The OVERTEXT

The Mona font is recommended to properly browse both this place and most of the textboards linked here. Download it from here.

Originally this was going to be called "The Textboard Index" as there was/is already an OVERTEXT made by Mohey Pori/allchan, though it's terribly out of date. I was a bit apprehensive of the idea of outright stealing overchan's name, but the alternative was using the shitty "Textboard Index" name so I'd rather stay proudly true to my lack of originality. Let's just call this site the Overtext's unofficial successor, because after all that's pretty much what it is.

Another version made by someone else is available at http://txtchan.org. This was originally going to be a more personal kind of thing so I never quite bothered in finishing/publishing it, therefore txtchan gets the privilege of being having been the first textboard overchan revival uploaded online and will also probably be updated more often than this. No e-peen waving going on here, I promise.

What are 2ch-like Textboards?

2ch-like Textboards (Textboards from here on) are a particular format of discussion boards which generally share the same characteristics: They are modeled after, or follow the design paradigm guidelines of 2channel and their mean feature is text-only, fully (but usually optionally) anonymous, free-for-all posting. It's common to have websites serving many different textboards, generally most of them specified to a particular topic, and one "anything goes" board. Some other websites host a single board, either focused or not in a particular area of discussion, oftentimes set up for ad-hoc purposes. Unlike imageboards, threads are not permanently deleted (although they may be closed after a set number of replies), making replying to old posts a usual and sometimes even encouraged practice.

Please do keep in mind that specifying "2ch-like" excludes certain sites which may technically be anonymous textboards (e.g. tinychan) and at the same time includes sites that don't look much like it follows the style of 2ch (e.g. Post Office). Such is life.

Why frames?

Frames, as horrid and outdated as they are, provide a way to navigate between boards of different websites without having to bother with a multitude of new tabs and/or having to navigate in and out the OVERTEXT. Frames are still being used to navigate around in websites hosting many textboards (2channel alone, for example, serves hundreds), and even imageboards such as 4chan (which, granted, ditched frames only relatively recently, but can still be accessed through http://4chan.org/frames) do. So, in a way, using frames in this site is in line with the textboard/imageboard design paradigm.

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How do I browse textboards?

• Hover over a link to read a brief description (assuming I added one in the first place). Website titles point to their respective homepage, and "important" pages related to the site (news, FAQ, rules, whatever) are also added next to it.
• Boards for each website are sorted the same way they show up in the site itself. Categories in [Italicized square brackets] show up when the site didn't specify any category in particular. I shouldn't be explaining this...
• Websites themselves are sorted following a careful criteria of not giving it importance.
• Some websites and boards are color-coded for your browsing pleasure:
  • Yellow - Non-english site or board. It's up to you to figure out which language they use! A yellow site does not necessarily imply that all of its boards are in a non-english language, but rather indicates that the site mainly aims at speakers of a non-english language. Likewise, a yellow board may just mean that its topic (e.g. a language board) implies that non-english posting is common. This is important for a non-english site hosting an "international" board (see BaI's /world"), or an english-speaking site hosting a language-speicific board (e.g. 4-ch's /jap)
  • Dark Red - Some or all boards have posting capabilities disabled and are therefore read-only.
• strikethrough'd links are down for reasons that may or may not be explained in the mouseover text; these links are either there for archival purposes, have a chance of coming back eventually, or because I'm too lazy to update the HTML properly. Most likely I'm too lazy. Boards that do not come back after a sensible period of time are presumed dead for good and moved to The Graveyard. Some of these dead links may now link at a different website, including ones with malicious content. Click carefully!
• Please take a moment of your time to read each board's rules before posting.

Missing/To-do

• List textboard archives with their own submenues and whatnot in order to minimize nested frames.
• Make catalog lists collapsible somehow before it turns into a huge unscrollable mess. With a list reaching a total of 120 (!) boards, this is slowly becoming a necessity. Let me know if you can help me out with this.
• Solve the nested-frames situation when clicking on each site's "main" page. This is easy to fix except things like archives and 2ch navigators which require me to rewrite their respective catalogs.
• Move the list of dead boards to the separate "graveyard page".

Contact

Questions? Suggestions? Hatemail? Want to add your own board or one you found online? Following the ancient tradition of comatose webmasters, you can drop me a line on the OVERTEXT's very own textboard, /meta/.

I am now available through e-mail as well! You can contact me at OVERTEXT@cock.li. My PGP public key, if so needed, is available here.