Information About2channel |
is a Japan ese Internet Forum , thought to be the largest in the world.At stats.2ch.net one can view the number of posts made every day. Currently there are 2.7 million posts made every day. This is two to three times larger than the largest Internet forum on big-boards.com . (Note: Big-Boards lists the total posts of all time, not the daily number of posts.)12 It is gaining significant influence in Japanese society, approaching that of traditional mass media such as television, radio, and magazines"This single site has more influence on Japanese popular opinion than the prime minister, the emperor and the traditional media combined. On one level, it serves as a fun, informative place for people to read product reviews, download software and compare everything from the size of their poop to quiz show answers. But conversations hosted here have also influenced stock prices, rallied support for philanthropic causes, organized massive synchronized dance routines, prevented terrorism and driven people to their deathbeds." "2-Channel Gives Japan's Famously Quiet People a Mighty Voice" , Lisa Katayama, 04.19.07, '' News '' OVERVIEW 2ch was opened on May 30 , 1999 in a college apartment in Arkansas , USA ,3 by Hiroyuki Nishimura , known simply as "Hiroyuki" (ひろゆき). Today, most moderation on the forum is done by a voluntary group, self-elected and picked from 2ch users. 2ch itself is non-commercial and run by banner advertisement fees and support from a hosting service company that provides specially priced inexpensive UNIX hosting. What is unique about this website is its scale and management style. It has more than 600 active boards (Japanese ''ita'') such as "Social News", "Computers", and "Cooking", making it the most comprehensive forum in Japan. Each board usually has thousands of specific threads, such as "Coming election in Tokyo: 4th vote", "P4 vs. Athlon: overheating 51 times", and "Best wheat for making Pizza: 3rd slice". 2ch operates on innovative forum software which is a major departure from 1980s Bulletin Board System s or 1990s forum software such as VBulletin . Most importantly, nearly everything is done anonymously and voluntarily. A posting in a thread will either "age" ( Bump , from Japanese "ageru", to raise) or " Sage " (not bump, from Japanese "sageru", to lower) its position in the thread list; "sage-ed" posts have no effect on its position. Threads may be "sage-ed" if the thread is disliked, or to keep it from cluttering the main thread list, or to prevent idle browsers from flooding in and Trolling the thread at the top of the list. Each thread is limited to 1000 postings at maximum, and a new thread must be opened (by some anonymous user, self-elected during discussion) to continue discussion. This prevents the rotting of old threads and keeps active topics refreshed. It also saves bandwidth, which is a major concern on a forum as large as 2ch. Old threads are moved to a paid archive, then eventually deleted. With the huge popularity of this forum, the style of web forums with anonymity, index, and sage features is now known as "2ch-style". CULTURE is popular on 2ch. This shows a Japanese-style funeral.]] Due to its accessibility, chaotic nature and large size, it is difficult to describe or define this emerging community. However, because 2ch serves a similar purpose to Usenet , the culture and customs of 2ch contributors parallels Usenet culture. Several important or well-known organisations are known to have posted or Lurk ed within this forum, even though the forum is considered by many to be " Underground ", despite its wide acceptance. Frequent visitors of 2ch usually call themselves "2ちゃんねらー" (meaning "2ch'er" or "2channeler", pronounced "ni-chan-ne-raah", Romaji is "ni channerā"). Even though topics vary a lot between each thread or board, 2ch as a whole keeps its unity through its unique cultural backplane. "2ch slang", "2ch AA" ( Shift JIS Encoded ASCII Art ) and "2ch Flash" are examples of such culture. Many virtual characters, such as Monā , and Onigiri have evolved out from these creations, and are now acknowledged as mascots representing the whole community. The now famous Soy Sauce Warrior Kikkoman parody character was created by members of the 2ch forums, as well as its Flash movies. 2ch members participate in various Distributed Computing projects such as the United Devices Cancer Research Project and SETI@home . 