User:891raba

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Writeup on Russian imageboards (Draft)[edit]

This is a continuation of Yotsuba Society's work on Russian chans. Starting point 2012, as 2013 was not covered at all and many omissions of important events of 2012 are present. Cutoff point is 2017, as it is a bit too early to talk about 2018.

2012[edit]

Balance of force[edit]

In the beginning of the year, Russian imageboards were pretty stable. Transfer of ownership over 2-ch.ru/2ch.so was more or less accepted (although tweaks continue here and there: forced user IDs, stricter moderation rules, moving RL-relations into a new /sex/ board, etc), Google+ exodus form IIchan.ru was over (coincidentally, 2012 was the last year namefagging was a major issue in /b/ there), Dobrochan.ru was more or less stable. Both of the functioning imageboard archivers were dead for several months without any hope for resurrection and not that many people actually cared. 0chan , on the other hand, had frequent and long downtimes and was constantly wiped. 0-chan.ru was created as a makeshift replacement, but was not better off and closed by admins frequently when 0chan returned from coma. Other anons went to other chans and thus crossboarding was still alive.

It is also highly suggested that IIchan changed owner in secret soon after moving to Hong Kong, but no definite and/or traceable proof ever surfaced. The accounts from one moderator are only partially traceable and cannot be trusted.

New government regulations and fallout[edit]

In Spring 2012 talks began in the Russian government pushing new laws to censor the Internet by blocking offensive websites off the web sidestepping the court. Most chans more or less ignored the issue, but IIchan sacked it's /g/irls and /h/entai boards in April and enforced stricter moderation policy, banning most erotica and pornography, sparring only non-explicit or text OC; doujin threads were killed overnight as well. The latter is thought to be the trigger to eventual desertion of /to/uhou board there. In July the threat became real with the law being ready to pass, so IIchan.ru changed provider to Netherlands and moved into .hk zone. Ban on pornography was never lifted, however: in August, a satellite was created by a member of a moderation team which hosted /g/ and /h/, but was shut down in a year. Mod-tan years later explicitly stated that imageboard will not have or affiliate with any chans with politics or 18+ content. In October 2ch.so was forced to move to .ec, then .hk domain as well. Drugs-related topics and boards are banned the following months. 0chan suffered the same fate and moved to .hk late October.

Soccer tournaments[edit]

Early in 2012 4chan had a brilliant idea of creating a multi-*chan tournament with representatives from all around the world. Ukrainian chan Uchan.to quite liked the idea and had decided to create a local championship first. The idea spread like fire and four other chans joined the cause: IIchan, 0chan, Apachan.net and 2ch.so. First matches were held in April, and the whole movement culminated in 2012 Summer Cup All-Stars with 4chan. Unfortunately, nothing but threads and trailers survived from that time. See more here: [1], some IIchan threads are still available on it's archive. The games continued into 2013, but gradually lost popularity and no records of 2013 Spring or Summer cups are present.

2013[edit]

New year has started with yet another large-scale collaboration over photoshoping a comics book published by MVD. Lots of content spawned in the matter of weeks, including porn that no moderation team decided to touch.

After that, it was to a decline. 0chan.hk continued to be wiped and DDoSed and lost (presumably, some speculate that it was a joke from the admin) it's .ru domain to a consumer electronics retailer. In August it was blocked in Russia provoked CP dumps (with reasoning like "we're already outlawed, what can go wrong?"), and since the 6th of September it was pretty much inaccessible until next January. 2ch was also DDoSed from time to time, at times shutting down completely, but just for a few days. That year is also notable for finally proving the 2ch's owner info (Abu Narimanov) and moving MLP-fags and dollfags out of /b/. In July, government authorities tried to press the owner to close /h/entai board, to no avail. IIchan continued to enforce stricter moderation: /t/orrents and /gf/ (gif and flash) boards were closed for Russian IPs, with /t/ scripts redirecting to some online petition. In 2015 /t/ had it's post form removed, and even later, the board was purged, still inaccessible. /gf/ never recovered from the blow as well but is still considered "open".

Everlasting Summer release[edit]

Russian analogue to Katawa Shoujo, which had a development cycle of five years full of drama (at times forced and even encouraged by IIchan administration - which at one point consisted mostly of the development team) finally seen the light in December. However, due to yet another conflict between artists the prefinal build was published by a renegade artist Smolev in November. The results can only be described as cataclysmic, and spanned several years:

  1. Game became quite popular and threads about it flooded /vn/ boards of chans, eventually forcing IIchan to affilate with a newly-created owlchan.ru (an imageboard dedicated to ES) and 2ch shipped all the ESfags on a custom board (which were introduced next Summer).
  2. Game popularity (and some say - the scriptwriter's greed) prompted the development team to publish the game on Steam. Which attracted even more people to the imageboards.
  3. Development team dissolved into three groups: Smolev went his way, scriptwriter Ritochka took over 'Soviet Games' studio and the core development team started Moonworks.
  4. Dissatisfied and/or creative anons, with help of one of the former coders of the game created a modding community spanning both 2ch and IIchan. However, little collaboration took place and everyone stuck to their own projects - most of them reached their fruition.
  5. After last bit of free advertising to Everlasting Summer on the day of release, IIchan administration has removed all affiliation links to them and started to treat the developers much colder.

