E621

e621 is a mature image board replacement for the image board Sidechan. A general audience image board, e926 (formerly e961) complements this site. E621 runs off of the Ouroboros platform, a danbooru-style software specifically designed for the site. It is likely that the site is named for the compound monosodium glutamate, whose E Number is E621.

History

 * September 17, 2007 - The site was closed down, citing on its front-page that claims had been made against the site for hosting child pornography and only the Oekaki board and the IRC channel remained active.
 * November 26, 2007 - e621 became active again, under the banner e621 2.0. It was forced offline for a few days over Christmas 2007 during the same DDoS attack that struck Fur Affinity and Fchan.
 * August 2010 - The website ended its operations briefly due to David Ross (Insane Kangaroo), lodging accusations of child pornography and copyright infringement with the principle hosting company. The site was formally shut down when he threatened Arcturus with deportation. The site returned to normal operation under a new owner on September 8, 2010.
 * August 30, 2010 - The website's main page was replaced with a small note saying that e621 would be permanently shut down due to "numerous threats to our host, false claims of illegal content, harassment and a few things that are much worse." This time, only the IRC channel remained active.
 * August 31, 2010 - It was announced that the site will simply be resuming with a new admin, Varka, after a short downtime. Announced changes to the site include an updated takedown policy to amend some of the issues leading to the threats issued in previous days.
 * September 1, 2010 - A website by the same name has appeared in the guise of Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5, as confusing as this is, both are different only due to the WWW prefix. That, or the old one was absolved by Adobe, while the new one is using the WWW prefix. Anonymous of Jacksonville says e621 simply has a messed up DNS record for the base domain, but the WWW subdomain is still correctly configured. Either the record's TTL hasn't yet expired (in the case of hacking or hostile takeover, this is a good thing) or someone somewhere has made a silly mistake. (When the site is typed in with, and without WWW it goes to Varka's page, the site itself depending how you reach it will send you to either by a 50/50 chance, it's easier to just put in WWW with it.) (needs update).
 * September 8, 2010 - The website was passed from Arcturus to Varka. Varka has implemented a newer, more artist-friendly takedown policy. There will also be more artist involvement that includes obtaining prints from Inkbunny and going to the artist's chosen website for commissions.
 * January 18, 2012 - e621 joined many other sites in protesting the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), by taking down its page and replacing it with the page that stated for others to write to their congressmen, being entirely generated by user content, e621 was a high risk target under the SOPA legislation, and took the site down with others for the protest.
 * February 2014 - The site hosts over four hundred thousand active posts ranging from non-sexual images to extreme fetishes, with more than sixty-thousand users.
 * August 18, 2014 - The site hosts over 450,000 active posts with over 140,000 users.
 * April 28, 2017 - The site hosts over 1,000,000 active posts with almost 250,000 users.
 * October 24, 2019 - Admin and lead programmer KiraNoot announces a new version of e621 that has been in the works for months and a beta version of the new site is available to use for stress testing. The new version uses a more modern platform modeled after the current version of Danbooru.
 * February 12, 2020 - Lead admin NotMeNotYou announces that the new version of e621 is nearing completion. The new version would include a new "Lore" tag category (which includes "canonical" gender identities) and the ability to search up to 40 tags at once.
 * March 5, 2020 - The new version of e621 leaves beta and replaces the old site.

Policies and content
e621 makes use of a DNP list, and takedown requests are honored when following the guidelines of the Takedown page (https://e621.net/static/takedown). Images that are removed are also blacklisted to prevent posting.

Registration requests for inclusion on the site by artists and users might or might not be moderated by e621's staff, depending on the amount of spammers or trolls they are being hit with.

Uploading of photographic child pornography or bestiality media is not permitted, and uploading of images from pay-sites is discouraged, with the exception of a few images (usually for publicity purposes).

Additionally, any post could be deleted without notice if they fail to meet a standard of quality as determined by the moderators (poorly drawn or badly compressed art), though this is uncommon.

Regarding post tagging, the site uses a "tag-what-you-see" (TWYS) tagging system where posts are tagged based on what is visible in the images and animations. (https://e621.net/wiki/show/twys) Although this system is seen as highly effective for searching and blacklisting, it has caused several conflicts between the site's administration and a number of its user base and various posts' artists, primarily regarding the tagging of genders. The site features a page on its wiki specifying how they tag genders. (https://e621.net/wiki/show/howto:tag_genders) Despite said page featuring a disclaimer stating that the site's gender tagging system is only for the purposes of searches and blacklists, "Not and Never for describing the character" (i.e. not as a personal labeling system), this policy has nevertheless led to a number of artists requesting DNP status solely out of a refusal to accept the site's tagging policies. Eventually, it was announced on February 12, 2020 that the new version of the site would include the introduction of a new "lore" tags category to complement the TWYS system, including canonical (i.e. by what the artist or copyright owner says) gender identity tags. However, "Lore" tags will be a locked tag category; only administrators would be able to add tags to the "lore" category after they sanction them first. Nevertheless, the site's TWYS, gender tagging, and "minimum quality standards" policies have led to continued criticism among several artists and members of the site (former and current).

On June 22, 2019, after having received several complaints about the vulgar terms "dickgirl" and "cuntboy" as gender tags over time, head admin NotMeNotYou announced that the tags would be aliased to less vulgar terms "gynomorph" and "andromorph". Other tags that incorporate the two vulgar terms would also be aliased to use the less vulgar terms.

Mascot
e621 has two mascots, both of them being feline characters; Hexerade and Esix.

Controversy
Early in 2010, the owners of e621 were looking for a mascot to adorn the site. After asking the site's users to come up with their own ideas, a poll was opened to decide on which character should be selected. However, a few weeks afterward the poll was closed prematurely as it came to light that one of the contestants had been rigging the contest by signing up many alts through proxies to vote his mascot up.

In response to this, the administrators announced that they would select a mascot among themselves. After deliberation, they selected a five character mascot team from the leaders of the poll, featuring characters by Mellis, Chizi, Keishinkae, Darkdoomer and Manafox.

e961/e926
In July 2009, a work-safe counterpart, e961.net, was brought online. The site was named after the E number of the then-new artificial sweetener, Neotame. Unfortunately, in November 2009 it was aliased to the original site due to traffic issues caused by the popularity of e621. However, users who want to view only safe for work content can use the "rating:safe" tag to exclude all mature content from e621, except banner adverts which will still include adult content. Images can also be filtered by placing ratings (i.e., rating:explicit) on the tag blacklist.

In November 2012, e961 was rebuilt as e926, a joke for it being a 'bleached' version of the site, was reinstated along with updates to the main site. It displays content from e621 that strictly has a safe rating. The site's login system shares e621's login database, but requires separate login, as it most likely has its own cookies. Notably, it also has its own "safe for work" advertising.