What are the main problems with Holla Forums?

I am a web programmer, and I aspire to build a forum software that allows users to create their own boards much like is allowed here on Holla Forums (but with less trigger happy mods).

I've built a few forum softwares in the past with my brother. We have been working together for about 5 years now. We are currently running version 3.0 of our forum app at sociopath-community.com which is basically just a single message board with a chat, and list of online users at this point. It does have an established community, a bit small compared to Holla Forums… I have some growing to do! lol

In version 4.0 of the software, my brother and I intend to expand functionality such that many boards can be ran from the software, and users can setup their own board, administrate them, even add css or a custom url!

It's kinda like.. a cross between a real time system with a professional collaboration system with the system that Holla Forums uses here that allows users to run their own boards.

I don't post here, or I never did until today, so I can't be certain what the main problems Holla Forums experiences these days are. So could you guys offer any ideas on what's wrong with this place, and how it can be improved? What lesson can I take from Holla Forums to use on my software?

I really admire the hacktivist group anonymous which originated from 4chan, and I admired Holla Forums when it split from 4chan for the sake of free speech… and I even admire the wheel chair guy who runs this place! I'm sad that Null failed with InfinityNext, but I believe there is quite an opportunity here to creative a modern successor to Holla Forums and 4chan, and that's what my brother and have dedicated the lats couple months to, and will continue to dedicate likely the next year+ to. We are currently about 1 month from having a prototype capable of being shown.

So, yeah, any advice from you Holla Forums veterans would be great. This is a great opportunity for you guys too, if you wish it to be, because you can help me to build exactly what is good for you.

Go easy on me Anons!! Us narcissists are sensitive hehe. The photo on the left is a screenshot of my SC version 3.0 which is running on sociopath-community.com.

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archive.fo/kocZj
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Ay this is probably just bait and you should probably try Holla Forums if you want to talk about technical stuff.
What's wrong? Let's see, dead boards or slow boards, which wouldn't be as much of an issue if the cancer had not been growing the last two years, Holla Forums is fucking normalfag magnet. But that's a community issue, not a tech one. All I have to say about this place tech wise is that as long as it works and I can lurk post and upload without any issue everything is fine and you don't fix what ain't broke.
It's not sad, what is sad is that retards gave him money and he got away with it. Hope he gets raped by niggers wherever he is now. Also he had shit taste and wanted some web 3.0 mobile browing first muh big buttons design.
That's the thing, I don't want a modern successor, I'll take a replacement if need be and as long as everything is just about the same on the surface and it works I won't care. I don't want change and from what I've seen most people here don't either.

So I guess we could say that any improvement would be quality of life stuff, bigger upload size limit, more types of supported embedding and stable software. 750+ replies threads, especially cyclical tend slow my browser and sometimes make it crash, but that's the only thing bothering me tech wise here.

less censorship
always

Members of my SC always yell at me when I update it. I'm on version 3.0 of it now after 4 years of SC being up, and many members still ask for SC version 1. Many don't like change until they get used to it because we are a result of our habits, and forming new habits can be frustrating, time consuming, and challenging.

Do you find that having all threads only on the left side of the screen? There is a lot of wasted white space on the right. Compare this to my SC where each thread is a single column with 100% screen width. Persoanlly, I find the SC style to be a bit less confusing.

Also, only 10 threads per page is really a tough one for me, I'm not sure that is something I'd like to keep.

Also, the way that replies are not clearly separated from one another can cause confusion I think.

I'm a bit unsure how I feel about the system where thread replies often show themselves on the thread list… why not just navigate to the thread itself? Sure, it would remove a small amount of convenience, but the over all organization and ease of reading of the site would be improved I think?

I believe a lot of 4 and Holla Forums users use IRC for chat's these days, but I've found that my users really enjoy having the public chat at the top of all pages, and the ability to private chat from there. Are you guys against the idea of each board having it's own public chat? Perhaps it could be a option enablable by the board creator?

I'd also like to make it so that videos can be posted, I'd like to see a file-sharing system, and most importantly, I'd like to combat this idea that it's necessary for a thread to have moderators.

