multichan/Manifesto

<-- multichan

Multichan - why, about, how

Multichan is a federated, tag-based textboard server. It is public domain software available here:
    https://bitbucket.org/796f/multichan
meaning you can download the software, modify it any way you want, and share it or run it however you wish. You can view a live version of multichan at https://0chan.vip .

The name is a reference to 2channel, named originally for being the ``second channel" of a popular anonymous textboard in Japan. It was the successor to a site called Amezou, which was a popular anonymous messageboard. People could use their computers to share ideas and communicate completely independently of their offline identity. This resulted in Amezou becoming very popular; 2channel was meant to help support the Amezou by remaining online when the other site ran out of bandwidth or otherwise went offline. It grew to become the largest web bulliten board for many years.

Multichan extends on this idea of a plurality of servers by employing federation, where all servers can back each other up, creating an system of networked discussions. A Multichan server will faithfully copy discussions and responses from other Multichan servers which are in its friends list. In this way, the network can be understood as simply a collection of messages from users, while various websites offer different views of this network based on the personal biases of independent server operators. A server can offer either a very open view of the community, or a more limited one; this experiment will yield interesting results.

     ,--- 0chan.vip , bbs.4x13.net , etc
     |
     v            v--- Web browser, app, etc 
  Server <--> Client

Clients can create a discussion topic, reply to a discussion, view a discussion, or get a list of discussions. Discussions can be assigned a tag. A list of tags, or a list of threads under a tag, or a list of threads from multiple tags can be viewed.

Servers share discussions with each other, too. So, what does this all mean? Discussions can be held in a server-agnostic fashion. The server-agnostic nature of a discussion means that unpopular moderation decisions will possibly punish a server by reducing its userbase; in time, servers with the least amount of moderation will become the most popular, followed by ones that filter out just spam and trolling, followed by ones that restrict the tag list / heavily filter new threads and responses, etc.

The multichan server can also be used to make your own personal backups of the network, even if you don't plan to host a website yourself. In the future, more tools will be released to do things with this database.

Defining characteristics of textboard software can best be understood by comparing them with ``typical" forums.

Textboards:

• Do not require registration.
  

Most web messageboards require, at the very least, a username, email address, and a password in order to make posts. A downside of this is that registration is generally annoying, and it can constrain a user's freedom to share thoughts because account-based systems lead to the development of personas. The value inherent to a position can be overlooked when the reputation of the speaker is necessarily attached. Binding messages to their poster's identity can also lead people to play games where personas are pitted against each other or become the focus of discussion themselves, which does not generally enhance conversations. Finally, registration can be a security risk – emails or passwords can be leaked, or usernames can become the object of cyber-stalking.

• Focus on text, rather than images or video.
  

If the purpose of a messageboard can be stated simply, it is to provide a space for conversations to take place. Sometimes, embedding images can clarify a message. At other times, they are used to stop dialog or provide no value to the conversation, especially in the form of memes. In some mediums (such as Facebook, Twitter) recycled images and video substitute discussion entirely. There is little incentive to post time-wasting / irrelevant media in a text-only forum. Indeed, better software exists for social media sharing – Danbooru, Pleroma, etc.

• Sort conversations by active participation.
  

For websites that focus on breaking news or new multimedia, recent activity is not a good sort metric. But for general discussion-based websites, it does fine. Novelty is not the defining quality of most discussion topics; indeed, a conversation should be able to continue for days, weeks, or months, if it continues to be relevant to people.

• Do not have expiration dates for discussion topics.
  

In line with the previous point, conversations on textboards generally take place over days, weeks, or even years. This is in contrast especially with imageboards (on 4chan, conversations generally do not persist for over 24 hours) but also Reddit, Facebook, or even Twitter, where the focus is on discussions started recently, generally within the last week.

• Bore boring people.
  

Because textboards are generally adverse to low-effort contributions (especially media recycling) and encourage anonymity, there is little incentive for boring people to stick around a textboard.

• Are easy to setup and modify.
  

