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8kun
Like 4chan is a ripoff of 2chan, 8chan (.onion) (also known as 8ch, infinitechan, fullchan, and cripplechan) is now arguably the coat-tail rider of 4chan (which is ironic because 2channel, which 2chan is a spinoff of hosts 8chan's servers as the "international 2channel"). It is the bi-product of a crippled midget the 8chan's userbase have named "Hotwheels" who conceptualized it during one of his shroom sessions. Hotwheels didn't like how imageboards like Wizardchan and 4chon were run by admins who banned people left and right. His response to this was creating a chan where anyone could make and moderate their own board. Originally a small chan, but over time pissed off ex4channers began to heavily populate it, most pissed off at the 4chan mods, the biggest spike being deletion of gamergate threads. Some 8chan users will tell you it's much better than 4chan, and some 4chan users will tell you the opposite. This page is meant as a somewhat neutral article to give newfriends an idea of what "fullchan" or "cripplechan" is and whether they want to check it out or steer the fuck clear of it.
Contents
How the 8chan system works
Hotwheels is the sole owner of 8chan. He moved to the Phillipines to be with the rest of the 2channel staff who he now works for. They host his site as long as he allows their ads to be posted. Hotwheels has no problem with you scriptblocking these ads. 8chan is 4chan with increased features, many inherited from 4chanx, some unique, and a few inherited from reddit such board creation, the top board system, thread inlining and fortunately nothing else.
Boards
Users that create boards can greatly customize their own boards (like enabling ID's or giving the board a custom theme), and boards are ranked on the board list by how many unique IP's in a span of the last 3 days have visited the board, the top 25 reaching being placed in the top section. The rest of the top section is reserved for a few "universal" boards and individuals favorite boards (stored in a cookie) The only "universal" boards are /b/, /news+/, /boards/ (advertising), /meta/ (site discussion), and /operate/ (support), which are all moderated by the global staff (except /boards/ out of respect for the boards owner since it wasn't always a universal board).
Global Mods
Unlike 4chan and reddit, outside of universal boards, global mods are only allowed to ban people who post illegal content (and just that) despite how many shitposters and 4chan converts beg and beg. Board creators are limited to moderating the boards they've created or claimed, and can select other board owners to moderate their boards. They can only be promoted to global mods if their board reaches the top 25 and Hotwheels and the staff believe they can be trusted. If a global mod oversteps their bounds, they not only loose their position but also their mods powers on the board they worked to the top.
Board Claiming
Also unlike Reddit, if the board owner abandons the board for 2 weeks or other IP's don't post on the board in that time, the board goes on claim.html to be claimed by another person. To discourage mass board grabbing, Hotwheels only allows 2 board grab requests at a time and will ignore more than that.
Illegal Content
Hotwheels himself (reasonably) responds to DMCA requests and will pull down copyrighted content with proof, though this rarely happens (and naturally it was shitty drawn porn). He will send CP to law enforcement.
Advantages of 8chan over 4chan
- It's code is open source. Most of /g/'s old opensource community have migrated to 8chan's /tech/ board because of this and their desire for security.
- Tor and proxy posting is allowed, but tor posters cannot post images. I2P support is coming soon. Hotwheels encourages this and is looking for secure ways to eventually make a better 8chan version of overchan.
- You can make a board for anything and moderate it how you choose as long as you don't break US law or modify the boards theme to disallow posting.
- Many of 4chanx's features are already implemented into 8chan some being thread autoupdating (default), filters (optional), forced anonymous (optional), image hovering (optional), thread watching(default), keybindings(default), and desktop notifications (optional).
- The community is larger than any other 4chan spinoff and is way faster than Idlechan (the closest thing to it).
- Webm's have sound, plus mp4's and apng's are also allowed.
- There are more text options that can be applied by key, such as bold, italic, and redtext.
- Thread inlining is allowed to make post reading easier.
- Picture thumbnails on threads are all the same size as the first thumbnail on a 4chan post, making them easier to see.
- Smaller features not mentioned, like putting (you) next to anonymous on your posts.
Inbetweeners
- Youtube embeds work differently. They are now in place of the images.
- Red text can be seen by some as annoying as most 8channers use it to grab attention to something important.
- Many 8chan users almost worship Hotwheels for giving them a new home.
- What a board can be about is only limited by US law, and thus boards like /homosuck/ (homestuck), /furry/, and /baphomet/ (because /b/ wasn't edgy enough) have been created as a result, but subthreads like /agdg/ (amateur game development) are heavily advantaged by this as they have their own board now.
- A bit after the gamergate exodus, a bunch of edgy /b/tards painted the classic green anon red, and half the userbase stuck with it.
- Hotwheels publicly posts more than moot ever has, and signs his posts to prevent confusion,
- The site has about the same redditor ratio as 4chan.
- Some of the top boards like /pol/, /a/, /christian/, and /v/ have moderation many people do not agree with.
- At least half of the sites userbase are gamergate supporters.
- Despite 8chan's aim at inclusiveness (board creating wise), many 8channers like 4chan before them do not like newfags, 4chan users, and redditors, despite many simultaneously using said sites for whatever reason (like 4chan users do as well). If you make a social justice board or make any posts in that vain expect to be shitposted to high holy hell.
- 8chan's /sp/ loves to go around and steal other boards gets as a sport. Many 8channers have a near pathological obsession with gets and dubs and almost no board discourages them.
Disadvantages of 8chan over 4chan
- Despite being the second largest English imageboard, 8chan is nowhere as fast as 4chan. /v/, the sites fastest board, moves around the pace of a smaller 4chan board.
- Due to this, many news is not posted quite as fast on 8chan.
- 8chan's Infinity is not as well coded as 4chan's Yotsuba software. There are noticeable glitches here and there and the post limit for all threads is set to 750 to keep your browser from slowing to a crawl.
- The top board system is exploitable. Raiding a board can bring it to the top, and boards have gotten to the top by proxy abuse. Hotwheels can take these boards off the top list, but they'll still flood the top spots in the board list page. This however, has only happened in one instance, and only 2 were brought to the top (and faded soon after), so it has yet to be seen what measures will be done in a larger instance.
- The site is understaffed, and Hotwheels can take quite a while to fix your problem.
- The ability to create boards can often split up a community, /pol/ is the worst case of this, as the natsoc moderators have divided the board into /leftypol/, /polpol/, and countless other politics boards. Many /pol/ users went back to 4/pol/ due to 8/pol/ not being a general politics board.
- The opposite happens too, board users of some boards wish to sacrifice board moderation over post speed, and somewhat enable mods to keep doing their thing.
- The community is still new and forming it's own identity from 4chan. Expect to see similarities and similar images between 8chan and 4chan.
- 8chanX is inferior to 4chanX, as new features are added to 8chan every month or 2. There are a few good features 4chanx contains that aren't in either.
