Citing overcrowding caused by the addition of close to 20 million users in five years, 4chan announced that they’ll be updating some of the rules around posting and membership for the first time in quite a while.

Rules around anonymous online conversation are not a simple architecture, however. Matt Buchanan recalled for us recently the spectacular decline of Digg after a redesign that caused users to turn on each other, and eventually, the system.

In seeking to avoid a similar demise while also reining in perceived declining quality of conversation, 4chan founder Christopher Poole writes that anonymity, and how to use it, is a central concern.

4chan’s gift of anonymity offers us something not often found on today’s Web—the opportunity to speak our mind and share ideas and be judged for the content of what we write rather than who we are. For a long time, this resulted in an environment unlike any other, one that fostered and rewarded creativity and experimentation. However these days, many posters use this precious gift as a license to say and do whatever they’d like, often to the detriment of the board. Using 4chan should be enjoyable—but your enjoyment of the site shouldn’t come at the expense of your fellow 4channers.

Poole goes on to detail changes to content discovery, including infinite scroll, cataloging and search, as well as new rules for moderation and other site specifics.