Internet Forum Design & LclBd thoughts & quotes

Post date: Sep 3, 2015 1:50:01 PM

I did read this stuff to improve my hobby project LclBd. So I wanted to be sure I'll remember all that stuff I've learned about online forums during about 30 years I've been using forums. Yes, I did mention on-line forums on purpose, because first 10 years weren't based on Internet technology.

Internet discussion forum design:

FUD forum, another Internet forum software package. An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.[1] They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived.

anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.

Bulletin boards

Internet forums are prevalent in several developed countries.

largest forum, 2channel.

Tianya Club.

virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users.

Technology, video games, sports, music, fashion, religion, and politics are popular areas for forum themes,

weblog

fully threaded discussions

sub-forums

Logically forums are organized into a finite set of generic topics (usually with one main topic) driven and updated by a group known as members, and governed by a group known as moderators.[citation

Non-Threaded/Semi-Threaded/Fully Threaded,

lurker and the habit is referred to as lurking.

The moderators

(neutralizing spam and spambots etc.).[12]

concerns about the forum, general questions, as well as respond to specific complaints.

banning, suspending, unsuspending, unbanning, warning the members, or adding, editing, removing the polls of threads.[13]

The administrators

As such, they may promote (and demote) members to/from moderators, manage the rules, create sections and sub-sections, as well as perform any database operations (database backup etc.). Administrators often also act as moderators.

A post is a user-submitted message enclosed into a block containing the user's details and the date and time it was submitted.

Members are usually allowed to edit or delete their own posts. Posts are contained in threads, where they appear as blocks one after another.

it is not uncommon for discussions to be derailed.

Posts have an internal limit usually measured in characters. Often one is required to have a message of minimum length of 10 characters.

There is always an upper limit but it is rarely reached â most boards have it at either 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, or 50,000 characters.

A thread (sometimes called a topic) is a collection of posts, usually displayed from oldest to latest,

When a member posts in a thread it will jump to the top since it is the latest updated thread.

Threads that are important but rarely receive posts are stickyed (or, in some software, "pinned").

topics on forums include questions, comparisons,

opinion as well as debates.

topic is controversial.

topic are often worded aimed at someone's point of view, discussion will usually go slightly off into several directions as people question each other's validity, sources and so on.

Several lawsuits have been brought against the forums and moderators claiming libel and damage. A recent case is the scubaboard lawsuit where a business in the Maldives filed a suit against scubaboard for libel and defamation in January 2010. For the most part, though, forum owners and moderators in the United States are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

A private message, or PM for short, is a message sent in private from a member to one or more other members.

Private messages are generally used for personal conversations.

Attachment An attachment can be almost any file.

Forums usually have very strict limit on what can be attached and what cannot (among which the size of the files in question).

BBCode

Commonly [i] is used for italic type, [b] is used for bold, [u] for underline,

[img]

[url]

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

RSS and ATOM Main article: Web feed RSS and ATOM feeds allow a minimalistic means of subscribing to the forum.

An ignore list allows members to hide posts of other members that they do not want to see or have a problem with.

Almost all Internet forums include a member list, which allows display of all forum members, with integrated search feature. Some forums will not list members with 0 posts, even if they have activated their accounts.

Many forums allow users to give themselves an avatar.

1 History 2 Structure 2.1 User groups 2.1.1 Moderators 2.1.2 Administrator 2.2 Post 2.3 Thread 2.3.1 Bumping 2.3.2 Stickying 3 Discussion 3.1 Liabilities of owners and moderators 4 Common features 4.1 Tripcodes and capcodes 4.2 Private message 4.3 Attachment 4.4 BBCode and HTML 4.5 Emoticon 4.6 Poll 4.7 RSS and ATOM 4.8 Other features 5 Rules and policies 5.1 Troll 5.2 Sock puppet 5.3 Spamming 5.4 Double posting 5.5 Necroposting 5.6 Word censor 5.7 Flame wars 5.8 Registration or anonymity 6 Comparison with other web applications 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Examples 10 References 11 External links

Similarly, most forums allow users to define a signature (sometimes called a sig), which is a block of text, possibly with BBCode, which appears at the bottom of all of the user's posts.

They may also allow the user to attach information to all of their posts, such as proclaiming support for a cause, noting facts about themselves, or quoting humorous things that have previously been said on the forum.

Common on forums, a subscription is a form of automated notification integrated into the software of most forums. It usually notifies either by email or on the site when the member returns. The option to subscribe is available for every thread while logged in.

Recent development in some popular implementations of forum software has brought social network features and functionality. Such features include personal galleries, pages as well as a social network like chat systems.

Often forums use "cookies", or information about the user's behavior on the site sent to a user's browser and used upon re-entry into the site.

For example, in an IT forum any discussion regarding anything but computer programming languages may be against the rules, with the exception of a general chat section.

what is known as a report system.

Moderators will generally frown upon attempts of moderation by non-moderators, especially when the would-be moderators do not even issue a report. Messages from non-moderators acting as moderators generally declare a post as against the rules, or predict punishment.

Bans can mean the person can no longer log in or even view the site anymore.

In most cases, this means simply that the account is locked.

Offending content is usually deleted.

Sockpuppet (Internet) The term sock puppet refers to multiple pseudonyms in use by the same person on a particular message board or forum. The analogy of a sock puppet is of a puppeteer holding up both hands and supplying dialogue to both puppets simultaneously.

Some forums consider concise, comment-oriented posts spam, for example Thank you, Cool or I love it.

Users sometimes post versions of a message that are only slightly different, especially in forums where they are not allowed to edit their earlier posts.

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

Necroposting A necropost is a message that revives (as in necromancy) an arbitrarily old thread, causing it to appear above newer and more active threads.

called a flame war.

are usually religion and socio-political topics, or topics that discuss pre-existing rivalries outside the forum (e.g., rivalry between games, console systems, car manufacturers, nationalities, etc.).

flame war

COPPA requirements

terms of service (other documents may also be present) and a request for agreement to said terms.[25][

Internet Forums are used frequently in conjunction with multiplayer online games.

On these forums, a tripcode system may be used to allow verification of an identity without the need for formal registration.

Because members may miss replies in threads they are interested in, many modern forums offer an "e-mail notification" feature, whereby members can choose to be notified of new posts in a thread, and web feeds that allow members to see a summary of the new posts using aggregator software.

newsgroups

On the other hand, weblogs and generic content management systems tend to be locked down to the point where only a few select users can post blog entries, although many allow other users to comment upon them.

Chat rooms and instant messaging:

Forums differ from chats and instant messaging in that forum participants do not have to be online simultaneously to receive or send messages. Messages posted to a forum are publicly available for some time even if the forum or thread is closed, which is uncommon in chat rooms that maintain frequent activity.