Updates Coming to the Board

It's been over a year since I touched the board.goeshard.org codebase. When I got into game development, it didn't leave a lot of time for webdev projects. Something that made it easy to move away from was, literally no one used the board back then. Now people sometimes use it.

Who knows how long that will last but I have some new ideas.

Purpose of the Board

While talking to another imageboard admin it came about that I explained exactly how the board differs from altchans.

I wouldn't call it a chan because it's a huge departure from Futaba imageboards and has different goals; it's a glorified guestbook that cuts through posts to find the best ones to feature on goeshard.org

I never really thought about it so clearly but, if you pay attention to this site, you'll see it.

The articles are punctuated by calls for you to explore the board. That is pretty obvious. What a lot of users might not realize when they get there is the distinction between /main/ and /trash/ (explained here and here) has a purpose as well.

Some threads and posts are good for featuring here on the blog and some are not.

Driving Account Registration

Why?

The original version of the site did not have "anonymous" (unauthenticated) posting. It was required to make an account to post and that was always the original intent.

I turned on postings for Anons when I realized there was nothing to defend. No one was making accounts. No one was posting. So I settled and made it easier to post.

A site where unauthenticated requests are allowed is very prone to many types of abuse which have developed over the years. The larger such a site gets, the worse the user experience is and the greater the cesspool becomes. There's all kinds of restrictions I have because of how abusable it can be. The only thing that keeps the site relatively chill is obscurity.

Solution to the "Anonymous" Problem

I've always said that if the site ever resulted in chaos that isn't worth diverting attention required to control it, I would shut it down. But I don't always say what I mean by that. The ability to shut off posting without an account is on a switch. And the day may come when it is flipped. The only way the board survives that is if posters become willing to use registered accounts.

Promote Quality Posting

Nameless posters make /trash/ and various threads into a fun playground, but the types of things that nobodies enjoy and the types of things that posters with names enjoy are slightly different. A person with a name is more interested in credibility. They put effort into posting because it reflects on their name, even if all that name is used for is Internet points. It would result in better posts on /main/.

How?

There has to be a greater incentive to register and post under a name. It might seem like allowing anonymous posters at all is in opposition to that, as many posters probably feel less comfortable being "mask off" surrounded by anons. And there might be some truth to that.

However if I shut off anonymous posting now, the slight amount of interest in the board that there is would immediately die because there isn't enough people who register accounts, post from them, and return to the site. It's circular problem.

Currency of the Internet

But what if the registered accounts were made by people who are particularly brave because they are creators who want an audience. They want Internet credibility. They want you to click on their button.

They don't want me to move their threads and posts to /trash/, where their buttons and links will not show. So they have incentive to do a good job posting on /main/ evident by the activity of anons who they want to see their work.

The User Signature

This could grow to include more things in the future but we'll start with a button and a website for it to link to.

Until Next Time

Now I have a lot of code to look through. As I said, it's been a long time since I've significantly updated this project.

See ya.