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Dataset Card generated by Kimi K2.6

Dataset Card for ironmarch_171121

A structured archive of forum threads and posts from the Iron March forum.

Dataset Summary

A structured archive of forum threads and posts from Iron March, a neo-fascist web forum active from 2011 to 2017. The dataset contains ~7,200 threads and ~195,000 posts. The forum used a flat post structure (no nesting).

Content Warning: Iron March was an explicitly fascist forum. The dataset contains extremely offensive content including hate speech, advocacy of violence, and extremist political material.

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Dataset Details

Dataset Sources

• Original source: SQL database dump of the Iron March forum, dated November 2019
• Source archive location: See iron_march_201911/README for provenance details

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Uses

Direct Use

Suitable for:

• Academic research into online extremism and radicalisation
• Computational social science studying far-right communities
• Linguistic analysis of extremist discourse
• Platform/archival studies of legacy web forums

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Dataset Structure

Schema

Column	Type	Description
thread_id	int64	Unique thread identifier
forum_id	int64	Forum identifier
forum_name	string	Human-readable forum name
thread_title	string	Title as shown in the forum listing
last_activity_date	string	Date of last activity (ISO-8601)
reply_count	int64	Number of replies shown in the listing
posts	list	Array of all posts in the thread

Posts Struct

Column	Type	Description
thread_id	int64	Thread ID
forum_id	int64	Forum ID
post_id	int64	Unique post identifier
position	int64	1-based position in the thread
depth	int64	Nesting depth (always 0 for this forum)
parent_post_id	int64 or null	ID of the parent post this replies to (always null)
parent_link_type	string or null	Link type (always null)
author	string	Pseudonymous username
posted_at	string	Post timestamp (ISO-8601)
body	string	Post body text

Statistics

Metric	Value
Threads	7,169
Posts	195,128
Date range	2011-09-13 to 2017-11-21
Mean posts per thread	27.2
Median posts per thread	12
Longest thread	10,703 posts
Max nesting depth	0
Posts with a parent	0 (0.0%)
Blank body posts	9,772 (5.0%)
Mean body length (non-blank)	596 characters
Median body length (non-blank)	207 characters

The dataset is most concentrated in the Introductions forum (1,741 threads, 24.3%) and Shill News (1,077 threads, 15.0%). There are 96 distinct forums in total, including many small regional or topical subforums.

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Dataset Creation

Curation Rationale

Iron March was a significant hub for neo-fascist organising online during the mid-2010s. The archive preserves a historical record of discourse, community structure, and user interaction patterns within an extremist forum before its shutdown.

Source Data

Data Collection and Processing

• Source: SQL database dump (iron_march_201911/database.sql)
• Processing: The raw SQL dump was converted to SQLite, then to CSV, and finally assembled into the same thread-oriented Parquet schema used by the xoxohth dataset.
• No filtering was applied to content; all threads and posts present in the dump are included.

Who are the source data producers?

Iron March users posting under pseudonymous usernames.

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Bias, Risks, and Limitations

Content Risks

• Hate speech: Racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic content
• Violence: Explicit advocacy of political violence, terrorism, and genocide
• Extremism: Propaganda and organising material related to neo-Nazi, fascist, and accelerationist movements
• Harassment: Targeted abuse of individuals and groups

Structural Limitations

• No ground truth for user identity; usernames are pseudonymous.
• The dataset ends in November 2017 and does not reflect any content or user activity after the forum's shutdown.
• Nesting depth is uniformly 0; the forum software did not support threaded replies.

Personal and Sensitive Information

• No systematic PII detection or redaction was performed.
• Usernames are pseudonymous but may occasionally contain identifying information.
• Posts may contain references to real individuals, institutions, or events.
• The dataset should be treated as containing potentially sensitive information.

Licence and Redistribution

No licence was identified for the source forum content. This dataset is therefore marked as license: unknown.

The dataset consists of archived public forum posts authored by third parties. The dataset publisher does not claim ownership of the underlying post text and does not grant additional rights beyond any rights users may already have under applicable law.

Users are responsible for determining whether their intended use is lawful, including with respect to copyright, privacy, data protection, and platform terms.