Leftchan?

[milkmiku]

Is there a chan dedicated to the Left? If not, there should be. Like it or not but Chan culture is a big part of the internet now and a leftchan should exist to draw and unite users who dislike traditional Forums.

How about an official revleftchan? Setting up a chan is easy and there are many imageboard packages available.

Tinyboard, Futallaby, Kusaba are all easy to set up.

[Q]

Dibbs on 1917chan :D

There are some chans with a commie subforum, but they're more often than not completely dead or full of clichés.

[Sam_b]

not, there should be

NO

[Igor]

oh god no

[Tenka]

I only use imageboards for porn. I've only ever used imageboards for porn. If there is a revleft imageboard, I will not want to use it because it will not (and definitely should not) have porn.

[The Douche]

I would totally veto any attempt to establish a revleftchan.

There is www.anokchan.com which is pretty much just a funnier version of @news. I lurk/post there when I'm really bored.

[marl]

/new/, /int/, etc on various imageboards are filled with fascists.

[revhiphop]

99chan had a /cccp/ Communist Board a long time ago. They also had a /reich/ board for nazis. They have now combined them into one board where communists and fascists argue all day.

[l'Enfermé]

I'm not sure that a leftist site celebrating Japanese cartoons is such a great idea...

[Prairie Fire]

Revleft itself already borders on 4chan too often for my liking.

The last thing that the left needs is to get even less political.

[Blake's Baby]

The only good Chan is a Jackie Chan.

I have no idea what a 'chan' is really. I have heard of 4chan, mostly from my kid who's 14. He's just told me 'there's random crap everywhere, it's like the scum of the internet'. It sounds awful.

[Kotze]

That type of discussion structuring has its pros and cons. How fast and easy you can go from first-time visit to posting without signupemailcookiesjavascriptstuff is very appealing, but sometimes anon agreeing with anon while disagreeing with what anon said about anon is a bit eeeh. Instead of everybody in a discussion being completely anonymous by default, there are also other possibilities, for example Krautchan's /int/ section marks from which country a user is posting.

If you make 1917chan I will visit.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

I only use imageboards for porn. I've only ever used imageboards for porn. If there is a revleft imageboard, I will not want to use it because it will not (and definitely should not) have porn.
http://i.imgur.com/rm6E4.png

[o well this is ok I guess]

Well, there's anokchan.
But it's sort of dead.

[Ostrinski]

This is a terrible idea.

[Decommissioner]

I am not opposed to this idea.

Leftist imageboard!= leftist version of 4chan. It would be no different than this board other than being more open and anonymous in nature.

There were imageboards before 4chan and there will be imageboards after. An actually good leftist imageboard (meaning not just a place for trolling and porn) is possible if there is plenty of moderation to ban the inevitable fascists and capitalists that would try to derail topics.

[MarxSchmarx]

I actually think it is a neat idea, but the problem is that it is too deeply incongruous with the nature of political discourse.

Don't we already have a graphics subforum and people post pics often enough here?

The image board idea I think works for some topics because a lot of the information can be conveyed visually, or there is a dedication to visual media like still photography or cartoons.

Politics isn't as readily conveyed visually; the subject matter does not lend itself to a strictly image board type format. Text plays too central a role. There are some attempts to visualize certain leftist ideas (ckaihatsu's stuff here and the manga on Das Kapital, for example) but I think these can't convey a depth of perspective or the nuance that a reasoned argument typed out can.

The one area I think something like this could be useful is if people post visual images about what they envision a post-capitalist society would look like - mundane things like dwellings, parks, photos of people even if actors "at work" in a socialist society, etc... I think something like that would be wicked and inspiring. The chaos of the internet means it won't become stale like socialist realism.

But still I think the existing visual arts subforum and the like suffice to this end - a sticky for a "your pictures from the post-capitalist future" e.g. seems to me to be more than adequate. A leftchan would ultimately be too limiting in terms of expressing ourselves politically, when the whole idea of such spaces should be to push the boundaries of expression.

[Kotze]

Politics isn't as readily conveyed visually...I agree with that, but it's not images alone that make imageboards different from normal western forums. I thought milkmiku brought up imageboards primarily because of how easy posting is and the different way online identity is treated.

[MarxSchmarx]

... it's not images alone that make imageboards different from normal western forums. I thought milkmiku brought up imageboards primarily because of how easy posting is and the different way online identity is treated.

Really? Because that's not how it works in practice. Even supposedly "anonymous" boards ID users by IP; the requirement of a formal registration at a place like revleft is effectively just an added formality. Those imageboards that scramble IPs- presumably a place like Revleft could do just the same although I don't know if vbulliten which is used has specifically that capacity. Adding a "unnamed user" account that anybody can use to login - there's nothing in the "normal western forum" paradigm that prevents that. I don't see what adding it does; given that admins have access to IP info anyway and a user's particulars are otherwise hidden from most other users anyway.

So I must admit I still think the idea of image boards focusing on images is what distinguishes them from a largely text based forum like revleft.

[Kotze]

Of course it is possible to allow unregistered visitors to post with forum software like the one used here, it is also possible to set up imageboards that require registration for posting or even reading, but that's not the usual experience. That admins can track a lot even without user registration does not make the difference in how normal users experience it I claim a moot point, whether in the American or British sense of the term.

The way identity is seen on the side of normal users has an effect on communication. Doesn't everybody in this thread believe that the anons-everywhere thing is part of imageboard culture, for better or worse (or much worse)? Maybe the best of both worlds would be allowing the same normal user to use several pseudonyms, with capping how much the same user can let them talk to each other and without giving that user more votes in polls, but I digress.

@milkmiku: If you want to make a leftchan, don't be discouraged by the negative comments here. A website's regular participants are usually a bit biased towards whatever software/layout/administrative style is used there.

What should be the topic structure of that thing?

[Kotze]

double post

[marl]

If someone here was to make an imageboard, which I doubt, I'd highly suggest not using Kusaba X. It's a buggy piece of shit. Tinyboard - don't use that either (PM me if you want to know why, it's a secret I can't leak). Wakaba is the best. Futallaby is an old piece of shit, and plain old Futaba is an old, Japanese piece of shit.

Yotsuba got leaked a while ago, along with Shiichan (for text-boards). They both sucked ass.

[milkmiku]

I'd like to set up a leftchan, but I user base needs to exist for it. Right now there are quite a few chans out there. If anyone else would be interested in such an ordeal, hit me up. I'm going to lurk a few other leftist forums and see if a userbase exist for such a task.

[arilando]

What i like about imageboards is the anonymity, the ease of posting, you can see the OP's post, not just the thread title, posts are not reviewed before you post them, and the loose moderation.

What i dislike is that you can only posts pictures, not videos or flash files, that threads get deleted, and that you cant just click on links to get to the site, you have to copy and paste into your browser.

My ideal forum would be one that had none of the negative aspects of imageboards that i have outlined above, and all of the positive ones.

[milkmiku]

What i like about imageboards is the anonymity, the ease of posting, you can see the OP's post, not just the thread title, posts are not reviewed before you post them, and the loose moderation.

What i dislike is that you can only posts pictures, not videos or flash files, that threads get deleted, and that you cant just click on links to get to the site, you have to copy and paste into your browser.

My ideal forum would be one that had none of the negative aspects of imageboards that i have outlined above, and all of the positive ones.


Modern Image board software can address every one of those issues. Serious.

[Orlov]

No, just no.

Must - Crush - Capitalism;2382692
My God what have you done to Stalin?