What's the plan? Will swfchan figure out a way to archive it or just stick to 4chan?

It mainly depends on if that board will actually stick around and have enough posters and uploads for me to bother implementing code that will scan it. I've seen a lot of boards come and go over the years, even a few that started out big but eventually faded away anyway. Many people went from 4chan to that site but will they stay there forever, that's the question.

Additionally the filenames have to be fixed. Nobody should want "1411472503247.swf" to spread. Even if the real filename is put in text next to it very few downloaders will bother to rename their flashes by manually copy-pasting and a few weeks later "1411472503247.swf" will be uploaded and the original file name is lost.

Also, the whole format of the board must change if swfchan will ever archive the threads and not just scan it for files. I'm talking about the multiple-flashes-in-one-thread thing. Sure it seems nifty at first but how fun is a thread with 100 swf files where posts relating to different flashes cross into each other and the discussion just becomes one big mess?

The format is exactly why I stopped archiving threads on 7chan's flash board, now it's just scanned for files every now and then. Check this out: http://swfchan.net/1/VJGFUJT.shtml Maybe some people appreciate threads that look like that but I'd rather keep them out of the database. Searching for information on one flash will easily show these kind of threads too since there's all sorts of keywords in there. No, the way to go is one flash per thread, one topic per thread.

Huh. I just thought you stopped archiving 7chan because it moved so slowly and it didn't really need to be archived anymore.

Since these criteria are seldom met, the best format yet is the classic one.
Personally, I highly doubt 8chan can uphold better standards.

Thanks for your quick reply. I'm thankful for stating your views on the situation. I sent this reply to the owner of the website, is there an email address I can mail to for follow ups on this topic?

I'm really sorry for the indirect advertisement.

I'm assuming you're the guy running 8chan are you Wulf? I'm currently looking for ways to try and get more people to swfchan, since Google has stopped sending as many people here these days for whatever reason. Are you interested in trying out a banner swap? I'm thinking something like a small image banner at the bottom of each page, like what was common in the old days of Internet. You'll get some awareness, I'll get some awareness, maybe everybody wins? No strings attached, if one of us isn't happy with what we get we just remove the banner. Sounds like something you want to try?

Btw, I notice that CloudFlare is hiding away the values of "mailto" links on your site. It's a feature to protect addresses from spam, but since it's used for sage and the like I thought you maybe want to turn that feature off in your CloudFlare account settings.

I'm sorry for just being a random, I hope the volunteer and copypaste come in here and talk for themselves so that we don't play telephone.

>>15115
No problem mate.

Quote: "eh i've changed my mind
i prefer it how it is though i will make it so you can add two files (flash and screenshot if you wish)"
Source: https://8chan.co/f/res/749.html

So I guess you might as well delete this thread since I doubt that the person opening it will bother to do it himself.

But once again, thank you for taking this serious and not deleting it outright. I can't speak for anyone else on the site but I truly appreciate it.

Thanks for the condescension. There's no way for me to delete the thread, only admins can.

>>15117
Sorry for bothering you with this.
Thanks for hearing me out.

Pity that the mod changed his mind, if I'd have to guess why it's probably because it's a lot of work for nothing if 8chan's /f/ turns out to become not used by many in the future. Perhaps he will change his mind again if it picks up in activity (although trying to make it so that the original file name is used instead of a random number would be good to do as soon as possible).

welp, we've gotten some changes
New board owner btw (me)

We have an actual proper /f/ format now
We are hoping to get more of the old /f/ style formats, BUT 8chans currently in a holding pattern for development since our payment processors for donations are all dropping like flies.

Admin, you mentioned that you don't like the normal thread design, is it okay if swf's are allowed in the threads even though they look like the classic fileboard format? I like the idea of say, a thread of one of those mario porn flashes, with maybe some alt versions posted in the thread, instead of the whole board. (It's also something that isn't currently a feature I can impliment)

Also the fileboard format is open source, and on the infinity github, you are welcome to use it if you like.

The problem I have with threads that accepts multiple flash files is that they rarely create a focused discussion about a posted flash. It would get very confusing fast if twenty people were talking about ten different flashes in the same thread all at once, especially if things get off-topic (happens all the time) or someone forgets to actually quote the one he is responding to.

