Talk:4chan

m00t's name is not Christopher Poole

Cristopher Poole = C.P. = CP = Child Porn... The Wall Street Journal got trolled by m00t! lulz.

Also, Poole = Pool = pool's closed

--66.50.34.57 (talk) 18:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

yeah, seems a bit odd, ive changed the infobox back to moot, but kept christopher poole in the body of the article (it does have a source after all)--Kip Kip 21:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Lev Grossman from Time Magazine:

He's even ready to reveal his real name: it's Christopher Poole, he tells me.

I don't see TWSJ saying, "his name is Christopher Poole and we know this because we saw his driver's license and his birth certificate". Hell, I am Cristopher Poole. Disprove it.

66.50.34.57 (talk) 22:21, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Leaving Christopher Poole in this article for one isnt factual, and secondly you're simply involuntarily pandering to moot, he trolled TIME magazine and now he's even affected wikipedia, wp mootykins or C.P. --78.16.159.99 (talk) 22:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Best bet is to say "allegedly" Christopher Poole. Name isn't blatant enough to say for sure it's a troll, but this IS moot we're talking about, and it would be awfully coincidental for both his initials and last name to become part of 4chan injokes.Umlautbob (talk) 00:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd guess it really is trolling, considering what /b/ is called right now (its "hahahaha trolled bitches")--Kip Kip 00:30, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey, according to wikipedia, information isn't factual unless it's reported by a reliable news source. I wonder if the same is true the other way around. Just because Time and WSJ say it, does it mean it's true? Piroteknix (talk) 07:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear god... when 4chan ends up in mainstream media... the world is ending... or at least the internet. ;_; Aside from his joke about Murdoch, this is assuredly done for public and monetary attention, which I'm guessing moot might think would be effective in helping him get moar money to take off to mootxico... or whatever else. Anyway... I think with the new information the article in Time and the Wall Street Journal has given, we have a bit more than just moot's alleged name that we can now reference and work into an article. I think that using that using the Time and WSJ articles, in conjuction with the Press, News, and Advertising pages is something we should really work on. Specifically, I think we need to completely rewrite the history and layout sections, and consider shortening or moving the media attention page, or incorporating it into the rest of the article without having a big section paying attention to media attention and not the topics the media attention was covering.

tl;dr: Let's find better ways to use all our media sources now that, for the first time in this article's history, we actually HAVE varied and reputable news sources on various events. Instead of putting all our sources in the media attention section, we should incorporate it into the rest of the article, making new sections where appropriate.

Also, if anyone reads the Time article and thinks that 2channel was the basis for 4chan, this is wrong. The site was instead inspired more closely by Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan. I wish we had more sources on 2chan, but we don't, so we can't cite the fact that /b/ is based off another board on 2chan, and that 4chan was inspired by 2chan.

Sorry for the long and confusing message. I need to sleep before posting on Wikipedia. (Steampowered (talk) 09:01, 11 July 2008 (UTC)).

Additionally, we could also use the sitewide post count statistics now available on the front page instead of just the /b/ post count, if we were so inclined, as they are actually easily verifiable, in a sense. I'll see how some of these edits work later. (Steampowered (talk) 14:19, 11 July 2008 (UTC)).

I believe his real name is actually Robert Bopkins. For a while, this appeared in 4chan's DNS records, and someone at the first Otakon panel called him "Rob". Dpbjinc (talk) 21:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

That's the problem. There's at least two different complete names attributed to him, along with one name that was given name only (m00t previously wordfiltered to doug, which a lot of people insist means his given name is Doug.) Even the Time article states that the interviewer isn't absolutely sure the Poole name is real. Given his prankster reputation and known desire for privacy, as well as the nature of the name, we have to assume it could be a joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.241.22.122 (talk) 04:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Leave the name from Time into the article, but with "claimed to be" or "allegedly". It comes from a notable source, but the source itself shows doubt to the claim ("he tells me"), so it's a notable claim. 202.40.139.170 (talk) 07:26, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

The article currently reads "...had his alleged real-world identity, Christopher Poole..." - is that OK? —Giggy 08:05, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Let the bear stay

The redirect from Pedobear isn't going away, and not mentioning a rather popular 4chan meme at least briefly in the main article makes no sense. Size is certainly not an issue, so I've added a sentence on the meme. I believe Pedobear is a very good illustration of the cynicism that is so common on many of the forums. Complaining that it's unreferencable is just nonsense. Googling "pedobear" gets you a quarter of a million hits, and there's even a rather silly pedobear.org out there. Either the redirect is deleted, or we include a minimum of information here. We can't both keep the redirect and keep the information out the article.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:25, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

How do you define popular, with ~100,000 posts per day, how much is needed to be considered popular?Redmagemp3 (talk) 22:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I've removed its mention here; like every other piece of information, it needs a reliable source for inclusion. —Giggy 08:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This is not an issue, guys. The problem is that we're still keeping the redirect instead of deleting it and that means it should at the very least be mentioned once. Like I already said, either the redirect gets deleted and protected, or we spend one measly sentence on this completely uncontroversial piece of information. We can't have it both redirecting here and then keep on removing it.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I have no big objection with deleting the redirect. —Giggy 09:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, you might not object, but others have. Until there's consensus to actually delete and protect the link, that brief and very uncontroversial sentence should stay. Removing it by claiming it's unverifiable is rather contradictory to the fact that the redirect is allowed to stay.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:33, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This is about the closest we're gonna get on a Pedobear reference. CTRL+F if you can't find it the first time. It's not descriptive at all and I'm not even sure if it's a reliable source, but it's the best we have: http://sfist.com/2008/06/16/photos_anonymous_pirate_scientology.php . (Steampowered (talk) 21:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)).

