NiIL: What is a Forum?

To kick off NaNoWriMo in Internet Land, I wanted to cover a very basic topic. What is a forum? What affordances of the Internet does it use? What makes it different from a chat room? This will set up the context for the rest of my analysis on the NaNoWriMo forums.

What is a Forum?

Once upon a time, a forum was a gathering of people, or the place they gathered in, to discuss certain topics. Greece was famous for its forums, especially in Athens, discussing politics and philosophy. A quick Google search defines it as this: "a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged" or "an internet message board". 

A forum is a space on the internet in which users can interact via nested text boxes, in a manner somewhat similar to Ancient Greek forums. There a separate spaces for different conversation topics. A (non-NaNo) example would be the Gaia Online forums. There are topic headings like "Hot Topics" or the "Artist's Corner". Within those are the actual forums: "US Presidential Election", "Adventure Time" or "Lolita Fashion", in "Hot Topics". These forums all contain hundreds of "threads" dedicated to different topics within that forum "header".

Usually one user can create a thread within which others can reply to the topic.  Threads tend to be long-lived, lasting days, to months, even to years, in the case of certain websites I frequent. They utilize the ability of the internet to store information by allowing users to post replies that can then be seen at any time. In less frequented forums, a reply to your post may not come for days. Often, in the more popular ones, you will wait a few minutes to a few hours.

Some forums may be private, meaning only specific people, like members of the site, can read what has been posted. Many more are public, which means anyone can read, or even reply to, the ongoing conversation.


How is a forum different from a chat room?

The two major ways to communicate via the internet are forums and chat rooms.  Chat rooms can be hosted on a specific website, to allow members to communicate, or may be a service in and of themselves (One may look at AIM or Omegle as an example of a chat room platform that is its own specific entity.)

Chat rooms occur in real time. Members enter the chat room at the same time to talk. Often, they have no specific topics or guidelines. They rely on the speed of the internet, but not its long-term storage of the conversations. Chat rooms provide an instant connection.

Often times, a forum will have a "chat space". Either a forum specifically dedicated to this "instant" kind of conversation (while still maintaining the forum structure of long-term, nested replies) or a separate chat "feature" that functions more similarly to a true chat room (generally a widget that is imbedded into the site).

Both have uses to the website in question. A chat space or feature allows members of the site to bond simply by talking to each other. They talk about anything and everything, with whoever is around at the moment. this strengthens to relationship between members and increases their happiness with the site. A forum, or as it usually occurs, many forums, allow the members to discuss specific topics of interest to them. It builds a repertoire of information that users can go back and look at, instead of bringing up the same questions over and over.


HONRS 201: Forums VS Chat Rooms

To put this in the context of academia, the first part of my project, I will use a classroom analogy. A forum is a class discussion, lead by the professor, to understand a specific portion of the syllabus. This would be structured and allow one student to respond to another, or multiple students, one at a time. A chat room is what happens before class starts or after it ends. It is a cacophony. It is everyone talking to their friends about whatever it is they want. Both are important to the students, but one is more useful to the overall understanding of the class.