4chan/Chronicle/qa

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  • 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:

Formative month (2015)

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

First Meta Period (2015-2017)

  • /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.

Early raids & listing (2017)

  • The firing of Anonymous-San, a badly timed April's Fool joke and the listing of /qa/ causes the forum to register 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 practically unmoderated; 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 SpinOff clique to self-exile; Frogs impose a short lived era of /int/-like frogposting ☼

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
    • /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.
    • 4chan cup ☼
    • [s4s] & /a/jp/ colonies --> other posters were ambivalent to their presence, but they were never aggressive and contributed large quantities of OC. ‼

"late" (2019-2020) /qa/

  • late /qa/ metaposters --> jaded as they get
    • (Punished) Happenings general --> A thread denied it's board.
  • /bant/ / /int/ type frogposting ☼ ---> nicer than they looked.

Legendary personalities of /qa/:

  • ACK / warosushitter - Infamous personality from /a/ and /u/. HF Autistic whose condition seemingly deteriorated into paranoid delusions, began blaming 4chan moderation and by extension meta for his woes. Fell into chronic bridge burning and spammed both #4chan and /qa/.[1]
  • GR15 Defense Force / GRXVDF ---> First homegrown /qa/ tripfag. 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 2D/Random saved /mlpol/ from raids narrative. Rebelled and befriended the Spin Off clique later that year. Banned in december 2017, dropped off public posting soon after. [2]

First Gen Raiders (2016-2017)

  • SpinOff / /ghost/ cliques --> ota-ch, merorin & GNFOS ‼
    • Trevelyon --> Admin of GNFOS, was a notorious avatarfag ‼
    • Asukaspammer --> Avatarfag posting Asuka Kurashina from Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm. Banned in december 2017 [3]. I'll never understand what they see in these generic characters.
    • ccd0 ---> mantainer of the 4chanX extention since 2015 ‼, began to cause problems for 4chan after the custom CAPTCHA got announced
    • "asukasspammer", asukascript spam tool, usually called asukaspammer by it's users. Not to be confused by the local asukaspammer
  • local resistance / /jp/ dissenters ‼
    • "The" frogposter --> identifiable by image hashes and his in-depth knowledge of /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 / !qajp / kissu.moe
    • Hibiki / ECHibiki / ECVerniy / Verniy ---> Canadian developer. Originally an avatarfag of character Hibiki‼. Later ran a bot.‼ When rangebans sweept, created kissu.moe‼
    • !QAJP/y0tgo / yotgo ---> Created the MD5 filter megalist for 4chanX[4]. Likely ran the bumpbot ‼. Kissu mod. Still around in 4hap[5]
    • atechan ---> Brazilian schizophrenic. clique member known for manually bumping several threads ‼
    • "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?
    • The Freak: mythological creature that may either be the group's most prolific poster or a boogeyman entirely existing in one spinoffer's head.‼
    • atechan ---> Mostly hearsay. Got in a fight with kissu ‼ and supposedly, according to them, became a major frog spammer ►. Might be a nothingburger
  • leebaiter / lee ► / leebot ‼
  • unicodefag / leto ---> Didn't specifically target /qa/ but several boards. Arguably affected /qa/ the most. ‼

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-soijak board wipes were made by a discord clique originating from /bant/
  • Soyjak Party ‼ --> really, really don't wanna touch on this

symbols:

‼ citation pending

☼ Unverified aka "i'm the primary source"

► 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

/gsg/ raids:

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

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


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


kissu astroturfing:

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2007664/#2007735


frogposters theorizing poster indentikits

https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2560610/#q2560636 https://desuarchive.org/qa/thread/2554646/#2554677


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


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