Ychan

Ychan was a furry image board that registered users and anonymous visitors could post to.


 * Address: https://ychan.net/
 * Administration: Bad Karma Networks
 * Ran from/to: March 3, 2008 - May 14, 2014

Features
Ychan featured search capabilities, image tagging, a bookmarking system called Favourites, and support for standard BBCode in posts. Ychan was a project of Yiffy International, and as such enjoyed many integrated features, including a private messaging system and distinct user profiles.

Ychan supported image (GIF, JPEG and PNG), Flash (SWF only) and video (MPEG, AVI, WMV and MOV) upload filetypes.

Tags and searching
Videos and Images on Ychan were taggable. Tags were keywords that went beyond the normal role of assisting searches and facilitated linking to and even suggesting related material. A traditional search interface and tag cloud were provided to cater to spelunkers and casual browsers alike.

Duplicate image detection
While most image boards traditionally served as temporary dumping grounds, Ychan aimed to be an efficient, highly categorized and diverse archive. As such, threads and posts are not phased out or 'pruned' (deleted) and techniques such as duplicate image detection were employed to reduce repeat posts and promote older threads.

Special boards
Ychan had two "special" boards, /ot/ and /rl/ which were for Off Topic and Real Life content respectively. Images and videos not pertaining to furry were allowed in the Off Topic board while the Real Life board was specifically for content deemed "reasonably furry." The criterion was that a photo or video contain one or more of the following:


 * fursuiting
 * plushie
 * ears/tails/other accessories
 * bodypaint
 * 'Zeta' toys
 * other content reasonably relevant to furry

Ban list
Yiffy International and Ychan maintained a common public list of banned addresses and information associated with them which the creator affectionately titled The Shit List. The purpose of this list was to facilitate detection, tracking and geolocation of malicious botnets for education, amusement and the benefit of the forensically inclined web community.

Rumoured legal action against Ychan
Rumours of legal action against Ychan circulated on WikiFur during May-June 2009 were caused by the gross misinterpretation of a statement issued both at Ychan and Yiffy International at that time. The statement outlined the cause of a two-week long period of downtime and the site owner's intent to pursue legal action against the former ISP for their perceived gross negligence.

Closure
On May 14, 2014, the site (along with other sites run by Bad Karma Networks) was replaced with a notice: