Imageboard
An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of a number of English-language imageboards.
Characteristics
Imageboards, similar to bulletin board systems, are used for discussions of a variety of topics. The primary focus of imageboards, however, is directed away from text posts, and is instead placed on picture posts. The two share many of the same structures, including separate forums for separate topics, as well as similar audiences. Imageboards are much more transitory with content—on some boards, the thread deletion time can be as little as 10 minutes. The most popular English language imageboard, 4chan, similarly has a large variety of topics.Imageboards are also different from online galleries in that most of the works posted are not made by the poster, but instead are taken from other online sources: galleries, other imageboards, and edited pictures.
Tripcodes
Most imageboards and 2channel-style discussion boards allow anonymous posting and use a system of tripcodes instead of registration. A tripcode is the hashed result of a password that allows one's identity to be recognized without storing data about users. Entering a particular password will let one "sign" one's posts with the tripcode generated from that password. Trying to take another user's tripcode and compute their password from it is somewhat computationally difficult. For those who want a custom tripcode, however, there are custom tripcode generators available, such as Meriken's Tripcode Engine and MTY_CL. Anonymity is considered to be one of the advantages of an imageboard, and some boards have from time to time removed the ability to post with a name altogether.Secure tripcodes
Because tripcodes can be cracked given enough time, some imageboards, such as 4chan and 8chan, implement a "secure" tripcode. A secure tripcode is not reproducible across different imageboards; it works by prepending a secure salt to the tripcode which, barring security hacker intrusion, is known only to the server's staff. It therefore functions closer to a username than to a cryptographic signature; this is why QAnon could not verify themselves on another website when 8chan went down in late 2019.Booru
A booru is a type of imageboard designed primarily for hosting and categorizing large collections of images, typically fan art, anime, manga, or other niche media. The term booru comes from the Japanese word "board", re-pronounced in a way that mimics how early anime/manga fans would romanize it online. It’s also a nod to Danbooru, the original and most well-known booru site.Boorus were created as a companion to image boards to archive and index posted media, as opposed to the policy of imageboards of deleting them when a post becomes too old. Booru also help international users to find media hosted by non-English gallery host, or hosts which often lack English tags, in particular Pixiv.
Forks and community Boorus
The source code for Danbooru is publicly available on GitHub. The most popular fork of Danbooru is e621.net, who maintain their own custom feature sets, and allowed post types. Some fandoms use their own booru software, such as Derpibooru, the largest and most popular imageboard for My Little Pony fan art.List of imageboards
2ch
Dvach is a Russian imageboard that replaced the 2ch.ru imageboard, which was shut down earlier on 17 January 2009. It thoroughly copied the original layout, was heavily advertised over the internet, and managed to succeed the original one in popularity. According to its owners, the number of posts left in the /b/ board exceeded 150 million. In September 2016, a pro-Russian government organisation, Mail.ru, helped to organize a "defense" against alleged DDOS attacks that took place during the same month. These events raised concerns and speculations among users, who grew suspicious of an alleged takeover committed by Mail.ru, and who criticized the owner's controversial decision to accept "help". As of October 2018 it was widely believed that the imageboard was simply "sold" on undisclosed terms to a pro-government organization. The decision was met with strong criticism, due to the risks to disclosure of users' credentials from an inherently anonymous community, coming from a government body that could potentially violate these principles of anonymity, causing many to leave the board by the end of 2016. As of 2019, it remains one of the largest active Russian-speaking imageboards.420chan
An English-language imageboard based on cannabis culture which was created on 20 April 2005 by Aubrey Cottle. The name is a reference to the larger 4chan and the code term 420 of the cannabis subculture. Its boards included various drug-specific boards, as well as a board featuring a chatbot named Netjester.4chan
4chan is an English-language imageboard based on the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel. This imageboard is based primarily upon the posting of pictures and their discussion. The Guardian describes it as "at once brilliant, ridiculous and alarming."The site and its userbase have received attention from the media for a number of reasons, including attacks against Hal Turner on his Internet shows, distributed denial-of-service attacks against eBaum's World, taking part in Project Chanology, and multiple cases of anti-animal abuse reports. Many Internet memes have originated there, including lolcats, rickrolling, and Pedobear.