Sage Freehaven on fChan

Sage Freehaven, former fChan admin, kindly offered to answer our questions, and here are the results.

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Q: Was fChan so - for lack of a better word - faggoty when you ran it?

A: Well, as best I can judge, no. I wouldn’t really know how to answer this question, but from all the tales I’ve heard from IRC buddies and from peoples on other imageboards, fChan was so much better back when I ran it.

Q: Were things so - for lack of a better word - restrictive back then?

Not as much as they are now, from what I’ve heard. (Keeping with my obnoxious honest streak, I’ve visited fChan maybe three times since I left it behind – Nadia changed it so drastically in terms of function that I can barely recognize it.) With the still-riding exceptions of non-furry art and DNP stuff, you could post pretty much anything you wanted under my reign. I should know – I posted pics on a regular basis even after I became moderator!

Q: Was the DNP so flipping huge back then?

HELL NO. Back when I first discovered fChan (January 2005, approximately a month or so after the site first came up – if I recall right ), the DNP list numbered into the single digits, and there were NO websites listed among the names. (One of the names on the list, however, WAS Jeremy Bernal, so I never had to deal with Mr. Sexyfur at all during my time as fChan mod.) Only after the site started getting a large amount of traffic – mostly due to 4chan /b/tards pointing people there on Fridays; I still love ya, moot! – did more people ask to put their names on the DNP. Some artists were relatively congenial about the whole situation; some were fucking pissed off. No matter the tone of their request, I honored it immediately and even asked them to post their own art themselves were they so inclined (as some artists were already doing, like Wookiee).

For the record, I never liked the DNP. I don’t support the idea of a DNP. Were I to have ever regained control of fChan, I would have probably done away with the DNP for good. But seeing as it wasn’t my idea and was built into fChan from the beginning, I did my duty and enforced it.

Q: I’d like to know how fchan came about in the first place? Were you involved from the start? If so, what were the ideas (and ideals, if any) that caused anyone make the site? What’s the economics of it (by which I mean, did you pay out of your own pocket for the dubious pleasure of providing people with free furry porn, or does fchan generate an income)?

fChan came about thanks to a fur named “Dr. Pon"; he started it up as a replacement to the furry board that was lost when 5chan died. I was not involved in any way, shape, or form with the creation of fChan. I did not create the DNP, nor set any of the initial rules that governed fChan from the start. As for the economics of fChan, you’d have to ask the owner of hentaiplanet.net, and the server what hosts fChan on that domain (last I know, he went by “Tenchi” in fChan’s IRC channel).

I came into running fChan simply by chance – Dr. Pon was virtually invisible most of the time, and people called for a new mod to help Pon run things. I raised my hand, people agreed, and Pon handed me the controls.

Q: How many boards on F-chan were there when if first started? What were they?

The two main text-based boards (Discussion and Requests) were around since the beginning; the imageboards on the site at the time I found it (which was a month after it started) were /male/, /female/, /straight/, /alt/, and /clean/.

Q: Did any of the fetishes (or deviancies) weird you out to the point of deletion?

I tended not to dwell in /alt/ when I didn’t have to. Beyond that, I just used Firefox’s Adblock extension to block out anything that really creeped me the fuck out (gore/guro, oviposition, watersports/scat). I feel that were I to delete something I found offensive, but others did not, would be shortchanging the artists and the site’s visitors somehow. Call me a supporter for artistic integrity and expression. *shrugs*

Q: What was your favorite board off there?

If I *had* to pick one, it’d be /female/. While I am both bi and a fan of herms (and /herm/ was my creation, dammit!), I just love females that much more. =3

Q: What’s with the “129282028432_” crap added to ‘Anubisorgy.jpg’? Is there any pattern or logic there or is it just random jibberish?

Insomuch as I know, it’s a system used to renumerate files like other imageboards do. After Xenofur came on board to help with fChan technical issues, he found a way to attatch the original filename to the end of the new numerical filename.

Q: Why are you all sages? Did you get that title by dancing naked round Stonehenge?

WAY back in 2000, I came up with my furry persona while sketching offhandedly. The name Sage I had already picked out (you can blame the anime “Ronin Warriors” for that), but Freehaven came to me out of nowhere; I liked it, and have been using it ever since.

Nadia, on the other hand, thought (like some of you probably have) that “Sage” was a title, and decided to add it to her name to keep with the “Sages” theme. Go figure. >_>

Q: How did Nadia end up gaining control of the board?

As some of you may know, in June of last year I lost home Internet access because I had to move out of my house (and that was for personal reasons which I’ve gone into in the past, but would prefer not to discuss here – e-mail me if you’re really THAT interested). The preceding month, I made a call for other moderators to take my place while I waited to try and get home Internet access back. (Anf for the record, Xenofur, who had helped reset fChan and improve it after one of the Big Server Crashes, was already a moderator when I made this request.) Sage Nadia, along with two others, ended up answering my request. Seeing how efficiently (for lack of a better word) Nadia ran the board and kept drama/bitchiness to a minimum, I named her head moderator; a few months down the line, it was apparent I would not get home access back anytime soon – and if I did, it would require a job that would severly limit the time I could spend watching fChan. Thus, I gave Nadia full control and ownership of fChan.

Q: What is Nadia like in real life?

Wouldn’t know. To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve never even MET another furry outside of the ‘Net.

Q: What the fuck is wrong with Nadia?

That…is something I’m not qualified to answer. I try not to think too hard about what drives psychopaths to do those things they do.

Q: Is she The One?

Depends on what you mean by The One. The One to Save Us All? Hell no. The One True Antichrist? …that’s a matter of opinion.

Again, if you have questions, ask Mitch (he’ll get them to me) or e-mail me directly – sagefreehaven@gmail.com