An Internet forum is a facility on the World Wide Web for holding discussions, or the web application software used to provide the facility. Web-based forums, which date from around 1995, perform a similar function as the dial-up bulletin boards and Internet newsgroups that were numerous in the 1980s and 1990s. A sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users. Technology, computer games, and politics are popular areas for forum themes, but there are forums for a huge number of different topics .

Internet forums are also commonly referred to as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, discussion forums, discussion groups, bulletin boards (but see also dial-up bulletin boards), fora (the proper Latin plural) or simply forums.

Culture

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Internet forums are prevalent in several developed countries. In terms of countable posts, Japan is far in the lead with over two million posts per day on their largest forum, 2channel. The United States does not have any one large forum, but instead several hundred thousand smaller forums, the largest of which are GameFAQs, Gaia Online, and IGN. Other countries such as China, the Netherlands, and France are also home to hundreds of independent forums. Some countries such as Finland and Sweden do not have many prevalent forums despite having open and easily available Internet access. As of yet no study has been done on the prevalence of forums in countries around the world. It is also dubious as to whether any country has its own fora, as - especially in the English language - contributors to a forum often come from outside the country in which the forum is hosted. There is often not a 1-1 relationship between languages and countries: for example, English language fora are contributed to by people all over the world, whilst Japanese language fora are likely to be contributed to only by Japanese people, but Japanese people also contribute to English language fora, so there is no 1-1 relationship between Japanese language fora and Japanese people contributing to fora.

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Trading community through forums and live chats http://bit.ly/d8MBA
forexgo (Karl-Heinz Landwehr) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:22:13 -0000
Trading community through forums and live chats http://bit.ly/d8MBA
Talking about all things edu-ma-cation on the RO forums right this very minuto. Come and have chats here: http://tinyurl.com/yknydj7
JoDegney (Jo Degney) Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:04:01 -0000
Talking about all things edu-ma-cation on the RO forums right this very minuto. Come and have chats here: http://tinyurl.com/yknydj7
Scoble makes some interesting points here about why forums and chats degenerate. http://bit.ly/28Us7d - but his comments aren't universal
randulo (Jazz blues wine voip) Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:14:06 -0000
Scoble makes some interesting points here about why forums and chats degenerate. http://bit.ly/28Us7d - but his comments aren't universal
Trading community through forums and live chats http://bit.ly/d8MBA
forexgo (Karl-Heinz Landwehr) Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:01:33 -0000
Trading community through forums and live chats http://bit.ly/d8MBA

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