It's a start.
Ponychan
History
Ponychan was founded on February 8, 2011, as a refuge for My Little Pony fans who were banned from 4chan's /b/ board during what became known as the First Great Pony Purge. Created by Orange Blaze, Ponychan sought to establish a community distinct from 4chan, enforcing a culture of "love and tolerance." Over time, the site experienced various internal conflicts, leading to staff and user departures. Notably, in 2015, Ponychan merged with MLPchan, incorporating aspects of both sites and revitalizing the community for a time.
Decline and Shutdown (2020-2024)
Following the merger, the site saw various leadership changes. Administrators came and went, each leaving their mark on the culture and structure of Ponychan. Despite multiple shifts in administration, interest in imageboards waned as users migrated to other platforms such as Discord.
Under the administration of Toybox, which began around 2020, Ponychan experienced a profound cultural shift. The administration's approach to moderation increasingly emphasized personal loyalty over adherence to the site's founding principles. This led to widespread accusations of favoritism, selective enforcement of rules, and a general decline in transparency. Additionally, much of the site’s active user base was funneled into a private Discord server, further diminishing engagement on the imageboard itself.
Toybox's tenure also saw an erosion of the site's historically open and community-driven ethos. Decisions were made unilaterally, and attempts to solicit feedback from users were largely ignored. This disregard culminated in the controversial decision to shut down Ponychan permanently. Unlike previous administrative transitions, no effort was made to pass the site to capable successors or engage with the community about its future.
On December 8, 2023, an abrupt announcement declared that the site would close in one month. The stated reasons for this decision were widely disputed, with many users viewing it as a betrayal of the community's trust. A press release was sent to Equestria Daily marking what was declared the official end of Ponychan, and the administration refused to make an archive of the site publicly available, erasing years of history.
Successor Sites
Following the announcement of Ponychan’s closure, community members began organizing efforts to preserve the imageboard format. Initially exploring other platforms, users discovered the open-source Ponychan repositories and sought to establish successor sites.
On December 20, 2023, user ⛵ announced the creation of Not Ponychan, hosted at www.notponychan.net. This site faced substantial technical difficulties at launch. Shortly thereafter, on December 25, 2023, an anonymous user launched a separate instance using the same repositories under the domain www.ponychan.org, which managed to avoid many of the technical issues of its predecessor.
The existence of multiple successor sites led to confusion within the community. The former Ponychan administration, while not acknowledging these efforts in official statements, declared that any sites other than www.ponychan.net were unofficial. Additionally, a separate alternative pony imageboard was promoted by the previous administration, further fragmenting the remaining user base.
Eventually, notponychan.net rebranded and moved to the domain ponychan.co. Once the major technical difficulties were resolved, ponychan.org shut down and redirected to ponychan.co, consolidating much of the remaining userbase under one platform.
This is also why you fucked me by moving Story to ponyville, which damn sure didn't need yet another serial thread. Because it was the one and only thing that could have been said to demonstrate the legitimacy of this site. Because Story was always on Ponychan, even when it was just you and me on there. You could have moved it to Ponyville at any time during the past decade, but you didn't. And so you waited until Ponychan shut down, when my shit was barely working, when I needed literally anything to prove the legitimacy of this site, to kick me in the teeth. Hope it was worth it. /rant