>Is he wrong though or were there actually imageboards on Usenet that predate the Japanese textboard and imageboards.

There were binary newsgroups where people shared image files (among other things) in the form of binary text that you could download, but they didn't display images, and to my knowledge they weren't called "imageboards" or even "boards". The imageboard format derives from web-based Japanese BBSes similar to what we're posting on right now, and the dial-up BBSes that directly preceded them. That makes binary newsgroups a distant cousin to imageboards, but not a direct ancestor.

>>8

>if imageboard is an anonymous forum

The anonymity aspect is a bit of a moot point; while the Japanese almost never used their real names, the use of pseudonyms was prevalent on Japanese underground sites in the 90s, and even today there are many Japanese boards out there where virtually every poster uses some form of name and/or trip.

>but if we need to consider only the format—as it is known today—it was the tor@kanrinin script, year 2000

I believe the first "proper" imageboard script (one where you upload image files directly to the board, and don't simply hotlink to images hosted elsewhere) was Toru's imgboard.cgi. On their site they claim it was "released as the world's first upload bulletin board with embedded images" on January 24, 1998 ( http://www.big.or.jp/~talk/t-club/soft/mini_r6/index.cgi ). They even namedrop 4chan as a popular site that's based on their script, and in a way it's kinda true; LetsPHP!'s GazouBBS (first released in October 2000) was one of several blatant clones of imgboard, and Futaba originally used imgboard for their first imageboard before switching to GazouBBS a couple of months later.

>some non-japs say it was the lnb based on the filthy work of some tripfags from 4chan

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Japanese source stating outright that Licentious Notice Board was the first imageboard (for what it's worth, the first iteration opened in August 1997 and closed in October 1997), but I have seen several Japanese sources (some of which were written years before 4chan's existence) stating that it was:

• a popular underground site
• shared many posters with Ayashii World sites
• was considered a treasure trove of great images
• had many posters adept at creating high quality idol collages and humorous photoshops
• had a huge amount of momentum during the peak of its first iteration, supposedly comparable with 2ch of later years (I saw this claim in a "what was LNB like?" thread on 2ch from 2003; I don't know if it was hyperbole or not)
• led to such a craze that it ended up being the origin of all the countless ero-oriented imageboards that existed by the early 2000s

As you said, the original LNB almost certainly used MiniBBS (first released in May 1996); the same script that most Ayashii World sites were using from September 1997 onwards, as well as many other sites. However, based on archives of various LNB sequels and spinoffs I've seen, they were using modified versions of MiniBBS that allowed users to paste images URLs into a field, and those images would show up in posts as hotlinked images (stock MiniBBS didn't have such a feature as far as I'm aware, but I haven't looked into that yet). So instead of uploading directly to the board, posters would have their own Tripod sites or whatever, upload their images there, then paste the URLs on LNB where it would be hotlinked in their posts.

>there have been other bbses—much earlier than lbn—with the exact same fucking function of attaching images

I'd be interested to know what those were if you remember any names, scripts, etc.