Finally, a less realistic goal of mine… is to get rid of the need for moderators. SC has had only 1 moderator at any one time since it's inception, and moderators are removed from position at the first sign of elevated ego, corruption, or abuse of power no matter how small. This is good, but even with 1 very good moderator, I see how the community power dynamics have shifted in this moderator's favor after being promoted. Simply put, power leads to corruption, and we need a system where power is not centralized in moderators as they are today, but instead spread throughout the board users with a sort of reputation system… so that a board can censor itself.

Yes, there will be arguements made that any automated reputation based crowd community moderation functionality will be easily gamed, and manipulated, and I'm not complety in disagreement… but I do believe that with dedication, and continous polishing, such a system can be made well, and it can do good for it's users, and remove the pathetic power dynamics that rule most forums these days.

I was banned from /cow/ yesterday for making a thread because the moderator felt there was an existing thread too similar… that's a great example of Holla Forums's…. power hungry mods. Day 1 posting on /cow/ I'm banned for 3 days. :( Yes, it's true what I'm saying can be a bit… anti-authorityt, and moderators who read this can feel threatened, but what I'm saying is a quality original contribution to the board, and when moderators remove those without sympathy, they frustrate and drive users away. My mod on SC would have perhaps deleted a topic posted in the wrong section, but he would have simple moved it for the user, not deleted it and thereby censor them.

If a user created a thread complaining about mod-abuse, my moderator would never dare to delete it… on /cow/ my thread complaining was deleted right away, and I was banned. I was silenced and censored. It's like Soviet Russia!

Why is it the norm that all boards are dictatorships these days? It's not the best way for a community to organize itself.

After 4chan I started to hate the chatroom format of automatically scrolling down with each message. Create a chatroom like a chan that lets you scroll at your leisure. Make it, in design, like Youtube comment section and I think you'll have a gem, OP, a true gem.

Some things don't need to change and are just as they should be, people just have to be committed and autistic enough to protect it.
I mostly use the catalog so I don't really care about that and I'd argue the imageboard format is pretty space efficient where it matters, something Josh couldn't comprehend.
I could just not look at it but you just need to take a look into irc rooms or other places populated by anons and those have a tendency to attract enormous faggots, which makes other faggots feel like they belong there, attracting even more faggots. The cancerous cycle of faggotry is real.
Now as an idea for a forum it isn't bad, you're just aiming for something completely different than here so you shouldn't really take my input into account.

Honestly good luck with that, moderators just dealing with outright illegal shit endangering the site and spam was and would be great for some boards but there comes a point where cancer has to purged.

Just post on >>>Holla Forums if you want some people more knowledgeable about that stuff. Quite a lot of cunts there though but if you're here you shouldn't have any issues with that.

Why dont you post here OP? Why did you now?

I do most of my posting on my own forum, SC. I tend to get myself banned from other places I visit because I can't stand the moderators. I expect I'll eventually be banned from here too lol

I will wait to post to /tech until we are a bit further along in development so I can have a bit more to show.

No facebook integration

obviously lol

some mods go mad and start banning everyone like Holla Forums naturally.

Been here since early 2014 when we still had flags that showed the country your IP is posting from. Honestly the main thing that made this chan go to hell was the fact that hotwheels never took a firm stance against posting lewd pictures of clothed children on Holla Forums so now this place is probably a pedo honeypot for law enforcement.

Jew moderators

Faggots

Bump

We have top men working on it.

Don't bother man. Chans are dying because imageboards are expensive to host and moderating content is difficult even with volunteers. Clear web chans are a thing of the past. Go make a niche blog or do freelance and actually make some money with your time.

The worst thing about 8ch is all the fucktards from 4chan and redshit. We were fine before their shithole sites overflowed and they started pouring in here.

I would suggest a registration and log in system that forced each account to wait six months before allowing the user to post. Keep anonymous posting, but maintain control of the accounts used to post. In that time they can enjoy lurking and learning the culture before being allowed to post themselves. In addition, it will give your mods time to prepare for any measures that will need to be implemented prior to a large-scale influx of outsiders, as you will be able to see increases in account registration 6 months ahead of them being allowed to post. And when you ban someone, you will only need to ban the account, not the IP…a VPN won't help get around bans at that point. Yes, someone can have multiple accounts, but each of them will have to wait 6 months to post anything. It would deter a LOT of shitposting like what goes on here lately.

I agree with the facts that you present here, but I disagree with the causal nature of the relationship which you put forward.

Image boards are expensive, and hard to moderate, but those are only contributing elements to why chans are dying. The real reason chans are dying is because they are social networks full of anti-social people. It is precisely the worst sort of environment for the kinds of people who you are trying to attract.

