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.

More on [ Internet forum ]

Volconvo Debate Forums

Link to a debate I'm having, need your input.
DBLerman Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:17:17 -0000
Just thought I would post this link to a debate I am currently having with someone on a local newspaper forum. First the guy presents a claim without referencing a source. Then when I call him out on his claim by providing evidence against his claim with cited references, he throws out a red herring. I keep telling him to address my argument but he keeps changing the subject and using ad hominems. It is just starting to get really frustrating so I thought I would post the link and get some of your opinions on the matter. Bow hunters are here to stay | Daily Record | Daily Record (http://dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080705/OPINION02/807050306/1095/OPINION)
Woman who died on hospital floor is honored in death
Halofan48 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:03:22 -0000
Woman who died on hospital floor is honored in death - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/06/esmin.funeral/index.html?iref=24hours) ---Quote--- NEW YORK (CNN) -- Esmin Green died in a drab hospital gown, facedown on a waiting room floor, apparently ignored by hospital staff for more than an hour. At her funeral Sunday in a tiny church in Brooklyn, packed with some people she didn't even know, she was dressed in lace gloves and a white chiffon suit. "I'm so glad you're in my life/I'm so glad you came to save us," four children sang in a hymn at the Jesus is Lord Sanctuary. The mourners sang along, many still reeling with anger and disbelief at the way their "Sister Green" was apparently treated last month at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. Surveillance tape, later broadcast around the world, showed the 49-year-old mother of six sliding off of a chair in the waiting room of the hospital's psychiatric emergency department, eventually lying face-down on the floor, convulsing. Green had been involuntarily admitted June 18 for what the hospital described as "agitation and psychosis." Nearly 24 hours after her arrival, the camera recorded hospital workers looking at her body and appearing to ignore her. Finally, a hospital employee nudges her lifeless body with his foot and summons help. But it's too late. Green died on the floor. ---End Quote--- Sad how this happened. She should of had help, but she was forced to wait. And for too long...:sorry: here's the video of her: Woman who died on hospital floor is honored in death - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/06/esmin.funeral/index.html?iref=24hours#cnnSTCVideo) :sorry: Thoughts?
Free speech is thorny online
Halofan48 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:56:42 -0000
Free speech is thorny online - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/07/onlinefreedoms.ap/index.html?iref=24hours) ---Quote--- NEW YORK (AP) -- Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative. Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed. Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors. The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services -- from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video -- become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms. Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that -- far from promoting smoking -- the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later. "I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete." There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren't clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny. "We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place," said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. "We're obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place." In Dors' case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo "sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Service providers aren't required to police content, but they aren't prohibited from doing so. While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities -- ones where minors may be roaming. Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy. Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far. Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen. "We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up." But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion. Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines. To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a "short code" for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.'s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints. Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular. "As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can't see alternative points of view, if we can't see the things that offend us?" asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities. First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child. With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague. Others believe companies shouldn't police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal. "Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. "When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules." But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them "tend to be tone-deaf. They don't see context." At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, "there's more of a guarantee of due process protections," said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users' rights are limited to the service provider's contractual terms of services. Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet's openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries. "Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue," Zittrain said. "Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble ... it may not be worth it to them." Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics. Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers. He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children. Meanwhile, in response to complaints it would not specify, Network Solutions LLC decided to suspend a Web hosting account that Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders was using to promote a movie that criticizes the Quran -- before the movie was even posted and without the company finding any actual violation of its rules. Service providers say unhappy customers can always go elsewhere, but choice is often limited. Many leading services, particularly online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace or media-sharing sites such as Flickr and Google Inc.'s YouTube, have acquired a cachet that cannot be replicated. To evict a user from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town. Other sites "don't have the critical mass. No one would see it," said Scott Kerr, a member of the gay punk band Kids on TV, which found its profile mysteriously deleted from MySpace last year. "People know that MySpace is the biggest site that contains music." MySpace denies engaging in any censorship and says profiles removed are generally in response to complaints of spam and other abuses. GoDaddy also defends its commitment to speech, saying account suspensions are a last resort. Few service providers actively review content before it gets posted and usually take action only in response to complaints. In that sense, Flickr, YouTube and other sites consider their reviews "checks and balances" against any community mob directed at unpopular speech -- YouTube has pointedly refused to delete many video clips tied to Muslim extremists, for instance, because they didn't specifically contain violence or hate speech. Still, should these sites even make such rules? And how can they ensure the guidelines are consistently enforced? ---End Quote--- Thoughts?
Study: Gays in military don't hurt ability to fight
Halofan48 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:42:21 -0000
Study: Gays in military don't hurt ability to fight - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/military.gays.ap/index.html?iref=24hours) ---Quote--- WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress should repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law because the presence of gays in the military is unlikely to undermine the ability to fight and win, according to a new study released by a California-based research center. The study was conducted by four retired military officers, including the three-star Air Force lieutenant general who in early 1993 was tasked with implementing President Clinton's policy that the military stop questioning recruits on their sexual orientation. "Evidence shows that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline or cohesion," the officers states. To support its contention, the panel points to the British and Israeli militaries, where it says gay people serve openly without hurting the effectiveness of combat operations. Undermining unit cohesion was a determining factor when Congress passed the 1993 law, intended to keep the military from asking recruits their sexual orientation. In turn, service members can't say they are gay or bisexual, engage in homosexual activity or marry a member of the same sex. Supporters of the ban contend there is still no empirical evidence that allowing gays to serve openly won't hurt combat effectiveness. "The issue is trust and confidence" among members of a unit, said Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, who retired in 1993 after working on the issue for the Army. When some people with a different sexual orientation are "in a close combat environment, it results in a lack of trust," he said. The study was sponsored by the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which said it picked the panel members to portray a bipartisan representation of the different service branches. ---End Quote--- Thoughts?
Non-lethal weapons for democratic convention
Halofan48 Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:04:17 -0000
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/07/07/lavandera.denver.dnc.security.cnn) (Note, may be a commercial before video) This discusses some of the many non-lethal weapons that may be used to protect the convention. There are two topics here: 1. Should these sort of weapons be used? 2. Should they be forced to reveal what weapons they are going to be used?
5 week program where orphans live with potential parents
Halofan48 Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:00:28 -0000
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/07/06/bolduan.more.summer.miracles.cnn) (note, there may be an advertisement before video begins) It talks about how potential parents can now spend 5 weeks living with the child before deciding whether or not to adopt to them. Thoughts?

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