Posts that have multiple quotes of different posters that were talking about different flashes would be a pain to look at, you would have to stop and backtrack the discussion just to desciper which flash is being discussed. Then someone responds to a post that have multi-quotes without greentexting the line he is replying to, further increasing the difficulty of backtracking.

Now imagine if you are someone new that want to join the discussion. The thread is huge since several people are discussing several topics, how can you be expected to look through it all? You can't know if what you want to contribute has already been said. This leads to people just dumping whatever they want to say into the thread, potentially creating duplicate statements or even duplicate discussions. New posters might reply to the wrong thing, thinking it was about a different flash, causing annoyance in the guy he responded to, making him reply back in anger, which could piss someone else off since he thought that was intended for him. Sooner or later the post count would start increasing without any actual contribution and these huge age-old threads would prevent newcomers from sharing their comments since they really don't want to dive into the mess.

Say that you don't have that many people discussing the flashes, the threads doesn't turn into a big mess. Well then there's not much point in having a comment system is there? People are just dumping flashes and nobody is talking about them, apart from the occasional song request of course. Having several flashes in the same thread also deters from initiating meaningful discussion in the first place since the flash you want to talk about was "several flashes ago" after all. Besides, you don't really see anyone else discussing, people just seem to dump flashes.

What might be the worst thing about archiving multi-flash threads here on swfchan is probably how many times they appear as a candidate for someone looking for information but were in reality completely unrelated. The larger the threads are the more keywords are in there and the more likely it will waste people's time since they have to check if the thread contains the info they are looking for.

Anyway, I've been looking at the activity at 8chan's /f/ from time to time and from what I've seen it has been near a ghost town, getting worse with time. The lack of interest is probably why the old admin disappeared. It isn't easy getting people to your imageboard, especially for a niche thing like flash (I would know, swfchan.org was pretty much deserted for years and I wouldn't exactly call the state it is in today 'active'). People flock to what's active and today basically only 4chan's /f/ can be called truly active.

I hope you understand why I can't scan http://8ch.net/f/ in its current state. In short it needs to get some people that start hanging out over there and they can't just repost some old flashes. There needs to be discussions going on or original content being created (only those count as real activity in my book). Also, if you keep allowing several flashes per thread the threads can't be too much of a mess for me to archive them. There has to be a limit of something like 5 flashes per thread or only OP allowing to post flashes in threads or 1 flash per 10 replies in a thread or active mods that delete flashes that are unrelated or... something. Ancient mega threads with thousands of posts spread across a hundred discussions isn't good either because it will turn up too often when it is unrelated. Old threads, even active ones, need to eventually die like all imageboard threads.

I'll check how your /f/ is doing from time to time, I hope you can get some people over there somehow. Feel free to come back here any time and let me know if you notice a sudden spike in activity!

Man, admin, this may sound weird, but I love you.
That in depth wall of text is something you don't really see too often nowadays. I just get like three words answers from people.

One things I will state, that doesn't really influence your decision making, but when we do have proper topics, they are interesting, such as TiTS threads, they're on topic and the only time there's any new flash files added on, it's when they're newer versions and the like.

I agree with the sentiment against multiple flashes in one thread, as I'm not too fond of general threads. Things like Miku Monday or 2hu 2sday would jsut become Miku General and 2hu General, losing their special meanings and such.

Lot to read, but a lot of good stuff in there.

Sorry you couldn't get ahold of HW, a lot of people have that problem, he's a busy guy.

He almost had to stop development entirely so he could find other work, because our payment processors keep pulling out due to pressure from ideologues. (Thankfully a whole lot of bitcoin fixed that)
He's also stated publically he's not a fan of flash sadly, as its not open source and all that gnu/jazz. He probably wouldn't support it if it weren't a 4chan feature.

I will try to get ahold of him, and prioritize both automatic thread expiration, and post per ip limits, and I will see if I can get .swf for OP only as an option.
I am trying to build this /f/ as close to the old /f/ as possible (without moots fuckups like captcha of course), but am also hoping alternates pop up, like a fileboard for webms.
I'm hopeful on both, as both could be used outside fileboards.
Sadly I myself am not a dev, so I have to rely on others. I can either try to see if hotwheels will put it on his todo, or see if I can pay a dev to add these features. However, I think both are actually features that would need to be applied on HW end, so he has to do it.