False claims of responsibility

Moved out of article as no sources could be found. If you can find references, please post them below and we can discuss adding something back in. —Giggy 05:26, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

False claims of responsibility section

Immediately following widely publicized killings, particularly school shootings, false claims of responsibility have surfaced on 4chan - supported by fake and back-dated screenshots of the killer writing that he is about to commit murder/suicide at the location. For example, while news of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre was breaking, some news sources reported that the killer had posted about his plans on 4chan. Most such news reports were quietly removed once it became clear that the post was a hoax, but several months later some such reports still remained posted without retraction.

I have a source. It needs to be translated, but it seems that it pretty much sources that entire paragraph just from the photos it contains. http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/1.642133 . (Steampowered (talk) 21:31, 16 July 2008 (UTC)).

I don't see the need in adding this to the article. All you could say was "one news article included a screenshot of a 4chan post saying blahblahblah". We don't need to report on every false bit of information that shows up in the media. If that source does take consider the post to be real, then you very well can't call it a reliable source, can you? --- RockMFR 23:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Are you serious??

The humor of /b/'s many users, who refer to themselves as "/b/tards",[citation needed]

Spend half a minute on /b/ if you want your fucking citation. The passive aggressive douchebaggery of the citationistas has gone way too far. Removed.

I just did a control+F on /b/, didn't find /b/tard, or tard anywhere, citation going back.Redmagemp3 (talk) 05:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, me too. Agree with the tag going back. /b/ probably isn't a reliable source anyway. —Giggy 08:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Both posts are moot, /b/ can't be used as a source because of pruning... and the appropriate course of action towards citation is not to just CTRL+F a single page that is more liquid than nearly any other page on the internet that I've seen. I seem to remember that the word /b/tard has actually been mentioned in media.

Five minutes later, and now I have a source: [1] at http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=2 . Not perfect, but still. We need to start researching and utilizing our references a lot more now. This entire article frankly needs a complete rewrite now that we have so many newsarticles mentioning and/or covering 4chan to pull citations from. Besides the media attention section which really should be either rewritten, put onto another page, or fully or partially integrated into the rest of the page, we've barely added or improved anything since getting these sources. However, none of us seem to be utilizing these sources, too well. The LA Times did a piece mentioning 4chan, Maxim did a 5-page piece on Anonymous, mentioning relevant on /b/ and 4chan, needed information that was previously not sourced. The Wall Street Journal and Time surely talked about more than moot's name, publishing information other than his name that would help us tremendously in improving this article. Hopefully, we can use these a bit better in the future. I'd personally like to see a comprehensive rewrite, with a special focus on expanding the history of the site section, but this is a large undertaking. Maybe I can get working on it tomorrow.

tl;dr: we finally have sources for this damn article. let's use them.(Steampowered (talk) 10:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)).

It's already using them - I added them a bit after making my last comment. :-) —Giggy 10:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

lol. My longer and more useless rants are often more prone to being outdated by the time I get the damn things typed. Thanks for fixing it up. (Steampowered (talk) 10:46, 15 July 2008 (UTC)).

I'd put this up, but I need sleep. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/07/4chan-sprays-go.html . If anyone else can put this up, that would be great. (Steampowered (talk) 11:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)).

Some more sources in other languages

Here is a German article reporting on the Google Hot Trends situation also has quite a bit of valuable information on 4chan itself, from what I can tell from the Google translation of said article. I also found a Swedish article that has a screenshot of a /b/ post allegedly made by Cho about Virginia Tech (which I believe has now been proven fake, though most sources on that have been removed). It would be great if we could use these articles as references, but I don't really know how to go about the process of getting a usable translation or whatever needs to happen here. What do you think should be done? (Steampowered (talk) 01:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)).

Yotsuba!&

There's no real reason to remove Yotsuba from the "see also" section of the article. She is, as much as anything could be, 4chan's "unofficial" mascot. Just hit the 404 page on the site and refresh. You'll see more than a few images of her. In fact, just now, I did this. 10/10 tries gave me unique pictures of Yotsuba. Howa0082 (talk) 03:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Blocks in the UK

Does anyone have any sources for this? Surprisingly (considering it would seem to be a big deal) the numerous searches I did got nothing. Anyone else had more luck? —Giggy 11:07, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I dunno. It's an old, old section and really has no sources, and I've been looking since I started working on this article (what, at least a year, maybe two ago?). That section was added at least a year ago, and I remember that it was one of the first sections concerning controversy related to 4chan. Besides a few discussion threads on the 4chan's Shiichan-based discussion boards, there's no record, and those certainly aren't suitable references. Besides, based on what I've heard from some British /b/tards, it's no longer blocked, and thus as relevant as it once was. If blockage becomes a problem again, there's a chance that it may, in fact, be covered, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm not sure how much coverage of this occurrence adds to the article. However, there is some relevant information concerning rules, enforcement, and the Chilling Effects/IWF /b/ removal from Google, which despite no news coverage can be verified via the references to Google and Chilling Effects that are already there.

tl;dr: Keep the cited stuff, nuke the rest. (Steampowered (talk) 21:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)).