schizophrenics screaming at ghosts.

Second Meta Period (2019/8-2020/03)

• Mods enact draconic measures that effectively end bumpbots and "/jp/" spam, exiling the #qa clique for good and stopping some of the more agressive frogposters. Frogs settle down into /bant/-like frogposting☼ and meta threads thrive once again. ☼
• A slow but steady influx of offtopic users develop into a small blogging culture.

Soijak Raids & freezing. (2020/04-2021/11)

• The lockdowns of the pandemic bring a massive increase of overall activity to 4chan which, through causes yet unknown, leads a /pol/-derived meme☼ to turn /qa/ into a thousands strong community of middleschool kids; They cause site-wide havok that ultimately gets /qa/ frozen.

Epilogue

• All of /qa/ is concentrated on the 4chan Happenings General, which gets "adopted" by a mod. The general takes refuge on /trash/ and later /r9k/.☼
• Soyjak posters migrate into their own imageboard and continue a meteoric increase in size and influence, until they implode and collapse into several discord cliques.
• An injoke of an injoke evolved somewhere in late 2023 from a soyjak thread into it's own website called The Frog Pond and later The Ribbit Rally. developing roleplay centered around kekistani mythos, the weeb/frog war and other party memes transforming them into one grand post-ironic injoke. The culprit behind most of this spinoff's content spends the better part of 2024 raiding the stragglers of /hap/ and occasionally /a/. The site dies on January 2025, presumably because Trump's electoral victory killed the joke. On February 5 the spammer comes clean on /hap/.

Demographic Summary

Regulars

Core /qa/ posters, the natural userbase of the board for good and ill

old /qa/

• metaposters
  • 4chan trivia aficionados --> discussed their main boards, made nice map threads and dug old pieces of OC
  • nostalgic oldfags --> mostly there to tell the aficionados how good they used to have it
  • armchair admins --> countless foolish but well-meaning "how i will fix 4chan" threads. ‼
  • internet hobbyists --> bibanon is here! - people who wished for a board best described as "/internet/ - Internet Culture" and found /qa/ it's closest equivalent, discussion about altchans dominated their interests
• complaintposters
  • /DELETEPOL/ --> primordial fire of all 4chan metadiscussions
  • /mlp/ apostates --> From the first day to the end of 2017, rotating casts of pony posters demanded to get GR15 revoked.
  • The 4chan Karen --> only here to vent and call people names ‼, but unwittingly acted as the greatest conversation starters on the board.
  • /a/fags --> technically Karens, but their numbers alone were enough to develop a persistent /a/ hatefandom during the early days ‼
  • Off-board Clique refugees --> Such as /gsg/ and /intl/ among others. Across the years several micro-communities took refuge on /qa/ to complain about this and that ‼. While not inherently a problem, these crossposters didn't find themselves obligated to respect the locals ♫
• sfwofftopicposters
  • Off-Topic Colonies: At first it was [s4s] & the /a/jp/ general. Other posters were ambivalent to their presence, but they were not aggressive and contributed large quantities of OC. Slowly, other groups, such as "/jp/", /pol/lacks & /bant/ made /qa/ their home away from home. All the colonists got ran out the board by the end of 2017, either due to the speeding up, loss of interest, or creating of other boards such as /bant/. ‼
  • Board-tans General --> As drawthreads moved on to other fotms, artsy teen remnants of the /co/ 4chan House and the /v/ Winter Ball projects found the newly created /qa/ as a refuge to ship anthropomorphic imageboards undisturbed. Managed to eke out a good 2 years worth of OC and a final cross-board events of the Winter Ball 2015 & 2016.‼ Changes to /qa/'s speed killed the general by late 2016 and the listing of /qa/ killed Winter Ball 2017 by redirecting all threads to the now unusable /qa/.
  • CSS General --> 4chan UI customization thread. that was taken over by raiders from the Spin Off. Coined the MD5 filter megalist.
  • Happenings General --> A mix of gossip and meta thread, it remained oddly consistent for the better part of 6 years.