The majority of textboard software rejects the use of SQL servers, favoring flatfile databases. Because the read and write operations on the data is simple, and the data itself is simple, extending or altering basic functions becomes very easy. All that's historically been needed to run a textboard is a domain name and CGI-capable server. Multichan simplifies the installation process further by including its own webserver, which makes setup as simple as downloading the software and then running the included script.

For over 20 years, 2ch (and in turn 4chan, 8chan, etc) have depended on the concept of a board to organize threads. These are based on the idea of a newsgroup, which is over 35 years old (stemming from USENET). 2ch's system of boards essentially categorize every conversation under a single label, such as breaking news, psychology, soft drinks, childcare, Trump, sumo, etc etc. The shift from newsgroups to boards is a downside in that USENET groups offer a clear hierarchy: eg, alt.tv.talkshows.daytime is more specific than alt.tv.talkshows which is more specific than alt.tv.

2ch tried to address the limitation of a ``board" (simple index of conversations) by simply creating as many boards as possible. There are several hundred 2ch boards in existence today. Essentially running hundreds of isolated websites for one community is not pragmatic for administration; for readers and commenters, it's only ideal if the user is interested in a limited number of topics.

When one or more topics apply to a conversation, there are two simple remedies on simple board based websites. One is cross-posting: the same conversation is copied to (ex) 3 or 4 places, then 3 or 4 different conversations are taking place based on the same topic message. The second is multi-board browsing (ex) multiple boards have their conversations pooled together into one meta-board. This is problematic because it still leads to duplicate threads as a result of cross-posting (repeating the same thread in multiple boards to make it visible to more people) The only real solution to actually implement tagging, which means that the same exact conversations exist in multiple places. This best serves the purpose of a board or directory in the first place: narrowing the global index of conversations based on a theme.

2ch and 4chan, unlike 8chan, never added the ability to make new boards, or to view multiple boards at the same time. Multichan goes a step further than 8chan by eliminating boards while making a vast number of tags available. A topic with multiple categories will still be listed in these multiple indexes, but if they're viewed together, the topic will only be listed once, as it should.

2ch and 4chan have traditionally viewed other servers in the anonymous board network with hostility; this anti-social attitude unfortunately means that their staff members have to manage too many boards and too many users, instead of spreading responsibility. To see how to community tries to address this limitation, let's look at imageboard directories. This one (allchans.org) lists about 30 imageboard servers, each of which hosts 10-50 boards on average.

iichan was the first board that tried to address the problem of running many boards: different site owners volunteered to run some boards, and all sites would link to each other, creating a network with many boards operated independently by multiple server operators.

Lynxchan/Vichan are starting to address the problem in a sophisticated way by sorting links across the network to other boards by info like ``posts per hour", users, and last activity.

NNTPchan realized that sharing threads between servers solves one problem of imageboards: the same board exists in many places, but each board only exists in one; this fractures the userbase. With NNTPchan, the more servers that exist, the stronger and more unified the network is.

Archive boards and ghost boards, such as warosu.org add more nuance to how text and imageboards on one site respond to those on others. Warosu (fuuka) not only creates a 1:1 duplication of certain 4chan conversations; it also provides its own commenting system for its users to make replies on 4chan conversations from Warosu's servers; the creation of Warosu was primarily a response to 4chan's overzealous post-removing philosophy. Warosu makes all comments available, while users decide for themselves what they want to see. This is the archive board. The ghost board is the comments from Warosu users themselves, which 4chan never sees.

Once meta-board and meta-site browsing is common, along with board archival, federation becomes the next obvious step. While overboards, webrings, and archives try to promote equality between servers and boards, proper federation goes a step further by eliminating the difference. Federation links and archives boards by acknowledging that remote archives will receive comments that may be relevant to the original discussion at hand.

The influences upon multichan are numerous:

• 2channel – the original anonymous textboard website.
• 1chan.us – uses tags, rather than boards, to organize threads.
• Federated Wiki – the creator of the wiki came to believe federation could solve the problems of users and administrators alike by overcoming the limitations imposed by any single server / central authority.
• nntpchan – decentralized (federated) imageboard software. Formerly known as overchan.

last updated 2021-06-09