>>1063
It's hard to know what specific features would make imageboards more attractive to "normies", but an easy first step would be to take the "good" ideas that other websites often implement. Most of these probably wouldn't be appreciated by current users at first, but I think as long as it's implement right, none of them are harmful, even if they're used by websites that are harmful.
>ordinary user accounts
they could be used to save things like watched threads, site settings, multi-boards, which posts were created by you so you can delete them without having to set and remember a deletion password, among other things. it should never be required though. That alone would go a long way towards being more appealing to new users. They might even be good for privacy if they can replace ip addresses for moderation purposes. I imagine that if these were implemented, they could also just be used to manage boards too.
>upvoting (but crucially, NOT downvoting)
Being able to support a post that you like in a easy way feels good. People like showing support, even if all it does it make a funny number go up. You can see how the lack of upvoting manifests in imageboards through all the replies in threads that are just some variant of "this" or "based" or "i agree". This is basically just an upvote in the form of a post, that takes up space in the thread, wastes readers' time, and doesn't get counted in any way. Having a way for users to actually upvote instead of these pointless "i agree" replies would be nice and I don't really see the issue with it.
most of the issues people bring up with site like reddit and other sites being a hivemind because of the scoring is mostly the fault of downvoting. I can't think of a single good use for downvoting. It just discourages people from sharing unpopular views, especially if a post with enough downvotes gets hidden or rendered less visible. Unlike upvotes, these are unquestionably bad and should be left behind.
>board blacklist
being able to add boards to a blacklist, where it and any posts from it will be hidden from view (maybe with some optional exceptions you can enable) would be very cool. For a nice new-user experience, maybe the blacklist could be filled out with some of the spicier boards at first, and users can just remove those boards if they want to see them. a little toggle somewhere to enable and disable the blacklist temporarily (like boorus let you do) would be cool too
>posting threads to multiple boards and forwarding threads to other boards (cross-posting)
this is pretty self-explanatory. A quick way to post a thread to multiple boards that it fits in would be cool. Especially if you could do it after the post with a thread that you come across and want to see on another board too. A nice idea for board discovery would be backlinks to all the other boards' version of the thread that was cross-posted. I'm not sure how things would work with the posts in the thread though. Should all the replies across the different boards be shared or synced together, or should all the threads just be treated as completely separate?
these are just a few ideas I came up with. I know they probably sound stupid and too reddit-like, but people said the same thing about user board creation, and that actually turned out to be a cool idea that was worth keeping around.