2ch is the current leader of the UD project, with the highest results and point total, as well as having the largest number of participants. Anonymous posting One of the most distinguishing features of 2ch is the complete freedom of anonymous posting. This is a large departure from most English language Internet Forum s which require some form of registration, usually coupled with email verification for further identification of an individual. On 2ch, a name field is available but seldom used. Entering your name in the field, unless you do so with an obvious lack of purpose, would identify you as a newbie who doesn't understand the forum, an administrator, or someone attempting to be a Web celebrity. The reason for allowing anonymous posting was given in an interview with the founder of 2ch in the Japan Media Review : :Q: Why did you decide to use perfect anonymity, not even requiring a user name? :A: Because delivering news without taking any risk is very important to us. There is a lot of information disclosure or secret news gathered on Channel 2. Few people would post that kind of information by taking a risk. Moreover, people can only truly discuss something when they don't know each other. :If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don't know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them. Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, "it's boring," if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work. Free speech Because 2channel is anonymous, the place is filled with every kind of Hate Speech imaginable. Apart from obvious and predictable examples of this, such as the Middle East board having at least one Thread containing Anti-Semitic or Islamophobic speech, and the Board of East Asia repulsed to Anti-Japanese Sentiment of China and Korea . On the other hand, they are friendly to Taiwan . , there are some forms of hate speech which are peculiar to 2ch, for example:
The typical response to most of these insulting " Troll " posts would be "You Too!" (オマエモナー, ''Omae mo nā'' in Japanese), and this eventually led to the creation of 2channel's mascot Monā , as a pun on this oft-said phrase. However, troll posts such as these are tolerated on 2ch, and are even treated like any other post; this is in contrast to most forums, where troll posts would not be responded to at all (''"don't feed the trolls!"''), and would be deleted on sight by a Moderator . The only type of posts which are not allowed are Vandalism posts (for example, Spamming and Flooding ) and posts which could be classed as Slander under Japanese Law , and could result in legal action being undertaken against 2channel. Also, posts which declare intentions to commit a crime would be referred to the police, due to events such as the Neomugicha Incident . Incidents such as this have happened in the past, an example of this being a women's Mahjong league and the activist Arudou Debito .http://www.debito.org/2channelsojou.html#english In fact, 2channel due to its massive size and anonymous posting is littered with slander and defamation against public figures and institutions. Though the site has a rule to delete such illegal posting, the scale of the site makes a prompt response difficult. There are numerous civil actions against Hiroyuki by individuals and corporations for slander and defamation. Hiroyuki so far ignored every court order and has never shown up for any trial and he has lost every civil case brought against him by default. Hiroyuki does not hold any sizable asset in Japan and any financial gain by Hiroyuki (bar what the court rule as necessary living expense) is subject to foreclosure. 2channel's assets are all held overseas; the servers are located in California and the domains are owned by a United States registrar. Moreover, technically, Hioroyuki does not own 2channel. None of the winner of civil action collected any money from Hiroyuki. In January 2007, a small court in Japan, making a judgement on yet another slander case, announced that 2channel's holding company was bankrupt and it would be repossessed. This claim was openly mocked by Hiroyuki on 2channel's splash page, and nothing of the sort happened, although 2channel's Japanese ISP ended its operations.http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Japanese_court_plans_to_seize_control_of_2channel However, even though incidents such as those described above have resulted in legal action against 2channel, these same incidents have also resulted in 2channel gaining a huge amount of publicity though mass-media coverage of these incidents. VIPPERs A notable part of 2ch's users call themselves as VIPPERs. VIPPERs are people, that post on 2ch's News for VIP board. News for VIP board is similar to 4chan's /b/ board where everything goes. Usual topics include commenting on Live TV and organizing different events for VIPPERs. VIPPERs also organise Flash Mobs , which have become the most popular pastime for VIPPERs. VIPPERs also frequently post so-called "MAD" videos on Youtube featuring VIPPER jargon. TERMINOLOGY These terms are used both on 2channel and on its Japanese and American spinoffs.Niten Project, , Tokyo: . ISBN 4796647546
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