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?

At the start, 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.

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 massive increase in activity^[1] causing generalized chaos and destabilizing regular threads.^[2]. By 2017, the forum registers on the map of multiple off-site cliques whose origins lie 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 gaslighing all passerbys. They get resisted by an equally intense group of locals with seeming ties to "/jp/" who adopt /pol/'s 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 with a pretense of 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/ (initially peaceful, but a mistake on the long term) ☼.
Soijak Party goes on to become an underground phenomenon
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
- /DELETEPOL/ --> primordial fire of all meta discussions
- The 4chan Karen --> only here to vent and call people names ‼
- 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 ‼. Not necessarily a problem but these crossposters didn't find themselves obligated to respect the locals ♫
- /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 thread 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. Slowly, other groups, such as "/jp/", /pol/ & /int/ frogposters came in. All the colonists got ran out the board by early 2018. ‼

late /qa/ (2019-2020)

/bant/ / /int/ type frogposter ☼ ---> nicer than they looked.
late /qa/ metaposters --> jaded as they get
- (Punished) Happenings General --> A thread denied it's board. Took in refugees from every other demographic as the board collapsed into non-stop spam. Was the thread to close the door on /qa/ as the board got frozen.

Native Personalities of /qa/ & Other Notables: Not actually a tripfag list. These entries are posters who waged little personal wars against the mods and other posters.

Pony avatarfag - A single poster, possibly but unlikely multiple, on a years long campaign to get GR15 removed. ‼
GR15 Defense Force / GRXVDF !!mQybBQsWzGP ---> Among 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 and insisted on it for the better part of a year. Befriended the Spin Off clique and got publicly banned in december 2017; dropped off public posting soon after. ^[3]
"asuka" / "asukaspammer" ---> Avatarfag of character Asuka Kurashina from Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm^[4], first spotted early 2016, likely a /jp/ / "/jp/" mainboarder. He utilized a crapflood script to wipe /qa/, then gloat after he's nuked and 3/4ths of the board with him.^[5]^[6]. Coordinated spam with with the /g/+/ota/ raiders but never directly associated with them☼.^[7]^[8] Publicly banned in december 2017, dropped of the board soon after. ^[9]. I'll never understand what they see in these generic characters.
"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/ for the lion's share of the board's early life; his drama retinue included other /u/ personalities such as !Akemi and warosushitter !!dApALfIDywS^[10]

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^[11], getting modcat fired^[12] among other things such as falling for trolls claiming /leftypol/ infiltrated the staff^[13]^[14]. As all bandwagons, it was intense enough to speed up /qa/ by an order of magnitude, but also short-lived^[15].
Spin Off cliques --> /g/, ota-ch, merorin & GNFOS. Arrived between february and april 2017 during a shitposting spree, those that remained began by aggressive campaign to run all other demographics off the board.^[16] Most spinoffers left by the end of the year, with only a singular clique remaining.
- 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. /qa/'s meta side had a sizeable /a/, /jp/ & spinoff presence before the raids. "/jp/"'s raid immediately raised alarms 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 subject but were unable to pinpoint who was responsible. ‼
- "The" frogposter --> A strange conbination of /pol/+/jp/ main; Identifiable by image hashes and his ability to directly name spinoff antics ‼. Coined the term weeb mafia. ^[17]. Active until the very end of the board. ☼
/mlpol/ --> The April's Fool 2017 prank caused a short-lived raid by /mlp/, as merging the board was the most interesting thing to happen to /mlp/ since 2015. ‼
"barneyfag" / Lee Goldson --> Infamous /co/ spammer; an autistic who despised Barney & Friends and associated the cartoons My Little Pony and Steven Universe with it. From 2015 onwards he imposed a reign of terror going on several boards including /v/, /vg/ & /qa/. Spent considerable time on /qa/ hunting down the local pony spammer ‼; He got doxxed in 2017☼ and his last confirmed activity was around 2019‼.

Second Gen Raiders (2018-2019)

Steamchat & #qa Clique / "weeb mafia" / /qajp/ / !qajp / kissu.moe ---> Typical no-fun-allowed, neurotic "/jp/" crew. Stragglers who actually believe the rethoric of making /qa/ into 2D/Random. 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^[18]. Likely ran the bumpbot ☼. Kissu mod. Likely still around in 4hap^[19]
- atechan ---> Brazilian, very likely underage. clique member known for manually bumping several threads and having episode if they were deleted ‼
- jevin ---> 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. Their goal was flooding the board with threads to 404 those protected by the steamchat bumpbot. 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 who coined the term "weab" ►.
"leebaiter" / "leebot" ‼ --> After Lee got doxed and allegedly stopped posting around 2019, the troll clique that formed around him kitbashed a leebot spamscript with image recognition capabilities and hooked it up to the brony booru. The maintainer of this lee imitation bot began using boards such as /int/ & /qa/ as testing 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:

‼ 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.

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/