Web Forums

As I searched in the internet to find a veracious definition of "Web Forums", it is said that a web forum is a web application which provides for discussion, often in conjunction with online communities. The Older forums date back to around the year of 1996. Before that, there have already been the newsgroups and bulletin board systems which were widespread in the world in the 1980s and 1990s. Some topics are very popular discussed, such as technology, computer games, and politics. However, the forums are actually available for many other different topics, I believe it could for whatever you like.

In my point of view, the WebForums provides a platform to Internet users or accesser. It is different from chat rooms or other instant MSG tools, the visible advantage of it is that people can focus on the topic of forums, No matter what result it is, we can get the information related to the topic from the forums.

In BIT (Beijing Institute of Technology), we have a kind of WebForum^?. As far as I know, a forum administrator typically has the ability or power to edit, delete, move or otherwise modify any thread on the forum. Administrators can also close the board, change major software items, change the skin, modify the board, ban, and delete, or create members. Moderator privileges are often able to be delegated to other forum members. Moderators usually help the Administrator (Admin), but have less abilities, which may include editing, deleting, and moving threads, mass pruning, warning members for offenses, and changing minor forum details. The reasons for having these abilities are to allow peace to be maintained and the rules to be enforced. It seems to be a kind of "moral deadline" we discussed in the blog.

Members of a forum usually have basic rights. They usually can post in threads, edit or delete their posts, start new topics, and change their personal settings. On most forums, users have a small picture located around their name, this is called an "avatar". An avatar is a small picture that is chosen by the user. I still remember my avatar in the webforum in BIT is a picture of a little girl with wings. The members also have the ability to use and send personal messages to each other, and the manager have the ability to send messages to all of the users. Members are the backbone of any forum, they post and respond to each other. In certain cases, members have been given the ability to close their own topics, or delete posts in topics they have started. Members also have the choice of a signature, which is usually words and pictures at the end of every post they have, and it will automatically shown on screen, you don't need to post them by yourself.

Forums can come in complex and many different styles. The "usual" forum contains many different boards, that direct you to a sub-forum. In each sub forum, there is a "sub-manager", who is in charge of that only sub-form. He doesn't have the ability to manage other sub-forums. Every sub-forum should have its own topic, and that may be a place for posting information or disscusing things according to that specific topic.

Here is the address of one of the webforum in BIT, you may have a look at it if you are interested in it.

-- WeiweiZhang - 16 Feb 2007 -- YansongLiang - 21 Feb 2007 -- WeiweiZhang - 16 Mar 2007 -- WeiweiZhang - 16 Mar 2007
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