What is really needed is to make chans less social. Eliminate all text. Only allow still images (no gif or webm), and only text-free still images (no memes or links). Keep social skills out of the mix as much as possible and let people communicate solely through images. If you do that, you will have a really popular site for very anti-social people.

They host images on the site, which is a liability.

The main problem with this site is this board is dominated by rich perverted freaks getting there kicks by regularly uploading pictures of 8yr old kids posing in explicit poses that surly have on their hard drive by the hundreds. Along with the recent posting of porn videos with slogans on them in an pathetic attempt to trigger me enough to get in a mad rage of some narcissistic gloating clown that thinks his something special all of a sudden from government shills & liberals/SJWs that latch onto to any attack of the character of their opponents will promote, regardless of what's true of not. As with everything they've never really cared enough to understand anything apart from what is generally accepted, what is fashionable.

I made that very mistake of coming to this board 18months ago when images of kidnapped children like that outnumbered that of any other content, upon first coming here.

If these people were rich they'd be too busy fucking kids with no repercussions because they're rich, not posting modelling images of children on a backwater imageboard.
Clearly their attempts to trigger you succeeded judging by this post though.

I was going to tell you that you are full of shit, but the more I thought about it and looked at the steaming pile of shitposts that we call the "catalog", the more I realized what a fucking good idea that really is.

The administration.
The users.
The software.

In that order. You can't code a solution to the fact that most people are garbage.

This is a fucking horrible idea. The sites dying you nimrod making it more of a secret club ain't gonna fix it.

4chan may be low quality but its bigger than it ever was in pph and ips. Chans aren't dying, there's still active communities that aren't here or 4chan. This sites just dying there's a diffrence.

The mistakes and management/ poor posters are what'll kill Holla Forums. I came here in 2014 and now I come here for a chuckle. 90 percent of you are meta obssesed losers who don't understand how to keep a board going.

Management is what killed 8ch. Also that pitiful attempt at creating "A Next Gen Image Board" when the software was doing just fine.

Newfags, everything else works fine.

lurk moar. reported for not lurking moar.

Reasons why 8ch sucks
Reasons why 8ch is cool

Most things that make or break a forum/image board can't be fixed with software. It's mostly (comunity) management.

Two reasons i wouldn't want to use your site

go kill yourself there is already a good software it's called LynxChan no one needs your hipster shit you fucking nigger.

This

For the most part, the only anons left on Holla Forums are whiny fucking losers who are still caught up in the days of GG. They're autists (literally) who don't know how to communicate/cooperate, and so they can't help but annoy the absolute fuck out of everyone – probably why they constantly got b& on 4chan.

As irritating as the 4chan rules are, Holla Forums is proof positive that those rules are there for a fucking reason - because people abuse the lack of censorship, the site goes to shit, people leave, and you end up with the pathetic userbase of 8/b/ or the literally fascist approach of 8/pol/.

That said, I still come here for the rare gem of a thread, and I've actually had some truly amazing discussions here with the rare user who isn't an autistic sperg.

Like it or not, 4chan is alive and well, and it's likely always going to be the main imageboard. Sure, it's filled with a lot of underage and generally boring people, but there are still plenty of oldfag degenerates left to make it interesting. And if you think 4chan is """SJW""" now, you have become desensitized beyond repair and you should seek help.

Don't think in terms of "imageboards". Think bigger.

To be honest, it is not my intent to make an image board. I like 4chan and Holla Forums in that anyone can make a "message board". Yes, a message board can contain images, but it doesn't need to. Also, I don't intend to host the images….

As for creating a system that keeps bad content out, I really feel like that can be addressed with a combination of a user reputation system and a good reporting system that automatically removes content if enough reputable users report it.

4chan users are certainly not my only market I wish to target. I wish my "real time forum software" to be available to small communities, and large ones, even professional businesses. It's different in that… if a message board creator does not want his or her board associated with the rest, they can purchase their own URL and run the board completely separately from the rest.

In regards to the fact that Anons cannot post on Sociopath-Community.com, I wish they could, but my members dislike the idea. On the new software I speak of, though, anons will certainly be able to make posts.

As for the chat… I understand some people don't like it, but I've found that my users really REALLY like the chat, so I'm a little conflicted on that one.

