[dktbs]

> The Something Awful forums (where 4chan was born, after all)

Would you mind explaining this? I have read that moot was originally an SA user and posted on there to announce when he first launched 4chan. Is there any connection beyond that?

[justtopostthis2]

moot was active on Raspberry Heaven, SA's anime forum IRC chat/DC hub, when 2chan.net was really popular there. He didn't start it in isolation and decide to post on SA - most or all of the original mods and users were from RH.

I don't have logs from when it was first started but here's a fun quote from a few weeks after: [2003-10-14 02:51] <rizzou> hey moot - there's this cool website at http://www.4chan.net/ you should check it out. it's really looking like the next big thing, you know?

A few days later 4chan started killing the shared server it was hosted on by fellow SA forums member nem (I remember seeing load averages of like 80000), and had to find its own home.

[9872]

A lot of ADTRW moved because SA had draconian policies against so much as discussing stuff like piracy, sexy anime babes, etc, except to condemn it and talk about how you're totally not into all that stuff.

[astrange]

The history of SA was all very interesting. There was a culture of very long decent posts I always wondered how to replicate - you still have the user base with too much free time these days, but they might have too many demands on their attention span.

In 2000 or so, SA was set up as a sea of quality in an internet whose users really weren't ready to be good forum posters. (Like: children, racists, perverts, really angry teenagers, people with signatures of anime characters holding huge swords, furries) The anime forum was opened because nobody else wanted to read the threads, but they mostly left it alone.

As the years went on quality went down as the user base got too large, so the admins started effectively a left-wing death squad called Helldump dedicated to finding reasons to ban everyone. It was pretty puritanical in the American sense, so nearly all the long time anime posters got banned for being "probably a pedophile". One person I knew was banned for a slightly too sexy image posted 10 years before and had since become the pilot of Marine One. It's a little surprising they were never sued for libel.

SA inspired the rarely-used "user was banned for this post" label, but mostly showed the importance of not having a post history.