FORUM

Q: What is Forum?

An online discussion group. Online services and bulletin board services (BBS's) provide a variety of forums, in which participants with common interests can exchange open messages. Forums are sometimes called newsgroups (in the Internet world) or conferences.

The simplistic definition of a forum is a place where people have the ability to start communication (in the form of threads) and reply to other people's threads. A member of the community in the forum posts a message, which is visible to everyone in that community. Once read, there is the option to post a reply, which can also be visible to the community. Thus, a discussion can build up without all users having to be online at the same time.