Forum

Cosma / Communication / Knowledge / Form / Participation / Community / Forum
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forum : (1) the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business (2) a public meeting place for open discussion (3) a medium (as a newspaper or online service) of open discussion or expression of ideas — Webster See also OneLook

discussion : (1) consideration of a question in open and usually informal debate (2) a formal treatment of a topic in speech or writing — Webster See also OneLook

Encyclopedia

Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to:
Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city
Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States
Internet forum, discussion board on the Internet
Public forum debate, or Pofo, a type of debate — Wikipedia

Encyclopædia Britannica, Columbia (Infoplease)

Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g., a single conversation is called a “thread”, or topic.

A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum’s topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish. Depending on the forum’s settings, users can be 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. — Wikipedia

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