The idea of managing your own anonymous community has some appeal for people who think a rowdy group of strangers are their friends, but it's actually a bad investment¹⁾ with many downsides. This article will primarily serve as a list of things to ponder, from a former board owner.

• Don't give yourself an identity. There's just something cathartic about the community naming you, rather than you naming yourself. If you're forced to adopt a name, be generic or thematic.
  • Don't be too flashy. If the community emphasizes anonymity, you aren't supposed to stand out in the first place! Even if you're not trying to, you'll always come off as flashy with the name on.
  • You'll need thick skin. Anonymity can bring out the worst in people, so don't take these things too personally. This is another reason why you should avoid any 'self insert' names.
• If you want a large community, you need other moderators. If you have no connections, this will be tough. You don't want to be the only moderator going insane by patrolling your own creation.
• You need a place for staff communications. There will inevitably be some IRC channel, a private board,²⁾ a Skype group, a Discord guild,³⁾ and so forth. I will expand on this in Part 4.

• You probably won't be the next 2channel/4chan/8chan/etc. You're trying to catch 'lightning in a bottle', but you simply can't force this using methods like sabotage, spam, and paid drones.
• Don't open a plethora of boards. You will spread your community thin, newer visitors will get lost because you've given them too many options, and most of your boards will look dead.
• Start off small and build upwards from there. The community is stronger when consolidated, plus you'd have to gauge your community to see if they'd even approve of certain ideas anyways.
• Don't stay on a single board for too long. The positive of consolidating activity has this negative where community subversion is easier.⁴⁾ Also, idiots rarely flock to lesser used boards.

• Establish rules and enforce them. Nobody likes them, but you need to have solid rules if you ever think your community will get big, and there needs to be some level of enforcement.
  • Determine protocol for proxies, VPNs, and Tor exit nodes. There's a lot of weird pests with too much spare time who will ruin the fun. Most outright ban, others temporarily disable.
  • Ban evasions are a pain to enforce. Special pests might try to manipulate discussions to make you look trigger happy, so consider showing that a proxy, VPN, or Tor was used.
  • Are you frustrated yet? It begins to dawn on you that solutions exist (e.g. registration system,⁵⁾ email verification,⁶⁾ paywall, etc.), but you'd have to accept that anonymity sucks, doesn't it?
• Going behind the scenes ruins the mystique. Once you see who posts what, the whole mystery behind anonymous communities vanishes as “it was user-facing anonymity all along!” 😱
  • Avoid leaking post histories. Unless it's huge and scandalous or weird, this should only be a last resort (unless requested) as it just decreases trust and won't be this magical 'fuck off' spell.
  • Taking notes on users is fine. Some boards lets you attach notes to IPs and post histories for a reason. If you're using one that doesn't, consider a word-replacing extension.⁷⁾
  • You don't need to be in moderator mode all the time. Some moderators leak the fact that they are a moderator in their posts.⁸⁾ Admittedly, mods can be fun to bully from the other end.
• Keep an eye on the old and the new. While fresh blood livens things up, don't completely overlook the possibility that ulterior motives could be in play when the new subjugates the old.

• There will be a meta chatroom. Appearances are deceptive. Above the surface-level discussions, there might be a secret chatroom you've never heard of, so try to be ahead of the curve.
  • Benefits of an official chatroom. While it draws attention away, it also gives meta a proper place to go, shows you how to conduct yourself, and warfare becomes hilariously more transparent.
• Splinter communities and dissent? Shit happens. You just have to play your cards right. If you're lucky, nobody cares and won't budge. If you're unlucky, welcome to the numbers game.⁹⁾
  • Reunification isn't always the best option. At the heat of the moment, you might feel inclined to patch things up quickly. However, just like real life, reunification isn't always the best option.
• Alliance? Coalition? Federation? Confederation? Webring? If you can afford to blow money on an independent website, you might be interested in these. Obviously, I never got here.
• Never clean house for a loyal triumvirate. If your community is sizable, this royal fuck up can leave your moderators overloaded. Some examples of this include late 55chan and Bunkerchan.

1. Transfer leadership. The rational, yet boring option. You'll probably have to sort out a ton of things behind the scenes to avoid getting bit in the ass for something you want out of your control.
2. Shut it down and announce a successor. A development where you manually guide or redirect the community to a specific refuge. Hopefully, you didn't burn too many bridges, right?
3. Shut it down and don't announce a successor. You announce the shutdown, but instead, you let the community decide where they go. You can't really back out after some time has passed!
   1. Do nothing. Will they scramble or congregate? Will it just die? Will some random teenager attempt to revive it in a few years or decades? Will you make a comeback? Who knows!
   2. Make the community-chosen successor official. What are you? Some kind of politician? This would please some people, but why go through the effort of sticking around to do this?
   3. Announce an unexpected successor at the last possible minute, despite the fact that the community had already picked its successor. Late 55chan was a huge mess.
4. Don't care and just nuke it all. The fun option! There was never any form of culture or life here, so slap on a robots.txt file to kill the Wayback Archive.¹⁰⁾ Effectively, this is a spicier Option 3a.
5. Allow it to get knocked offline and never pick it back up. After a website gets hacked, raided, or wiped, you could bring it back, restore a backup, or just let it unceremoniously die.

　　　　　　　　 　 　 (⌒;,ノ;
　　　　∧,,∧ 　　 :('　;ｿ.　　I just want
　　　 .( ´･ω･)　＜二：彡　to grill for
　　　　( つ旦O　〔￣￣〕 　God's sake.
　　　　と＿)_) 　　|_━_|
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