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[GlyphGryph]

I don't know, I think its quite deserving of study. It has a huge user base, a fairly unique culture, and seems to flout what most conventional wisdom agrees are the most important aspect of successful online communities. And no matter what else it is, it is successful. Beyond that, they are and have been a very important force in pushing out new trends, and understanding how and why could be incredibly useful.

And Bouchard, just because you don't like people's hobbies doesn't mean you can minimize the impact 4chan has, or say that they are a "small group", or label everyone that uses the site as a troll, because they aren't. 4chan is freaking huge.

[ein]

That and each board tends to be its own little subcommunity, with board specific memes and such.

[Virex]

And Bouchard, just because you don't like people's hobbies doesn't mean you can minimize the impact 4chan has, or say that they are a "small group", or label everyone that uses the site as a troll, because they aren't. 4chan is freaking huge.

I don't get why it's size would mean that it's not a troll lair?

Props to the scholars for getting what seems to be a proper picture of /b/. I'd say I even learnt a few things from it.

7% of /b/'s activity is dedicated towards calling for action? That's far higher than I expected for the website, and does indicate that its political actions must be studied deeply...but really, researchers need to compare this sort of activity to other forums to see if this is abnormal or not.

Yeah, but a lot of those threads end quickly with "/b/ is not your personal army".

Not to mention that it includes requests like "raid this dweebs facebook page" and "need some1 to hack my exes profile"...

[freeformschooler]

And Bouchard, just because you don't like people's hobbies doesn't mean you can minimize the impact 4chan has, or say that they are a "small group", or label everyone that uses the site as a troll, because they aren't. 4chan is freaking huge.

I don't get why it's size would mean that it's not a troll lair?

Troll lair (contains/houses trolls) != entirely trolls.

[Aqizzar]

The preamble gave the best reasons for why conduct study.  It's an environment with a large number of human actors, with near total anonymity, and no actual permanence of information (not including knowyourmeme and the void where Encyclopaedia Dramatica used to be).  It's also really easy to study with some good computer programming.  So just throw a few computers into the task, and voilą you have tons of research data on how people communicate in the strongest example of the informational dynamics of Internet-based communication.

Interesting stuff too, I'm giving this a thorough read.  I know a few professors who would probably enjoy reading this.

[Africa]

Used to be? What happened to Encyclopedia Dramatica?

Not that I'd mourn it.

[Darvi]

It got politically correct or something.

[KaelGotDwarves]

There's always someone else to fill in that niche.

Do you remember the meme archive site(s) that existed before ED?

I don't even recall the name, but I remember that it was there.

[Vector]

There's always knowyourmeme.com, right?  I like that one a lot.

[KaelGotDwarves]

They're a fairly recent addition that's monetising the traffic they get through means of adverts.

I always found it interesting that moot's always had a mostly hands off approach with 4chan while other groups such as icanhazcheeseburger and others were so quick to jump on the "how can we make money off this" train.

[Vector]

Oh, okay.  Whoops, then... I thought they were old enough, but I suppose there was some other group you were thinking of.

[freeformschooler]

They're a fairly recent addition that's monetising the traffic they get through means of adverts.

I always found it interesting that moot's always had a mostly hands off approach with 4chan while other groups such as icanhazcheeseburger and others were so quick to jump on the "how can we make money off this" train.

Well... his approach is pretty hands on sometimes, but only in terms of "replace top banner with pudding" and stuff.

[ein]

He approaches the site like a person who goes there, not a person who runs the place.

[Grakelin]

I lol'd at people seriously questioning the validity of doing research on this topic. Research into internet culture is starting to become huge in the academic world. Latching on to a subject, especially a subject which everybody frequenting the internet seems to be aware of, is an amazing idea.

I don't see how studying 4chan is any less useful than writing a 100 page paper on the blooming pattern of blue azalea flowers in the wilderness (I remember seeing this once, though that wasn't the exact name). The "Elite" who reside in these universities spend their time developing knowledge to be disseminated by the rest of society. To insult them over their profession without acting the fool, you would have to travel up into the deep wilderness and become completely self-sufficient, taking nothing, not even the clothes on your back.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Yeah, having spent a weekend hanging out with the guy, he stuck me as far more reasonable than someone who has seen his fair share of things on 4chan should be.

He's mostly operated on a completely hands off approach lately - in the beginning with the oldest memes, there was a sticky on /b/ every few days. 100k post on /b/... "lol internet". Doesn't 100k posts take less than a day now? Used to take months. Hell, I even got a sticky at the top of /b/ once. The last times I checked 4chan or heard about it, it seems like moot will get drunk and decide something needs to be done because the site is going to complete rubbish and he'll just initiate random silliness.