There are countless legal provisions and protections for online service providers, intended for preserving the health and intellectual prosperity of an open Internet. One of these is the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, which is a widely-recognized, well-established mechanism to allow Internet web sites to host user-generated content, while preserving the rights of copyright holders. Under subsection (c) of 17 U.S.C. § 512, Ponychan (the Service) is protected from the actions of its users under the colloquially-known Safe Harbor provision for online service providers (OSPs). However, we still make every effort to ensure the legal integrity of our Service, as well as respect the rights of all copyright holders. If you believe that your copyright has been violated, please send a Notification of Claimed Infringement (informally, a DMCA takedown notice), containing the information enumerated in 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A), to [email protected], to ensure a timely response. If all information contained therein is deemed legitimate and complete and the notice is believed to be in good faith, then within 72 hours either the content will be removed, or we will reply with a Counter Notification (informally, a DMCA counter-claim) as described in 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(2)(B).
When your computer connects to a website, it sends technical information about itself, such as its IP address and user-agent string, so the server knows where and how to send the response. This information is analogous to the return address on an envelope. When a post is submitted, this site stores that information in an anonymous fashion, to assist the moderators in keeping the site clean, and to track abuses of our software. This information is not shared or sold, and this site does not have third-party advertising.
There are blue ? buttons near some of the fields of the post form. Remember you can click on them to get some basic help.
And now a typical post form. Later on I will focus on particular fields of this form. Remember that you don't actually have to fill out any of them except for the message or file fields (or both, particularily when creating a new thread).
There are more fields possible, but they're typically board specific and will not be covered.
And after that, there's the actual file and/or the message.
As you might have noticed, this site allows for posting without registering or anything like that - just write your message, click "reply" and it will appear, credited to "Anonymous" (or whatever the default name on your current board is). This kind of anonymous posting is pretty much the default mode of posting on chan boards, but ponychan spefically has an extremely large percentage of people who post with names. It's easy to give yourself a name, just put it in the "Name" field in your post and it will stay there until you change it to something else, but how do you then protect yourself from other people impersonating you through the magic of ctrl+c/ctrl+v? This is where the tripcodes come in.
A tripcode is a non-bolded series of symbols starting with a '!' that follow the username. It's generated using a password as a base, which is then evaluated by an algorithm and transformed into this series of symbols and appended to the name. Since the user never actually touches the tripcode, only feeds the password into the algorithm, the only real way to have a post with the same tripcode is to feed it the same password, which is kept secret from everypony else. And thus you can prove your identity by proving that you know this password. And it can't be faked by copypasting the evaluated tripcode into the "Name" field either, as then either a new tripcode would get evaluated using the pasted one as the secret password (as it would have to include a '!') or if somehow that reevaluation were to be avoided, the tripcode part would get bolded with the rest of the name.
To use a tripcode instead of just writing your name in the "Name" field, write your_name#your_code - the #your_code part will be automatically replaced by !tripcode. Instead of '#' you can also use a '!' for the same results.
The standard tripcodes are gibberish, but you might have noticed that not all of them are like that. Some have words in them, or actually look like a part of the name of the user or things like that. These are called custom tripcodes, and they work exactly the same as regular tripcodes. Typically to get a custom tripcode one simply checks millions (per second) possible passwords and the tripcodes they yield, and chooses one out of those. One of the ways to do that is to use a program like Tripcode Explorer:
Basically, to use it, write the possible words you're interested in and press the green symbol to run it. The program will then start testing different passwords at random and report back with an ever increasing list of passwords that contain the words you're looking for as a substring. Since this search is random, the length matters a lot - a single additional character in a word will make it many, MANY times less likely that any given tripcode will contain the desired substring. 6 characters or less should be pretty quick, 7 characters is as many as you can expect to find given a "reasonable" amount of time, 8 characters is ridiculous-but-still-possible-I-guess, 9 is basically impossible, 10 is a complete joke, and 11 or more is impossible for the simple reason that there are only 10 characters in a tripcode. Remember to set this program to ASCII only in the options. (It's possible to search without this setting, but involves a few extra steps to use your tripcode. Using ASCII makes things much easier.)
A tripcode CAN be cracked. It's very unlikely that anypony would ever bother, but it can be cracked, especially if the secret password is something simple like "banana" or something. If anypony wanted to try to do that, they could use some software similar to Tripcode Explorer to brute-force check many different possibilities (particularily using a dictionary) on their own machine until they finally stumble upon something that generates the same tripcode as yours (it most likely would simply be your password). If you're worried about that possibility use a secure tripcode - instead of name#code, write name##code. Secure tripcodes display with "!!" instead of "!" and are generated using your password and an additional secret component on the server, so brute forcing them on a local machine gets basically impossible. If you do so, it will make it basically impossible for you to have a custom tripcode for obvious reasons, though.
The "Email" field may have been intended by the authors of the board software to be the place where a user could put in their email for easy contact. This is not the only possible use for it, though - another, possibly more crucial use, is the email codes.
