Megachan.net Imageboards

Over the months I’ve received emails asking for specific boards to be added, as well as emails and board posts complaining about the lack of posting. I’d like to address both at the same time while giving some traffic stats

First off, I’m amazed that Megachan has come as far as it has in nearly a year (it was started at the end of January). I’m cynical and generally pessimistic and thus didn’t really expect this site to get as far as it has in such short a space of time.

When I started this site, my aim was to have mainly ‘niche’ boards or uncommon boards, as well as some generic/general boards for good measure (with the niche/uncommon boards always outnumbering the others). The first full month of traffic (February) saw approximately 1282 unique visitors using 1.25 GB traffic. This has pretty much grown every month with the total for November being 9171 UVs using 17.35 gigs of bandwidth. Thats a UV increase of over 700%, with a bandwidth consumption increase of over 1300%! Looking at those stats you’d think the boards would be buzzing with posts. Except they’re actually rather quiet, and some as quiet as a graveyard. This sort of trend is common amongst all chan sites, where the vast majority of users are normally lurkers. Think about how much traffic 4chan gets to consume 18TB of bandwidth and compare that with the activity on the boards. Yeah, they’re updated frequently, but not as frequently as they would be if the majority of the userbase posted on a regular basis.

Still, I’ve happy with how things have come along, and am also happy that not all of Megachan’s traffic comes from chan-related sites like Overchan. I mean, Underboobery and her delicious underboobs sent me a fair amount of traffic (well, her old blog does at least) and the CyberPunkReview forums send me traffic as well. This all means that Megachan is reaching a slighter wider audience, which I find pleasing (although it’s more of a matter of how much of that traffic stays, but anyway…)

Now, how does this relate to the boards? Well, while I’ve always felt that the quality of the posts is more important that the quantity, I do like to see a certain amount of activity, and I’m not alone (judging by the emails that weren’t drug and porn spam). Well, for those of you who complained, the unfortunate reality is that the boards are only as active as the people frequenting them make them (ie, if no one fucking posts…. :< ), and niche boards will generally get a smaller amount of posts (ironically enough, MC's niche boards have higher posting rates than the general ones...)

Some of the suggestions for new boards are the following:

Safe For Work:
Warhammer 40K
Design (dealing with designing stuff, like toasters or treehouses or guitar-driven vibrators. Oh wait…)

Not Safe For Work:
Hentai (I suppose then I could combine it with the Ecchi board to make something like 7chan’s /h/ as opposed to 4chan’s separate /e/ and /h/ boards…)
Fetish
General Porn

To be honest, I’m hesitant to add any new boards, as I don’t know what the response will be like. I’d rather deal with the existing quite boards than adding more. So, lets first look at the 3 most quiet boards:

• /a/ - Anime/Manga
• /m/ - Mecha
• /sp/ - Space

Solution 1: Leave them be
This is by far the simplest option, as I don’t have to do anything, lol. Seriously though, the problem with this solution is that it isn’t really one, and kinda implies the hope that the board picks up.

Solution 2: Delete them
The simplest ‘proper’ solution - with no board, there can be no bitching about lack of posts. Problem with this is that one loses the content which would suck, and it’s the cheap way out

Solution 3: Merge the boards
Heh. This I’d love to do - content is kept and (theoretically at least) there should be increased posting as the board traffic will be combined. However, this option is also a real pain to do. Kusaba, the imageboard script running MC’s boards, only has the option to move specific threads from one textboard to another, and I’m not surprised - merging two boards together is rather complicated because you’ll have to prevent duplicate threads and make internal anchors (like quotes) match up.

Solution 4: Get more posts
A blindly obvious solution, but the heart of the problem. How to get more people to post more often. Combining the problem boards is one theoretical way, but not a certainty as there’s no guarantee that the combined traffic will result in increased posting. Promoting the boards on other sites is a possible way, but the aim is increased posting rates, not increased traffic, although increased traffic that results in increased posting is, of course, naturally desired

What do you guys think? I’m typing this in the early hours of the morning, so I’ve probably missed some other possible solutions…