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A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

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Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#21

Post by ivarious »

mafribe wrote: post #17
dogma1138 wrote: post #14

"9. RARE PEPES In this Section we display some of our rare Pepe collection." Things that you have never thought would appear on a bonafide research paper for 800$. EDIT: 4Chan thread regarding this paper, this is worth the read on it's own. http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/92612923/a-longitudinal-m...

This sentence -- not to mention the rare pepe collection at the end -- made me pause a bit and wonder if the paper isn't a particularly elaborate chan troll. Clearly "rare pepe" is a chan in-joke.

Not to mention the rickroll in page 2.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#22

Post by JD557 »

hex12648430 wrote: post #12

If you are a researcher looking for a 4chan dataset spanning a much longer time period and many different boards, I would recommend looking into the archive.moe database dump[0] that was uploaded to the Internet Archive after the owner decided to stop his activities. [0]: https://archive.org/download/archive-moe-database-201506

I was recently working on a project to identify pepes in images and dumped a bunch of images from the /r9k/ archive using the 4chan API.

If you are a researcher looking for a 4chan dataset for supervised learning, be aware that labeling the images is not a task for the faint of heart.

When you browse an image board, you will have an implicit image filter: you will probably only open threads that interest you and that have been alive for a while. That does not hold for an image dump of all threads.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#23

Post by hacker42 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #14

"9. RARE PEPES In this Section we display some of our rare Pepe collection." Things that you have never thought would appear on a bonafide research paper for 800$. EDIT: 4Chan thread regarding this paper, this is worth the read on it's own. http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/92612923/a-longitudinal-m...

Remember that arXiv is just pre-print and the last page if not the entire paper is probably nothing more than a lame/distasteful joke. Remember that any nutbag who knows a little English and LaTeX can publish on arXiv. It will likely not make it into a journal.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#24

Post by dogma1138 »

hacker42 wrote: post #23
dogma1138 wrote: post #14

"9. RARE PEPES In this Section we display some of our rare Pepe collection." Things that you have never thought would appear on a bonafide research paper for 800$. EDIT: 4Chan thread regarding this paper, this is worth the read on it's own. http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/92612923/a-longitudinal-m...

Remember that arXiv is just pre-print and the last page if not the entire paper is probably nothing more than a lame/distasteful joke. Remember that any nutbag who knows a little English and LaTeX can publish on arXiv. It will likely not make it into a journal.

Not sure, I think it will make it in, also the response from 4chan was pretty funny via one of the authors. https://twitter.com/jhblackb/status/786301793064017920

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#25

Post by egjerlow »

trevelyan wrote: post #8

How does it take eight people to write this paper?

From my experiences in astrophysics: Second author is supervisor, third, fourth, etc. are previous collaborators of supervisor that somehow have some 'moral' claim to supervisor's work because it remotely thematically touches upon previous work they did, and thus have provided 'inspiration' for the current work. It's a racket ;)

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#26

Post by EJTH »

To be fair, /pol/ is one of the best places to get happening news (Information about terror attacks that would otherwise be censored by mass media, information from the Syria conflict etc)

There is a lot of shilling and a lot of trolling... It seems to me that /pol/ posts has become >50% shitposting from trolls and shills and less political discussion.

The real influx of users into pol started with the european refugee crisis, not the presidential elections.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#28

Post by loeber »

dogma1138 wrote: post #14

"9. RARE PEPES In this Section we display some of our rare Pepe collection." Things that you have never thought would appear on a bonafide research paper for 800$. EDIT: 4Chan thread regarding this paper, this is worth the read on it's own. http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/92612923/a-longitudinal-m...

The best is Footnote 2: "For readers unfamiliar with memes, we suggest a review of the documentary available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ ."

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#29

Post by ivarious »

It's rather disappointing that the authors didn't talk about the biggest thing that has reshaped discussion in 4chan since years.

The reply indicator.

For people who don't go to 4chan, you can read it on http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-here-s-your-you. Basically, if someone else replied to your post, the post pointer will show a (You) word, showing that the poster replied to a post that you wrote.

Moreover, the post number of posts that replied/quoted you will be attached to your own posts. Much-replied post will have a lot of link to the posts that replied them, and very visible when you skip through the thread.

This one simple feature has changed 4chan. Before, posts are similar and anonymous since they don't have visual distinction between each other. You have to actually read their content to know what's inside. The reply indicator make controversial posts very visible and "famous" in the thread.

Much like Reddit's voting system and Facebook likes or Twitter's retweets/favorites, 4chan now has its own post rating system. The difference is that Facebook likes and Reddit's vote system rewards popular posts that people agree with and liked. 4chan's "rating system" rewards controversial posts that people rebuke or laugh at.

The presence of this reply indicator make people try to post controversial contents, and to be controversial by 4chan standards, your post have to be very, very controversial.

Re: A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

#30

Post by wnkrshm »

hacker42 wrote: post #23
dogma1138 wrote: post #14

"9. RARE PEPES In this Section we display some of our rare Pepe collection." Things that you have never thought would appear on a bonafide research paper for 800$. EDIT: 4Chan thread regarding this paper, this is worth the read on it's own. http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/92612923/a-longitudinal-m...

Remember that arXiv is just pre-print and the last page if not the entire paper is probably nothing more than a lame/distasteful joke. Remember that any nutbag who knows a little English and LaTeX can publish on arXiv. It will likely not make it into a journal.

It is not entirely a free-for all (as in, anyone can submit papers), there is an endorsement system [1]. Of course, it's only networking and who-knows-who - but there is controversy, as in established contributors think that the endorsement system is too high a barrier.

[1] https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

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