Internet forum

The modern forum originated from bulletin boards, and so-called computer conferencing systems, and are a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system.

Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through public message boards and sometimes via direct chatting.

Early Internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic mailing list or newsgroup (such as exist on Usenet); allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages.

Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that are widely used today.

Early Internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic mailing list or newsgroup (such as exist on Usenet); allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages.

Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web.

China also has many millions of posts on forums such as Tianya Club.

Tianya Club (Mandarin: Tiānyáshèqū 天涯社区 "End of the World" Club) is one of the most popular Internet forums in China.

One of the first forum sites (which is still active today) is Delphi Forums, once called Delphi.

Delphi Forums is a U.S. online service provider and since the mid 1990s has been a community internet forum site.

Forum software packages are widely available on the Internet and are written in a variety of programming languages, such as PHP, Perl, Java and ASP.

The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking.

The modern forum originated from bulletin boards, and so-called computer conferencing systems, and are a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system.

Internet forums are a replacement for traditional bulletin boards.

Japan posts the most with over two million per day on their largest forum, 2channel.

A posting in a thread will either bump or not, determining its position in the thread list.

WordPress comments at the bottom of a blog post allow for a single-threaded discussion of any given blog post.

WordPress is most associated with blogging (its original purpose when first created) but has evolved to support other types of web content including more traditional mailing lists and forums, media galleries, membership sites, learning management systems (LMS) and online stores.

Each package offers different features, from the most basic, providing text-only postings, to more advanced packages, offering multimedia support and formatting code (usually known as BBCode).

BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards.

Some stand alone threads on forums have reached fame and notability such as the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread on MovieCodec.com's forums, which was described as the "web's top hangout for lonely folk" by Wired Magazine.

"i am lonely will anyone speak to me" is the title of a thread that was posted on the Internet forum of the video codec downloads site Moviecodec.com, and had become "the web's top hangout for lonely folk".

WordPress comments at the bottom of a blog post allow for a single-threaded discussion of any given blog post. Several other web applications, such as blog software, also incorporate forum features.

In the 1990s, Internet forum software created running conversations with "threads".

A sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users.

An online message board is a forum where people can discuss thoughts or ideas on various topics or simply express an idea.

From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content.

There are many types of user-generated content: Internet forums, where people talk about different topics; blogs are services where users can post about many topics, product reviews on a supplier website or in social media; wikis such as Wikipedia and Wikia allow users, sometimes including anonymous users, to edit the content.

Early Internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic mailing list or newsgroup (such as exist on Usenet); allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages.

Discussion lists often require every message to be approved by a moderator before being sent to the rest of the subscribers (moderated lists), although higher-traffic lists typically only moderate messages from new subscribers.

An emoticon or smiley is a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form.

As SMS and the internet became widespread in the late 1990s, emoticons became increasingly popular and were commonly used on text messages, internet forums and e-mails.

Such features include personal galleries, pages as well as a social network like chat systems.

Thereby, a feeling similar to a spoken conversation is created, which distinguishes chatting from other text-based online communication forms such as Internet forums and email.

Common privileges of moderators include: deleting, merging, moving, and splitting of posts and threads, locking, renaming, stickying of threads, banning, unbanning, suspending, unsuspending, warning the members, or adding, editing, and removing the polls of threads.

Blocking is used by moderators and administrators of social media and forums to deny access to users that have broken their rules and will likely do so again, in order to ensure a peaceful and orderly discussion place.

The moderators (short singular form: "mod") are users (or employees) of the forum who are granted access to the posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussion (similar to arbitration) and also keeping the forum clean (neutralizing spam and spambots etc.).

Forum spambots browse the internet, looking for guestbooks, wikis, blogs, forums, and other types of web forms that they can then use to submit bogus content.

A person who is a very frequent visitor of the forum, a section or even a thread is referred to as a lurker and the habit is referred to as lurking.

Researchers have shown that different motivations underlie reading, contributing, and moderating web forums.

Multiple posting can also be used as a method of trolling or spreading forum spam.

Forum spam consists of posts on Internet forums that contains related or unrelated advertisements, links to malicious websites, trolling and abusive or otherwise unwanted information.

Multiple posting can also be used as a method of trolling or spreading forum spam.

by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses

A word censoring system is commonly included in the forum software package.

A wordfilter (sometimes referred to as just "filter" or "censor") is a script typically used on Internet forums or chat rooms that automatically scans users' posts or comments as they are submitted and automatically changes or censors particular words or phrases.

A user may also send the same post to several forums, which is termed crossposting.

Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple information channels; forums, mailing lists, or newsgroups.

Some forums (commonly game forums) have suffered from forum-wide flame wars almost immediately after their conception, because of a pre-existing flame war element in the online community.

Commonly, people communicate through social networking sites, chat rooms, forums, e-mail lists and discussion boards.