There are two of those:
"Autosage" is a term related to "sage". A thread being on autosage means that no replies of any kind will bump it. Going on autosage can be automatic after a thread reaches a certain number of responses. It can also be imposed by a mod by hand - conversely, mods also have the power to remove autosage from a thread, even the automatically imposed kind.
Making a basic post is easy - just choose a picture in the "File" field, write something in the "Message" field, or both, and you're done. Yet, there are still things that are good to know here.
First, there's the reference system:
You don't actually have to type in the post number by hand if you wish to reference it in the same thread. Just click on its number and a reference will be added to your "Message" field. Like I mentioned back in (1), this can be useful when replying to multiple posts at the same time.
If you wish to make a clickable link to another site, just paste the address starting with "http://" and a clickable link will be made out of that automatically.
Example: http://www.equestriadaily.com/
Certain boards on Ponychan have a way of embedding Youtube videos beside your post. While using this system, remember that it's not the entire link that you paste into the box, but the video ID. For instance, if the URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfJR6sAo0CU, all you paste into the box is the LfJR6sAo0CU part of the URL.
Ponychan has an integrated system that allows people to roll dice inside of their posts, like so: d10 = 1
In order to use it, you follow the following template.
[ Then we have the bbcodes. To use these place a [bbcode] before the text, and [/bbcode] right after it. For example, [u]THIS[/u] would get shown as THIS. Multiple codes can be used at the same time: EXAMPLE. There's 5 documented tags, and you can see them all after clicking the ? next to the message field: There are also some codes not documented in the ? section of the post form. The usage of the "File" field is obvious. The interesting part here is the checkboxes. If you select the "spoiler" one for your file, its thumbnail will be replaced with a generic "spoiler" picture, which is useful for when you wish for only the people who click on it to actually see the content. This could be because it contains actual spoilers, or perhaps because you're trying to make a joke that won't work otherwise. BBCODES
TEXT (alternate code: [-])
like
this for
example
FILE CHECKBOXES
The password fields are there to enable you to delete your own posts. When you send a post, Ponychan remembers the password that was used with it - that password can then be used for its deletion. These passwords are not related to tripcodes in any way. When arriving on Ponychan without having a previously used password in your browser's memory, one is automatically generated for you and put into the appropriate fields, so it's possible to take advantage of the post deletion system without ever explicitely selecting a password - though you are free to do so.
To delete a post, select the checkbox near it and press the "Delete" button in the lower right corner of the page. You can select multiple posts at a time for that. If the passwords (the one used to create the posts and the one in the field next to the "Delete" button) match, the posts will get deleted. You can also elect to only delete the pictures appended to the posts - to do this select the "File Only" checkbox.
Deleting the OP deletes the whole thread.
Ponychan has expanded its settings and moved them to an entirely different page as opposed to using the drop down menu it used to have. There's a bit more to look at in there, so this section will help you navigate it and customize your Ponychan experience a bit more easily. (Please note that some features shown in the Settings page are inactive. Those inactive features are not listed here, and will be added once they're implemented.)
General Settings Tab
User Settings Tab
Preferences Tab
Please remember to hit the Save button at the bottom of the page if you make any changes to your settings. Also note that, on some screens, the Save button might be visible, yet not work correctly. If this happens to you, try scrolling down and clicking again before attempting to ask for help. If a monitor is just the right height, then the Save button might be visible but inactive.
PonychanX is an addon built into the site that enables users to have access to many extra features for more efficient browsing and posting. The use of PonychanX is certainly recommended, but it is by no means required. If you wish to toggle PonychanX on or off, you may find it in the General Settings tab on Ponychan's Settings page.
When you turn PonychanX on, the site will undergo a few visual changes, the most noticeable of which will be the condensed version of the Navigation Bar at the top of the page. The links to the different boards will be condensed and will move over to make room for other features, explained in a moment, to fit in the top left corner of the page.
At the top right of the screen, clicking the symbol that has appeared there will open a new drop-down menu. This menu will allow you to access Ponychan's Settings page, the PonychanX Settings Tab, and a small menu to change your Ponychan theme and font. When you click on the PonychanX Settings, you'll be given a window, which will contain the following settings:
VIEW TAB:
Updating:
Images:
Posts:
Title:
Other:
Pagination:
POST:
Submission:
Notifications:
Cycling Names:
FILTER:
Filter:
STYLE:
Spoiler Covers:
Post Header:
Overall Appearance:
And those are all of the features explained on a basic level. The Menu on posts has several extra features not directly connected to the settings page. They are as follows:
And that should pretty much cover it! If you feel like I've left something out in this quick guide, then please contact me! My information is at the bottom of the FAQ page and is on the Contact Us page. If, however, you have any questions, concerns, or issues with Ponychan X, then look through and/or make a post in the Ponychan X /meta/ thread.
Q: I'm still not sure what all the boards are specifically for, can I get more in depth descriptions of them?