Half of Japanese net users just don’t care about 2 channel

With the recent kerfuffle in the news about the impending closure of 2 channel, or at least the threat of a forced seizure of the domain name, or perhaps just business as usual, japan.internet.com reported on goo Research’s survey into what people thought about the rumoured closing down. Between the 19th and 21st of January they interviewed 1,059 people from their monitor group. 51.9% were male, 26.9% in their twenties, 25.1% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 23.4% in their fifties.

Note that a previous survey showed that 56% of a sample of mainly business professionals have visited there, so I would have through that there might have been a stronger showing of people with definite opinions about the news, especially considering that over three quarters of the total population have visited the site, and just 4% have not heard anything about it. Also note that as far as I can see, neither my blog nor my name appears on that site, but I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad sign!

Q1: How often do you visit the 2 channel web site? (Sample size=1,059)

Frequently	16.0%
Sometimes	37.2%
Infrequently	24.8%
Never visited	17.9%
Don’t know what 2 channel is (to end)	4.1%

Q2: Do you know that there is a debate as to whether 2 channel will close? (Sample size=1,016)

Know about it (to SQ1)	71.7%
Don’t know about it	28.3%

Q2SQ1: How do you feel about the possibility of 2 channel closing? (Sample size=728)

Should close	13.5%
Don’t want it to close (to SQ2)	37.4%
Not bothered either way	49.2%

Q2SQ2: Why don’t you want it to close? (Sample size=272)

	Votes	Percentage
A means for accumulating data will be lost	213	78.3%
Because it’s the origin of an overwhelming amount of information	149	54.8%
Interesting background information will not come out	144	52.9%
It’s part of the Japanese internet culture	127	46.7%
I’ll lose my space for wasting time	109	40.1%
Personal voices will not be heard	109	40.1%
Chances to interact with other internet users will disappear	24	8.8%
Other	13	4.8%

I’m not terribly confident about the translation or the meaning of the top phrase there: “情報収集の手段が失われるから”. Does this mean that it is seen as a free-form repository for information regarding various subjects, like an (even more) anarchic Wikipedia?