late /qa/

• /bant/ / /int/ type frogposters --> With the spinoff bots out of the picture, the more unhinged frog raiders leave and the remaining frogposters settle down. They go through a demographic shift that sees them more in tune with posting habits you'd see in /int/, /tv/ or /bant/.
• late offtopicposters --> Mostly new stock. Culturally very close to /bant/, casual, and moderately hostile to both frogposters and the kissu clique, but not afraid to post content related to either.☼
  • blogposters --> The majority of /qa/'s new blood from 2019 consisted of one-line blogposters running rolling threads, usually anime related,☼ but sometimes well adapted to board culture, ☼ not too dissimilar to /int/'s /brit/ or similar trends in /bant/ and [s4s]. ☼
  • Not a Happening General --> As soyjaks ate up the board, blogposting migrated in increasing numbers to /hap/. Eventually the situation became unsustainable and the /nah/ thread was created.
• late metaposters --> Generally veterans of /qa/ who survived both hiroyuki memeing the board and the great war. jaded as they get.
  • (Punished) Happenings General --> A thread denied it's board. Took in refugees from every demographic as the board collapsed into non-stop spam while dealing with multiple problem tripfags. By the end of the board /hap/ was a multifacetic beast with competing points of view taken from all epochs of the site. It was the thread to close the door on /qa/ as the board got frozen.

Native Personalities of /qa/ & Notables

Not a tripfag list. These are posters known to be notorious rulebreakers who waged little personal wars against the mods and other posters, homegrown and tourist.

/qa/'s lovely band of crazies

• "Pony Spammer" - A single poster, possibly but unlikely to be multiple people, on a years long campaign to get GR15 removed. Been on /qa/ since practically the beggining. Went on overdrive after April's Fools 2017 created /mlpol/. Got ran out of the board a few months later.
• "Catholic Anon" / Andy - Old /qa/'s lovely resident retard, rants about religion and /pol/ being infiltrated by nu/pol/ subhumans and Reddit. Managed to get all of early /qa/'s panties on a twist. Known to get in massive flamewars with Gun Control Anon.
• "Gun Control Anon" - Alleged femanon infamous for gun control rants, putting EMPHASIS on words and never quitting a reply chain.
• GR15 Defense Force / GRXVDF !!mQybBQsWzGP ---> /qa/'s first problem tripfag. Donned the name in late 2016. His claim to fame is the failed GET that unexpectedly became an infamous reference point for the start of the spin off raids. Obsessed with bronies and generally a teenbro type shitposter. Spun the narrative that 2D/Random saved /qa/ from /mlpol/ raids and insisted on it for the better part of a year while picking fights with the mods. Befriended the Spin Off clique and got publicly banned in december 2017; dropped off public posting soon after.
• "asuka" / "asukaspammer" ---> Avatarfag of character Asuka Kurashina from Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm, first spotted early 2016, likely a /jp/ / "/jp/" main. He utilized a crapflood script to wipe /qa/, then gloat after he gets nuked and 3/4ths of the board go with him.. Prolific blogposter. Alleged to run the earliest instances of the bumpbot (rofl & 3 letter gibberish) and the Suck My Cock Dude spambot. Coordinated spam with with the /g/+/ota/ raiders but never openly associated with them or the #qa clique remaining purely anonymous instead.. Publicly banned in december 2017 and while he became less active, never truly dropped /qa/. I'll never understand what they see in these generic characters.
• /qa/doge --> Problem blogposter. First appeared 2021.☼ Avatarfag of (dogbitch) from Helluva Boss.☼ Obsessed with soyjak posters.☼
• leafeon --> Problem blogposter. First appeared 2020.☼ Avatarfag of Leafeon from Pokémon.☼

Dreadful outsiders ruining our fun

• "Anti Crack-Kun" / "ACK" - Infamous personality from /u/. Formerly a guerrilla scanlator, he was a high functioning autistic with serious hangups about shipping. His condition deteriorated into paranoid delusions of targeted trolling, leading him to blame Team4chan for his woes. ACK turned to spamming both #4chan and /qa/ at several points in the board's life; a drama retinue that included other /u/ personalities such as !Akemi and warosushitter !!dApALfIDywS followed him around.
• "barneyfag" / Lee Goldson --> Infamous /co/ spammer; an autistic who despised Barney & Friends and associated it with cartoons My Little Pony and Steven Universe. From 2012 onwards he imposed a reign of terror that spread to several boards including /v/, /vg/ & /qa/. Spent considerable time on /qa/ hunting down the local pony spammer ‼; He got doxxed in 2017☼ and likely stopped poster soon asfter.
• "leebaiter" / "leebot" --> After Lee got doxed and allegedly stopped posting around 2017, the troll clique that formed around him kitbashed a leebot spamscript with image recognition capabilities hooked to the brony booru. The maintainer of this lee imitation bot began using boards such as /int/ & /qa/ as testing grounds. Albeit there's argument that it's all done manually
• "unicodefag" / "foxe" / leto ---> Notable scriptspammer from /trash/ & /bant/. Chiefly known for operating with a massive proxylist that could wipe an entire board in a matter of minutes. Has wiped several boards. Attempted to bait the #qa clique into a flamewar but wasn't picked up on.. Fell in with the sturdychan /cumg/ crew and by late 2024 ran the [CENSORED] ban evasion tool.

