"forum" versus "board"

[blujay]

Mario,

Who defines the difference between the technical terms "forum" and "board"? You? Who appointed you editor of the universal Internet dictionary?

No offense, my friend, but "forum" and "board" are two words that mean the same thing in this context. You seem to be hung up on the 1996-esque WWWboard idea of a "board." The 'Net has evolved far beyond WWWboard.

The simplest reason for requiring user registration (which seems to be your real complaint), is to prevent abuse. If anyone can post without registering, it makes it more tedious to stop abusers. I've had personal experience with this running a fairly large site--people who would register 20 different usernames, use different IP addresses, etc. That was bad enough; if they could do it without registering, it would have been easier for them and harder for me.

Get a decent password manager program, have Firefox remember your username and password, and forget about it. It's a small price to pay if the forum is one you really need to use.

[tmp000]

I really don't understand what all your peoples problem with this topic
is. There is no need to argue about what defines a forum and what a
board, this is clearly defined. Only because 95% of web sites these days
label discussion boards as forum doesn't make it any more valid; like
"hackers" aren't bad people only because mainstream media and some
uninformed tell so; and MSIE, the "Internet" and the Web are different
things as well.
Maybe this helps some of you:
(de) http://aktuell.de.selfhtml.org/artik...ards/index.htm
(google translate) http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools

And to give another example (my last seemed to got dismissed here
without reason) - have a look at, ahem, http://slashdot.org/ - a forum
differs from a board in that people can reply to messages and to each
other, whereas in a board you only have one topic and a list of replies.
It's also a nice example of that open post forums can work, though I
admit the "Anonymous .." accounts there (no optional free user names)
make it less interesting to read.

Also it clearly shows that messages and spam can be managed without
assigned moderators, simply by power of user voting.

And to get real, the spam problem is the only serious problem you
mentioned that an open site has. However, there have long been solutions
to this. Now looking at the bottom of the pages here makes me think,
that the site admins aren't that much against link and google spamming
(but then it problaby only counts who spams who).

Whatever, page rank killers (redirecting links through google itself)
and limiting links in guest post for example proved to be the best
countermeasures agains spam postings, in blogs as in wikis and forum
software. Besides this, your phpBB already employs those graphical
code tests to separate humans from bots, which of course are far more
reliable than verfifying email addresses (that spammers already know
how to generate in thousands). So IMO all the technique is there to
keep spam to a minimum.

So the real reason you don't open your board is lazyness. At least,
that is my impression by now. It works elsewhere, you just haven't
tried it.

In this board, user registration is enforced for no compelling
reason; you traded open and hassle-free user support for ease
of administration. I don't applaud.

Sure I'm impertinent for now stating it this way, but if most support
and help forums on sourceforge and elsewhere provide open and easy
support, why can't YOU also do this? Really irritates me. I don't
think you are honest with your stated "user support" goals. You
scare away and offend everyone who doesn't follow your user account
dogma.

-

And Ms.Cuddles, why do think "this is getting into rediculous"? Do you
feel that offended by me not really needing a user account here?! Not
at all did I say you shall abandon your all so useful user accounts, I
just wanted to point out, that elsewhere it works without, and it's
easily possible to make them OPTIONAL.
And again, this isn't about guest accounts, or anonymous postings,
which phpBB surely would support, it is about posting without having
to go through the annoying registration process (it crosses the
medium twice, in case you didn't notice: web, email, web; the board
isn't well integrated with the mail server here).

What pissed me off, is that you expect people to give out their email
addresses, while claiming to be an open support forum. Yes, the term
"forum" sounds nice to people, because it signalizes to be an open
participation place. (Please look up the dictionary excerpt you cited
first.)
Oh, there is nothing wrong with having to sign up for some free service,
but for all the discussion boards out there this is becoming really
frustrating. Why is it that everybody nowadays feels obliqued to create
yet another separated isle?

(Nobody enjoys giving out email addresses anymore, and my personal
problem with it is, that I did this on some of these phpBB sites
and was serviced with release announcements long after I stoped using
the software the board was about. Happily @spamgourmet addresses time
out somewhen, and I don't use real passwords anymore for such sites...)

There are possibilities to share user accounts / databases across
different sites. (XML-RPC or SOAP, see Liberty Alliance - hell I'd even
use M$ Passport if you people got over your our-own-user-database
attitude)
But have the site administrators researched this first? No, not all.
Obviously phpBB needs a hard-wired internal user database, so you
couldn't even use it any other way, even if you had considered asking
anybody to share a user database with. (The whole thing is about,
that people don't want another account with every single discussion
board out there, just because the administrators like the idea of
having their very own and big list of aquired users.)