Sounds a lot like Reddit

I don't mean hiding unpopular opinions, I mean using such a system to keep out ILLEGAL content

...

Reddit, to me, seems like a system where people submit content or links, and then that content is listed on the home page based on upvotes/downvotes/time algorithm. So… basically, Redidt votes good content up to the top where everyone can see it, and bad content to the bottom where no one reads it.

I'm talking about a community similar to this one in that the post on the top is the latest post…. and anyone can create and run their own "sub" just like can be done here.

Reddit is a crowd-based quality content site or something, Holla Forums, 4chan, and the software I am describing is more of a message/image board type software.

I only mean to make use of a reputation system so that the report system cannot be gamed by socks and trolls. The reputation system would be hidden, so noone would know the effect of their "report" to illegal content, but on the backend… those who report stuff that isn't worth reporting can be ignored, and those who report legit illegal content will take priority.

Say, you have 2 users. One reports everything that offends him even if it's not illegal, and the other reports ONLY illegal content, and has been doing so for years…. it would make sense for the automated system to assign the latter a high reputation. It might take 20 reports of users with lower reputation, but perhaps only 2 reports to automatically hide (until mod can confirm it really is illegal) content if a reputable user reports it…. I'm strictly talking about removing illegal content… censorship is not something I am interested in. There is value in seeing Humanities true uninhibited side, and anonymity allows us that freedom.

TBH I hope I can design the system such that even I can't access user identifiable data… that way no government can demand it you know?

So does this sound like Reddit to you? :P

pick one

Spaceghost would be ashamed

Okay, yes, that's a very good point… It's going to be difficult and likely impossible to get community leaders to create boards if they are not able to police them how they like…

All I can do is give the boards the ability to be free… you know? When a user "creates" a new board, they must decide many things. Can anons post? Will the board use our url, or will the creator purchase their own domain, and connect it? Does the board creator wish to display the board within the public list on the app home page? Does the board creator wish to accept donations? Does the board creator wish to have the chat, or disable it? They will also be able to write their own CSS, assign their own admins and mods, and I expect even contribute to the project which we will list on GITHUB as open source once we are closer to completion. They can also download the software, and run their own server.

I am 20 years old, and I have been running Sociopath-Community.com since I was 16. It is a single board, and at this time of my life, I am hoping to expand to many boards, and give others the ability to run their own.

If those board creators wish to be tyrants or free-speech enablers, I suppose there isn't a lot I can do.. I would just hope that should a Tyrant "rise" within a board, users would leave that board for a less oppressive one.

That's not going to happen. It's never happened on any imageboard ever.

Okay, so what do you suggest? Some policy that says if you are listed on the main board you can NOT censor your users? So then you get trolls invading all the boards……………….

Perhaps I can just make like 20 default boards… then I can make sure the mods of each one are only deleting illegal content?

A board is only as good as it's admin, it's Humanities fault that we are so corrupt and power hungry lol. Sociopath-Community.com is like a culture of no moderation. If I tried to become a tyrant there, I'm sure they would leave. Why you guys cant organize yourselves is beyond me, but honestly… like look at /cow/ they followed Null and he was SUCH a tyrant, he banned me like my 2nd day on his board, he had like 30 admins, like that was one of your own… he was going to make the InfinitaChan, and Hotwheels was paying him.. it's pathetic to think about. What's wrong with you Holla Forums? :P

No, I guess that doesn't sound much like Reddit.

I think you have some good ideas, but you'd better be a fucking whiz at coding, man.

"Freedom" is a tricky thing, and the more complex things become, the more ridiculous and unattainable the concept seems.

suck my cock op or should i say nulls personal cumslut?
archive.fo/kocZj

moralfags

userbase is retarded and barely pass for human

just no, fuck you and your faggy little cringefest of a website

I'd ban you at least fifteen times now if i was mod tbqh.

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pic related

What is wrong with Holla Forums is reflected in this hierarchy. If what you are building can invert this hierarchy, it will be a good site. If not, it will suck like all the other chans redshit, fuckfacebook, and twatter.

What does that imply? That there is too much focus on political news and activism on the boards and not enough focus on anarchy and spam? :P

I need to read more /pol I don't really understand it's users or why they post there, and why in such numbers, and why don't they divide themselves into smaller more specific groups? Someone needs to do a study.

Not enough 12 year old girls