Sadly i've shilled the new /f/ very little, I have been busy as of late, yet it seems to be growing, but the massive megathreads that will never die as long as they are bumped will probably make it seem slower until expiration is a feature. I think it will take time, but when we get a bit closer to 4chans features and they start realizing there is an alternative with no captcha and 4 threads a day limits not 2, i think we will see a boost (they will ban you for mentioning 8chan at all, even on /f/ however)

Thanks for the advice admin, i'll see what I can do to keep improving the place!

Not sure if anything will change and reenable it in infinity next, in reality a flash style board probably hasn't even been written for next at all. (NEXT is 8ch's new board software written from scratch, will be done "soon(tm)"

Got me thinking though, admin, would you be able to make use of the boards code?
Im sure with a little tweeking you could use it to implement a "classic /f/" style board. I don't know what it is but I always loved 4chans /f/ board, just the fact that it was a single page of rotating content, I liked that, and there's nowhere else really like it imo. But now with 2 post limit, captcha, and hiroyuki running the site, I don't want to post on 4chan if i can help it. Not sure if im the only one who cared enough to want an alternative though. Would you be interested in making a clone of it that works the same way?

Feels best to have two styles of flash boards: On 4chan there are no thumbnails and true Anonymity while here there are thumbnails and you get a thread identity (OP/A/B/C etc). Supports different post styles that complement each other.

I've been thinking about making swfchan truly Anonymous as well (since I like that better, I think you should be able to both love and hate the same poster in a thread simply because you don't know it's the same person that made two posts) but what's preventing me is that it would remove something that differentiates my board from 4chan's. To have a fighting chance on the Internet today you have to bring something unique to the table, otherwise people will just flock to the biggest player.

Also I don't really have the time to get into another person's code right now to be honest. I'm doing that on a different matter at the moment so I know how tedious it can be. If I would use someone else's code on the swfchan server I would really need to fine-comb it to make sure it's not doing anything bad in some function somewhere.

I've been meaning to rewrite swfchan.org as well for quite some time now (same appearance but with a better post receiver and with more modern features for the poster) but haven't finished it yet. I've started but it's on hold. The GifShooter and SwfH264 also needs to be updated, plus a bunch of other projects I want to do.

What's that about pikachu.swf by the way? What happened?

Difference is good too, im not saying replace whats here, just as an additional board or something. However you make a good point, digging into someone elses code would take a lot of work, and, it left a lot to be desired, neither czaks who was paid to write it, or hotwheels really understand /f/ or how it works.

As for the pikachu swf, a flash file was found that inserted js into the browser of anyone who opened it. Both 4 and 8 /g/ and /tech/ came together to figure out what was going on with it. It inserted malicious code that caused your browser to administer some sort of attack on 8ch, the specifics of how it was attacking went over my head somewhat. This security hole in flash cause hotwheels to initially disable swf posting entirely, then it was brought back but you now have to download the swf and open it externally, no opening it within the site. and really now, whose going to browse that. Not to mention several server side features were still missing, old post auto deletion, limiting the posts on the board to one page, stuff like that.

Can't exactly disagree with the decision because of malicious code, but its a shame, I sank money into getting that code written too (I believe it was pushed to vichan, probably named "fileboard" format or something like that, thats how its referred to when making a board, if you ever want to give it a look, feel free to go ahead)

Flash have a bad reputation today due to a lot of misinformation and people describing issues to be worse than they actually are, causing the misinformation to keep getting worse. I find it hard to believe that there's any reason to go so far as to deny flashes from being displayed on the site completely, if the problem was indeed DDoS it could probably have been prevented with a cross-domain policy file (crossdomain.xml that gets auto-loaded by the flash plugin).

You don't happen to still have pikachu.swf around do you? I'd love to take a look at it.

And yes, it injected the script, so even if you only had the flash open for a fraction of a second, it kept attacking the site.

It was definitely not a ddos, I understand how those work, this was a bit more complex than that.

here ya go