Raiders

Off-site and sometimes local groups who organized to bring /qa/ to it's knees one way or the other, plus their lynchpins and notables.

First Gen Raiders

(2016-2017)

• /pol/ bandwagon --> The first group to pervasively raid /qa/ was /pol/, as payback over perceived slights originating from the also pervasive /deletepol/ threads. In what's essentially a months-long sore winner tantrum from the then most influential board on 4chan, teenage /pol/yps gloated to /qa/ddit of resisting supposed attempts at bringing their board down, winning the election, getting modcat fired among other things such as falling for trolls claiming /leftypol/ infiltrated the staff. As all bandwagons, it was intense enough to speed up /qa/ by an order of magnitude, but also short-lived.
• /jp/ Spin Off Cliques / "/jp/" --> warosu.org/g/, ota-ch, himasugi, 4taba, no-you, /nen/, GNFOS and likely more.. Invited between february and april 2017 during a massive shitposting spree, those that remained began by aggressive campaign to run all other demographics off the board. Most spinoffers left by the end of the year, with only a singular clique remaining.
  • Trevelyan / Trevor / "T" --> Admin of GNFOS & no-you, legendary /jp/ shitposter and spinoff pioneer. Visited /qa/ around february causing an entire mob to follow him there. Returned to the fray in 2018 and a began project to make daily reviews on the /jp/sphere. Went just a little bit nuts over it.
  • "Satania" / "Trevor" --> Avatarfagged as Satanichia Kurumizawa Mcdowell from Gabriel DropOut (bruh) around 2017. Was confused to be trevor by local frogposters.
  • ccd0 !!Bu9nPEv33rQ ---> mantainer of the 4chanX extension since 2015 ‼, part of the steamgroup clique and in bed with their antics on /qa/. Integrated tinychan spinoff variants into 4chanX's framework.. Began to cause problems for 4chan after the custom CAPTCHA got announced in 2019. The betrayal was shocking enough that the mods banned all mention of him on /qa/, and enacted a series of sweeping rangebans to kill the clique for good ‼
• local resistance & "/jp/" dissenters --> /qa/'s meta side had a sizeable /a/, /jp/ & spinoff presence before the raids. "/jp/"'s raid immediately raised alarms among those familiar with /jp/ and they made their opinions known, to little effect beyond basically predicting how the whole thing would go down ‼. Furthermore, many other /qa/ natives spoke their mind on the damage done to the board but were unable to pinpoint who was responsible. ‼ Tensions mounted until a sizeable "resistance" looking for ways to bait the spinoffs into flamewars began hounding their threads ☼.
  • "The" frogposter --> A 2016 tourist that made himself known through polite frog posting in early 2017. Never pseudonymous, but identifiable by image hashes, filenames and his ability to directly name spinoff antics, if not always correctly. He implied to be an OG /qa/ poster but he has never been spotted before 2017; His identity, usage of /pol/-type frogs and polite-yet-sarcastic prose seemed handcrafted to make spinoff posters as angry as possible thought he was known to engage spinoffers playfully early on. His MO consisted of trying to bait the cliques by waging a low energy guerrilla war where there's always couple frog threads on the catalog.. The tactic was an overarching success that inspired many copycat trolls. May have coined the term weeb mafia. . Dropped off the board after /qa/ got listed, but sporadically visited.
  • Small Skelly !!RAjBw+iGH/Y --> Poster with some /r9k/, [s4s] and /jp/ knowledge, but not enough to know of spinoffs; an election tourist that quickly ID'd problem posters from /jp/ and called them out then spent the rest of the year pointlessly picking fights.
• Steamgrüppe / Steamcord & /mlp/ --> The April's Fool 2017 prank caused a short-lived raid by /mlp/, as merging with /pol/ to form /mlpol/ was the most interesting thing to happen to that board since 2015.☼ This was also instigated by a clique known to raid several boards but most specially /vg/'s /gsg/ - Grand Strategy General. This is quickly picked up by the local remove GR15 spammer and used as a new rallying point. ☼