2014[edit]

Somehow, that year managed to be even worse. Conflict in Ukraine played a major role in it as well: 2ch's /po/litics board erupted in flames, Crimea-threads became a general in /b/. IIchan has closed it's/ /p/olitics board for the second time (ironically, first time was also mostly due to Ukraine-Russia holywar). Annoyed at all the bullshit, creator of the most popular Imageboard userscript - Dollscript (think 4chan X, but for every board in existence) hardwired autohiding Crimea-threads on 2ch in October. Resulting drama had him leaving 2ch for good and 2ch temporary adding a mocking message to posts of all Dollscript users.

0chan closure[edit]

0chan.hk went online in February only to be closed on the April Fool's day. Some of it's population has already assimilated into other chans. Other created a culture of "parasiting" off other small imageboards for as long as their hoster is willing to keep them. Several dedicated post-nullchan imageboards were created, gaining varying degrees of popularity. None of them have achieved the same level of success.

2015[edit]

As years go by and chans start to drift more and more apart, it becomes harder to pick noteworthy material. IIchan starts to close "inactive" boards. Each year since 3-4 boards are closed, sometimes without warning. Also, a first major improvement introduced in years - board catalogue, which, sadly, only updates upon thread creation or deletion and does not show bumplimited threads. 2ch also starts to ship off "inactive" boards to a user-created ones. In april, after a PR-campaign in Vkontakte sponsored by some anon, lots of people completely unaware of chan culture flooded 2ch. Cue in further restrictions and harsher moderation.

Chans play agar.io in a semi-organised fashion, but most cultural exchange come from ex-0chan crossboarders.

2016[edit]

From September onward, after a few weeks of DDoS, 2ch is being hosted by mail.ru - Russian media giant. What it means under current Internet regulations is pretty obvious, and loli threads disappear (reportedly, obtaining further proof is tricky). Infuriated, some anons leave to Brazilian Brchan.org, where they are allocated a /rus/ board.

2017[edit]

IIchan gets a FAQ, which changes nothing in moderation policy or understanding how moderation works by populace. 2ch adds ReCaptcha2, and history notes for it cease after this point.

0chan resurrects under the same admin but new engine on the Aprils Fools day. It only got two days for moderation team to start banning people for what anons thought would be the norm for "True Nullchan" and rules to be implemented, so the board quickly lost most of the respect and never got big again.

Brchan admins, not quite fond of hosting Russians for too long, ask them to leave. Lolifox.org is created, and /rus/ moves there.

Possibly the last collaboration project between chans to date - collective drawing in pxls.space. Lolifox, Dobrochan, IIchan and whatever community remains of 0chan participate, threads running through the whole Summer. Eventually, people get bored.

Current archives[edit]

  • https://arhivach.ng/ saves threads from IIchan and 2ch upon request
  • http://ii.yakuji.moe/ scrapes IIchan automatically but results are "pre-moderated"
  • metachan.org and nyamo.org/.su used to be analogous services, but were closed in 2009-2010 and currently all data is lost.
  • IIchan and 2ch have local archives built-in. Former is selective, latter seems to be automatic but lacks full images. Dobrochan used to have an archive but it is closed off from public. Threads seem to live forever, though.

Statistics[edit]

Other publications[edit]

Further work[edit]

The sections can be greatly expanded at least with help of lurkmore.to support. Archives, be they partial or missing, cover most of IIchan's part of the history as well. Noobtype.ru and various published material can help as well. In-depth info gathering on Dobrochan without an inside source seems impossible, unfortunately, same for the smaller chans ecosystem.

A rewrite/expancion of Yotsuba Society material would also be good. At least mention IIchan's interactive story threads/controversy, IIRC the Paladin one was even somewhat popular on /tg/ before /qst/ opened.

Sources[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ https://drama.kropyva.ch/Архів:Історія_Учану_в_часи_розквіту#.D0.9E.D0.BB.D0.B5.21_.D0.9E.D0.BB.D0.B5-.D0.BE.D0.BB.D0.B5-.D0.BE.D0.BB.D0.B5.21_.D0.A3.D1.87.D0.B0.D0.BD_.D1.87.D0.B5.D0.BC.D0.BF.D1.96.D0.BE.D0.BD.21
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