Ahh, you know you suck when you register only to post a reply to a thread without any intentions to frequent.
By the way, as an fan and reader of Ghastly's and a relatively frequent visitor to 4chan, this thread is pure awesome.
And another btw: "zomg" on 4chan is no longer is filtered as that. It was filtered as "zoomj", then "zounds". Now it isn't filtered at all. "Loli" isn't filtered as "duck" either, nor "emo" as "bosnian" any more. And so on.
http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan
The essay about why 2ch-type discussion boards are "better".
Essentially, 2ch type boards encourages focus on the topic, to the point where the individual poster does not matter, only the quality of what he/she/sie/it contributes with. Also, the boards on 2ch are mostly not moderated, to my knowledge. At more serious discussion threads trolls are dealt with by simply blatantly ignoring them (attention whores without attention die from lack of nutrition), and people who respond to trolls are deemed as bad as the trolls themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2channel#Anonymous_posting
The above link has a piece from an interview with the founder of 2ch, him explaining "why Anonymous posting".
(random comment: I recommend people having a look at the series Densha Otoko, Densha's one big annoying crybaby, but the other posters and the series is damned funny and made out of キタ and good. The movie is okay and more true to what's revealed in the original thread, but i'm too much into serious humour - i by far prefer the series)
SAGE = short for Sageru if I'm not mistaken, which is what is placed in email fields for posts in threads users seek to remove from the board."
The above is true at 4chan, yet not what the real intended usage for sage is.
Threads expire, posting a reply normally to a thread will bump the thread higher up in the page.
Posting sage in the email field of your reply makes the reply not bump the thread higher up on the page than what it already is.
The point of this?
2ch type boards are subject-centric. If you do not have anything of value to add to a thread, but want to reply anyway, you can sage your reply. This so that other people won't have to have to scroll through a thread on the top of the page that has nothing important added to it.
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2channel#Anonymous_posting :
"Sage (pronounced "sah-geh") - from Japanese sageru (下げる "to lower"), refers to replying to a post using the word "sage" in the email field in order to increase the number of replies without age-ing the post. This can be used as a courtesy, allowing one to quietly add comments that may not be interesting enough to warrant pushing the thread to the top. It can also be used as a way to show displeasure with the post being replied to.