Second Gen Raiders

(2018-2019)

• Steamchat & #qa Clique / "weeb mafia" / "the weab" / /qajp/ / !qajp / kissu.moe --> Eclectic mix of teenbro shitposters and no-fun-allowed neurotics. Toxic positivity aficionados who actually believed the rhetoric of making /qa/ into 2D/Random, they don't stand out from the rest of the spinoffers until the last quarter of 2017. Concentrated together with a large repertoire of the spinoff personalities in a Steamchat called /qa/ and the #qa rizon IRC. Responsible for thousands of botposts over the span of 3 years. I'm only naming those suspected of running bots or raiding, I don't intend to witchhunt nor encourage such behaviour.
  • Verniy / !HibikiZODI / "hibikid" / ECHibiki / ECVerniy --> Canadian developer, possibly of Russian origins. Tripfag & avatarfag of character Hibiki from Kantai Collection. Earliest appearances can be traced to April 2017. Wrote the spellcard bumpbot. Created an alternate 4chan ban logger. Dropped his trip by 2018, can be identified from 8chan-hash filenames. When rangebans swept and post deletions removed, created kissu.moe, then spent months spamming the report queue with fake GR1 violations.
  • yotgo / !QAJP/YOtGo --> No-fun-allowed, passive-aggressive spammer fixated on removing anything that isn't /jp/-derived from /qa/. Spent hundreds of posts trying to convince people that "/jp/" never did bad for /qa/. Earliest posts can be traced to March 2017. Oldschool anime aficionado, recognizable for posting Di Gi Charat and Rika. Claims to have been on /qa/ since 2015. No evidence has been found (and likely won't). Early he'd attack any /jp/ aligned dissenter by him concernbro or spamming pictures of concern brands. ☼ Reputed to be the most prolific OC producer of the #qa clique,☼ he also created the MD5 filter megalist for 4chanX. Ran an instance of the spellcard bumpbot.☼ Ran a weekly anime stream that later moved to Kissu where he became a mod. In March 2019 had a fight with another clique member, Atechan, that caused a mental breakdown leading him to run around the board accusing everyone of being Atechan. His hostility and general condesencion towards everything not /jp/ made him turned him into the most reviled poster of /qa/. Announced he was leaving the board in Aug 2019 but was seen doing his daily gaslighting a couple days later now pretending /qa/ was depopulated without him. Seems determined to stay here forever.
  • atechan / Rin --> Brazilian, very likely underage. clique member known for manually bumping several threads and having emotional episodes if they were deleted.‼ Got in a fight with the clique around March 2019, the clique doxed him in June.
  • jevin --> Seemingly harmless ☼, [s4s] speak aficionado ‼. Could have posted on /a/jp/? ☼ Likes frogs!
  • "lowercase-kun" / "schizoweeb" --> The angriest poster on /qa/. Appeared around March 2017, known for angry lowercase posting, marisaposting, and generally unhinged posts and throwing accusations of samefagging directed at frogs. Oscillates wildly between being genuinely angry and going on elaborate stream of thought shitposting sprees confusing frog and weeb alike. His usual calling cards are combinations of subhuman, schizo and freak His abrasive demeanor only got more hostile with time, even getting him disowned by the clique. He later became obsessed with a frogspammer often described as "the freak" and hunted him down on every thread. By the end of the flamewar he and The Freak had become two sides of the same coin.
• Frogposters --> is a group that was 100% homegrown really a raider? Due to !qajp taking the bait every single time, /qa/ developed a community of copycat frog posting trolls inspired by the antics of the original frogposter. More destructive and incoherent, and likely less numerous, they'd occasionally try to flood the board with threads to 404 threads protected by the steamchat bumpbot. Notably less polite than their originator.. Slowly, they MO began to take a shape similar to frogposting see on /int/ and /tv/.
  • "schizospammer" / "the freak" --> Mythological poster that may either be the board's most prolific frog spammer or a boogeyman existing entirely in one spinoffer's head.‼ The freak in question is in the habit of making long, detailed gonzo journalist like rants painting fantasy scenarios where the antics of the #qa clique are always exaggerated. While likely to be one person, could have consisted of multiple copycats. Popularized the term "weab".
  • atechan / Rin --> Got in a fight with kissu‼ (surprising absolutely nobody), according to the more unhinged posters like yotgo and lowercase, is the person behind schizopammer..

