4chan/Chronicle/qa

DRAFT
- 2025/01/18

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

>why am I writing this

Personal endearment.

>but why now?

Arguably the most revisioned board history on the site.

>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 which then became something else entirely.

Breakdown:

First Meta Period (2015-2016)

Leftovers of moot's big AMA stream reminisce on nostalgic memories and ponder what to do with the board. The /qa/ charter gets drafted.
/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 (2017)

Sweeping site changes on 4chan's 13th birthday, the 2016 US election, the firing of Anonymous-San, a badly timed April's Fool joke and finally the listing of /qa/ cause a considerable speed up in activity^[1] followed by visible destabilization in established threads and generalized chaos^[2]. The forum registers on the map of a number of off-site cliques whose origins range between disparate boards, 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 (2018-2019)

No-fun-allowed rejects from the spinoffs determine to turn /qa/ into their homeboard by aggressively botting up the place and personally gaslighing all passerbys. They get resisted by an equally intense group of locals with seeming ties to "/jp/" who adopt smug frogs as their callsign; This years long flamewar practically depopulates the board.

Second Meta Period (2020)

Mods figure out how to kill the spambots, causing the /qajp/ clique to self-exile; Frogs impose a short lived era of /int/-like frogposting oriented on meta ☼

Soijak Raids & freezing. (2021)

Through causes yet unknown, a /pol/-derived meme☼ turns /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 takes refuge on /trash/ (a gross mistake they came to regret)☼. Years later, /qa/ "lore", kekistani mythos, stormfront propaganda and other bits and pieces of old memes are recycled by a small clique of Soijak Party posters to create /qa2/ & The Ribbit Rally.

Basic demographics:

old /qa/

metaposters
- 4chan trivia aficionados --> made nice map threads and dug old pieces of OC
- nostalgic oldfags (am I permitted to use this lingo?)
- 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
complaintposters
- The 4chan Karen --> only here to vent and call people names ‼
- Off-board Clique refugees --> when things got too heated and/or weird in other boards or sites, /qa/ would find itself hosting a thread to discuss the situation; not necessarily a problem but they didn't find themselves obligated to respect the locals ♫
- /DELETEPOL/ --> primordial fire of all meta discussions
- /mlp/ apostates --> From the first day to the end of 2017, rotating casts of pony posters demanded to get GR15 revoked.
- /a/fags --> technically Karens, but their numbers alone were enough to develop a persistent /a/ hatefandom during the early days ‼
sfwofftopicposters
- board-tans general --> As drawthreads moved on to other fotms, artsy teens found /qa/ as a refuge to ship anthropomorphic imageboards undisturbed. more prolific than people imagine with multiple site-wide events to their name. ‼
- Happenings general --> Remained oddly consistent for the better part of 6 years.
- CSS General --> Short-lived 4chan UI customization that was taken over by raiders from the Spin Off. They contributed a number of interesting developments.
- Off-Topic Colonies: At first, it was [s4s] & /a/jp/. Other posters were ambivalent to their presence, but they were not aggressive and contributed large quantities of OC. Slow, other groups, such as "/jp/", /pol/ & /int/ frogposters came in. All the colonists got ran out the board by the end of 2017. ‼

late /qa/ (2019-2020)

late /qa/ metaposters --> jaded as they get
- (Punished) Happenings general --> A thread denied it's board. Took in refugees from every other demographics as the board collapsed into non-stop spam
/bant/ / /int/ type frogposting ☼ ---> nicer than they looked.