And if I read it correctly, your whole discussion of user accounts
boils down to "we need users to register with accounts, so we can
delete them" - isn't that your idea of "control"? Maybe I'm again
wrong here, but I think moderation means something different.

Your whole accountability babbling and lengthy rant about ugly
user names is bogus, unless you had actually tried it. The example
forum I pointed to last, uses OPTIONAL user accounts with freely
choosable user names. And contrary to what you tried to paint it,
people don't only use names like Guest001, Guest101, ...
Besides that THIS board is one is of the I-probably-only-visit-once
sort, I have non-registered user names within a few of the forums
where registration is OPTINONAL. Name robbing could be a problem,
but it is probably far more likely with all the boards where I simply
used the 000000 password again (really really tired of user accounts).

(yes, I use lots of impolite phrases to make my points, but you are
overly ignorant - didn't you notice?)

I'm sorry for having started a flame here (= having a different
opinion on stuff than the moderators), it was obviously the wrong
forum *rolling_eyes* for making this up. No change expected.

-

Closing this, I didn't say that it is wrong to use a board for this
site. Actually it's the better tool for the exchanges that happen here -
people come, ask a question, and more often than elsewhere never visit
again (side effect of email notifications).
This is the sort of places, where the topic-with-replies appearance
of a board makes sense. A real forum would be overkill here.

I just liked to point out, that the site admins did choose a board
in the believe it was "one of the cool forums with smilies and user
accounts". It is not an _open_ discussion forum, but a gated (or
"closed") place, and will shy half of your visitors away (I'm
obviously only the first to speak it out) rightout.

This site could be far more helpful, if you only had CONSIDERED or
tried to keep it open. And please don't belie people, it's only a
"board".

[blujay]

tmp000,

Go here:

http://www.scriptarchive.com/wwwboard.html

That's probably the most well-known and possibly oldest Perl message board/forum there is. Notice that even they use the terms interchangeably; yet the name of it is "board, yet it is, by your definition, a "forum."

Board/forum, potato/potahto...

Your cries of "it's closed and gated" are moot; anyone is free to register. It takes a little more effort. Big whoop.

[chris-harry]

just to continue what blujay is saying and to anoy tmp000...

Board/forum, potato/potahto

tomarto, tamaco... sassage, sussage... fish, fosh...

its all the same.. forum, board... pritty much the same thing in todays society...

[j.drake]

M: (Knock)
A: Come in.
M: Ah, Is this the right room for an argument?
A: I told you once.
M: No you haven't.
A: Yes I have.
M: When?
A: Just now.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't
A: I did!
M: You didn't!
A: I'm telling you I did!
M: You did not!!
A: Oh, I'm sorry, just one moment. Is this a five minute argument or the full half hour?
M: Oh, just the five minutes.
A: Ah, thank you. Anyway, I did.
M: You most certainly did not.
A: Look, let's get this thing clear; I quite definitely told you.
M: No you did not.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't.
A: Did.
M: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
A: Yes it is.
M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
A: No it isn't.
M: It is!
A: It is not.
M: Look, you just contradicted me.
A: I did not.
M: Oh you did!!
A: No, no, no.
M: You did just then.
A: Nonsense!
M: Oh, this is futile!
A: No it isn't.
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
M: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
A: No it isn't.
M: It is.
A: Not at all.
M: Now look.
A: (Rings bell) Good Morning.
M: What?
A: That's it. Good morning.
M: I was just getting interested.
A: Sorry, the five minutes is up.
M: That was never five minutes!
A: I'm afraid it was.
M: It wasn't.
Pause
A: I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue anymore.
M: What?!
A: If you want me to go on arguing, you'll have to pay for another five minutes.
M: Yes, but that was never five minutes, just now. Oh come on!
A: (Hums)
M: Look, this is ridiculous.
A: I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid!
M: Oh, all right. (pays money)
A: Thank you.
short pause
M: Well?
A: Well what?
M: That wasn't really five minutes, just now.
A: I told you, I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid.
M: I just paid!
A: No you didn't.
M: I DID!
A: No you didn't.
M: Look, I don't want to argue about that.
A: Well, you didn't pay.
M: Aha. If I didn't pay, why are you arguing? I Got you!
A: No you haven't.
M: Yes I have. If you're arguing, I must have paid.
A: Not necessarily. I could be arguing in my spare time.
M: Oh I've had enough of this.
A: No you haven't.
M: Oh Shut up. (Walks down the stairs. Opens door.)

[chris-harry]

hahaha... i get it... i feel soo smert...

man, that argument/contradiction is just like this one...