4Chan: Sage Not Bump (For Now)

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OK, so the upshot is that the 4chan archives I’ve acquired will not be going up to archive.org, or anywhere public, anytime soon.

After a good amount of discussion with various mentors and friends, I’ve determined the negative results would outweigh the positive.  Don’t worry, nobody “got to” me. People don’t generally “get to” me with very good outcomes. It’s just a matter of timing. The short form, as they say: “too soon”.

But I’ll ensure the safety of this data and rest assured, at some point down the line, it’s getting out there. Copies are being made and drives stored in distant locations. All is well with the data.

So rest easy. I’m sorry for the turnaround there. Anything more in the way of apology or explanation would be redundant. That’s how it goes, folks.

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This entry (permalink) was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 8:19 PM by Jason Scott and categorized in computer history.

Comments (12) left to “4Chan: Sage Not Bump (For Now)”

  1. ASCII by Jason Scott / Bump Not Sage: Saving 4Chan wrote:

    [...] 4Chan: Sage Not Bump (For Now) [...]

    Posted on 25-Jul-09 at 8:21 pm | Permalink

  2. JakeNo Gravatar wrote:

    Can’t you just throw up a torrent? I’d love to do some data analysis and visualizations. torrents or gtfo

    Posted on 26-Jul-09 at 7:11 am | Permalink

  3. Bill KenyonNo Gravatar wrote:

    Negative results from making it public? I can’t imagine anything negative that would come about making a previous version of a public website, public again. Keeping this from everyone is poor taste in my opinion.

    Posted on 26-Jul-09 at 8:21 am | Permalink

  4. AndyNo Gravatar wrote:

    Just because it’s public doesn’t mean there isn’t a reasonable expectation of privacy. Just as in real-life, different online communities have different social norms. 4chan’s norm is that they ban all public crawlers (using robots.txt) and delete expired threads quickly.

    As a result, 4chan users expect that the things they say won’t be archived and broadcast elsewhere. Even if they’re anonymous, this can have serious real-world repercussions.

    Posted on 26-Jul-09 at 1:02 pm | Permalink

  5. AnonymousNo Gravatar wrote:

    Thank goodness. Archiving content that was already public is wonderful, I’m all for giving future generations as full access as possible to content that was published before their time. 4chan content however was never published publicly, in the usual sense; its users knew what they wrote would be gone in a matter of minutes (or even seconds) and the only people reading it were a bunch of people who – by virtue of having found the site – were like them, they got it. This used to mean something. And it was this transience that made the website what it was and inspired people to post how and what they did. If there were archives, it would have been completely different. Yes, there is now 4chanarchive.org, but this too is extremely against the Anonymous ethos and was created during the mainstream murder of 4chan.

    Publishing expired 4chan content would be like me springing on you that I recorded all your phone conversations for the last five years and I’m going to put them up for everyone to hear. Don’t do it.

    Posted on 26-Jul-09 at 8:47 pm | Permalink

  6. AnonymousNo Gravatar wrote:

    It’s going to suck for future kids to be told about 4chan and not be able to experience it for themselves or whatever but that’s just how it is sometimes. Some of the best stories handed down from my grandparents end with “you just had to be there”, and that’s okay. We’re not going to forget (cringe), we will do the job of informing next generations the old fashioned way.

    I’m also getting a very “because we can” feeling from this whole initiative. Any justifications seem secondary.

    Posted on 26-Jul-09 at 8:53 pm | Permalink

  7. anonNo Gravatar wrote:

    DON’T TREAD ON /B/

    Posted on 27-Jul-09 at 3:33 am | Permalink

  8. Successful TrollNo Gravatar wrote:

    /B/? WTF is /B/?

    Posted on 29-Jul-09 at 9:15 am | Permalink

  9. DaveNo Gravatar wrote:

    This is a fake, guys. This guy hasn’t even heard of 4chan 5 years ago. Move along.

    Posted on 05-Aug-09 at 2:38 pm | Permalink

  10. anonNo Gravatar wrote:

    i respect your decision. I anticipate it being used in a doc some time the in the future. In the meantime, moar sauce.

    Posted on 20-Aug-09 at 12:21 pm | Permalink

  11. YaanuNo Gravatar wrote:

    You could always find and delete the CP. Just replace it with an image that says something like “CP lulz”.

    In any case, I hope you manage to find a solution or whatever. Maybe a FreeWebs page?

    Posted on 22-Aug-09 at 6:48 pm | Permalink

  12. EdNo Gravatar wrote:

    Could there be a way to get all the threads of a specific date?

    Posted on 28-Dec-09 at 1:18 am | Permalink

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