Native Personalities of /qa/:

"ACK" / warosushitter - Infamous personality from /a/ and /u/. HF Autistic whose condition seemingly deteriorated into paranoid delusions, blaming 4chan moderation and by extension meta for his woes. Fell into chronic bridge burning and spammed both #4chan and /qa/.^[3]
GR15 Defense Force / GRXVDF ---> One of the first homegrown /qa/ tripfags. Self declared poster on /a/, /jp/ and /trash/. Wrote the 2D/random declaration ‼. Paranoid about brony raids, went unhinged after the April Fool's board mergers. Spun the narrative that 2D/Random saved /qa/ from /mlpol/ raids. Befriended the Spin Off clique and got publicly banned in december 2017; dropped off public posting soon after. ^[4]
"asuka" / "asukaspammer" ---> Avatarfag of character Asuka Kurashina from Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm^[5], first spotted early 2016, likely a /jp/ / "/jp/" mainboarder. He utilized a crapflood script to wipe /qa/ whenever he felt the board accelerated into shitposting. Quickly fell in with /ota/ raiders.^[6]^[7] Publicly banned in december 2017, dropped of the board soon after. ^[8]. I'll never understand what they see in these generic characters.

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^[9], getting modcat fired^[10] among other things such as falling for trolls claiming /leftypol/ infiltrated the staff^[11]^[12]. As all bandwagons, it was intense enough to speed up /qa/ by an order of magnitude, but also short-lived^[13].
SpinOff / /ghost/ cliques --> ota-ch, merorin & GNFOS ‼
- Trevelyon --> Admin of GNFOS, was a notorious avatarfag ‼
- ccd0 ---> mantainer of the 4chanX extension since 2015 ‼, began to cause problems for 4chan after the custom CAPTCHA got announced in 2017 ‼
local resistance / "/jp/" dissenters ‼
- "The" frogposter --> identifiable by image hashes and his ability to directly name posters /ghost/ antics. ‼ Active until the very end of the board. ☼
/mlpol/ + /gsg/ + /intl/ + others --> not necessarily raiders

Second Gen Raiders (2018-2019)

Steamchat & #qa Clique / "weeb mafia" / /qajp/ / !qajp / kissu.moe ---> Typical no-fun-allowed, neurotic "/jp/" crew. I'm only naming those suspected of running bots or raiding, I don't intend to witchhunt nor encourage such behaviour.
- Verniy / "hibiki" / ECHibiki / ECVerniy ---> Canadian developer. Originally an avatarfag of character Hibiki‼. Later ran a bot.‼ When rangebans sweept, created kissu.moe‼
- yotgo / !QAJP/YOtGo ---> Created the MD5 filter megalist for 4chanX^[14]. Likely ran the bumpbot ‼. Kissu mod. Likely still around in 4hap^[15]
- atechan ---> Brazilian schizophrenic, very likely underage. clique member known for manually bumping several threads ‼
- jevin ---> Developer ☼. seemingly harmless ☼, [s4s] speak aficionado ‼. Could have posted on /a/jp/? ☼
- "schizoweeb" ---> at least one, possibly two‼, unspecified clique personalities known for unhinged posts and accusations of samefagging directed at frogspam.‼
Frogposters ---> is a group that was 100% homegrown really a raider? Due to !qajp taking the bait every single time, a community of copycat frog posting trolls formed around the antics of the original frogposter. Notably less verbose than their originator.
- "the freak": mythological poster that may either be the group's most prolific frogspammer or a boogeyman existing entirely in one spinoffer's head.‼
- atechan ---> Mostly hearsay. Got in a fight with kissu ‼ and supposedly, according to them, became a major frog spammer ►. Likely to be a nothingburger
leebaiter / lee ► / leebot ‼ --> later on the mantainer of the leebot began using /qa/ as test grounds.
unicodefag / leto ---> Didn't specifically target /qa/ but several boards. Attempted to bait the #qa clique into a flamewar but wasn't picked up on. ‼

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 ‼. not many 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.
Soyjaks / Soyjak.Party / the Sharty ‼ --> It hasn't been determined whether it was organic or artificially created by mods redirecting threads; soy variants of wojak, originally from /v/ and /pol/, started getting posted on /qa/ and attracted an enormous following, which quickly imploded into it's own website and several discord cliques. They got the board frozen after effectively running out every other thread.

symbols:

‼ 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.

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

/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/

early threadbombing:

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

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

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