Third Gen Raiders

(2020-2021)

• Kissu hardliners --> Even thought verniy and most of the clique was happy on Kissu, one or multiple posters remained at /qa/ on a strange mission to convince everyone else their clique has only been good for the board ‼. Few believed their tale.
• /bant/ Cabal ☼ --> supposedly, the last pre-soyjak board wipes were made by a discord clique originating from /bant/. They can be identified by usage of real life photos (anathema to spinoffers) during crapfloods.
• Soyjak Posters / Soyjak.Party / "the Sharty" ‼ --> Remixes of a popular Soy variant of wojak created on /int/ becomes a sitewide phenomenom in 2019. It hasn't been determined whether it was organic or artificially created by mods redirecting threads, but a soyjak community forms on /qa/. The presence of soyjaks can be seen infrequently as early as Aug 2019 and it eclosions into permanent fixture around April 2020, likely encouraged by the pandemic.☼ Unexpectedly, this explodes in popularity & develops, with some exceptions, into an unique culture disconnected from /qa/ proper to evolve into a site-wide teenage phenomenon with a complex irony culture and their own imageboard. Through interboard raids and sheer numbers, they ultimately got the board frozen after running out every other thread except the Happenings general.
  • /qa/ Archeologists --> A subset of jak posters got interested in the antics of old /qa/ and started browsing desuarchive for amusing tidbits, ghostposting along the way. ☼ jaks managed to reconstruct a crude timeline of events, lists of names and phrases, enough to integrate then into the Party's ironic sense of humour. Many old pics and phrases used by older personalities saw themselves reposted by these sleuths. The extent of the act was such that OC in line with both frog and weeb MOs was produced.

TEMP

fat sack of loot: some will be used for the Timeline.

extremely important evidence: https://desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/qa/image/1496/55/1496556790721.png

note: trifpags are a surprisingly informative resource on presence of other boards.

fun things are fun -> /a/fags ;

fuwafuwa -> /a/jp/ / spinoff

Punky Brewster !GRG1IWogTk / Punky Brewster !!3KOUpWS64nD -> oldschool [s4s], /a/jp/

https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/username/Punky%20Brewster/order/asc/page/12/

https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/username/milkless%20cereal%20/order/asc/

/jp/ meta

one of the best meta threads ive ever read https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/469585/#

/a/ meta

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/261522/#263640

https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/username/Fun%20Things%20Are%20Fun/order/asc/page/17/

/gsg/ raids:

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1220369/#1220369

https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/18852770/#18852809

[s4s] <3 /qa/

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/828021/

/pol/ raid

people debating asukaspammer -> https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/833874/

early threadbombing:

classic that started it all: https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/image/5XOGOo6Y78jgow5f5t%2FYhw%3D%3D/page/82/

pre jp board wipes https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/836969/#q837077

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1134747/#1135235

warosu raids:

early spin off presence https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/text/%22suck%20my%20cock%20dude%22/order/asc/

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1368463/#1368866

clueless anon discuss raids: https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1365400/#q1366364

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1673519/#q1673716

eta about raids https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1363253/#1363627

qa native adressing asuka, frogs and ghost raiders PLUS early schizoweeb mentions: https://www.archived.moe/qa/thread/1374236/#q1374294

/qa/ getting absolutely destroyed https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/type/op/start/2017-08-03/end/2017-08-05/order/asc/page/1/

bumpbot selections

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1418437/

kissu/weeb mafia gaslighting:

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1934751/#1935668

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1934170/

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/5180231/#5183023

kissu infighting

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2838188/

possible OG frogposter sighting

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1004342/#q1034360

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1004342/#q1152768

frogposters theorizing poster indentikits

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2453967/

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2560610/#q2560636

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2554646/#2554677

qa review

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/1634875/

schizoweeb

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2554646/#q2554704

anons talking board personalities:

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2554646/#q2554739

Generic info on non qa raiders

• unicodefag https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/5210481/#q5215928

• unicodefag https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/4781883/#q4782056

• unicodefag https://desuarchive.org/qa/search/text/foxe/deleted/deleted/type/op/

• bui raid https://archived.moe/bant/thread/5829585/

jaks churning oc like its a goddamn job

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/3730452/

Clique refugees:

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2007664/

curia:

>Mass download every image hash uploaded to 4chan in the first two months of this year.

>Calculate the similarity of boards based on how their share image hashes

>Build a chart that shows overlapping userbases