Maybe I understand on a gut level that the opposite of censorship is not academia but 4chan (which probably still has mechanisms to prevent spam).
A quick factual note: 4chan unconditionally bans child pornography and blocks (in a Wikipedia sense) the IPs, as I found out myself back when I was browsing through Tor. They’ll also moderate off-topic posts or posts in the wrong section. They actually have a surprisingly lengthy set of rules for a place with such an anarchistic reputation.
From what have just said, I surmise that 4chan is a actually a well-tended garden. I could well be a well-tended, thoughtfully organized, subtly organized anarchy garden.
Most of the rules are mostly there for the sake of legal cover—the only things that are strongly enforced are:
a) Child pornography bans.
b) Bans on organizing illegal activities, namely “raids” on other websites that can result in serious damage.
c) Mass spam, especially spam that is meant to propagate scripts that are used for further spamming.
d) Topicality rules. This only applies to some of the boards.
Moderation is most reliable for (a). 4chan is hardly a well-tended garden, let alone a “thoughtfully organized” one. Moderation is often capricious as well, with certain memes being unofficially targeted every once in a while (furries, Boxxy, etc.) It’s hard to really find an apt term or even a metaphor to properly summarize 4chan’s governing ethos… some kind of chaotic swarm or something, perhaps.
Also, it’s important to note the difference between 4chan as a whole, which is indeed an erratically-tended garden of sorts, and the “random” sub-board, which is a seething cesspit of trolling and memes, with occasional flashes of socially-uninhibited lucidity, and indeed has anarchy levels that are (as they say) over 9000.
A quick factual note: 4chan unconditionally bans child pornography and blocks (in a Wikipedia sense) the IPs, as I found out myself back when I was browsing through Tor. They’ll also moderate off-topic posts or posts in the wrong section. They actually have a surprisingly lengthy set of rules for a place with such an anarchistic reputation.
From what have just said, I surmise that 4chan is a actually a well-tended garden. I could well be a well-tended, thoughtfully organized, subtly organized anarchy garden.
Most of the rules are mostly there for the sake of legal cover—the only things that are strongly enforced are:
a) Child pornography bans. b) Bans on organizing illegal activities, namely “raids” on other websites that can result in serious damage. c) Mass spam, especially spam that is meant to propagate scripts that are used for further spamming. d) Topicality rules. This only applies to some of the boards.
Moderation is most reliable for (a). 4chan is hardly a well-tended garden, let alone a “thoughtfully organized” one. Moderation is often capricious as well, with certain memes being unofficially targeted every once in a while (furries, Boxxy, etc.) It’s hard to really find an apt term or even a metaphor to properly summarize 4chan’s governing ethos… some kind of chaotic swarm or something, perhaps.
Also, it’s important to note the difference between 4chan as a whole, which is indeed an erratically-tended garden of sorts, and the “random” sub-board, which is a seething cesspit of trolling and memes, with occasional flashes of socially-uninhibited lucidity, and indeed has anarchy levels that are (as they say) over 9000.