Forums are governed by a set of individuals, collectively referred to as
staff, made up of
administrators and
moderators, which are responsible for the forums' conception, technical maintenance, and policies (creation and enforcing). Most forums have a list of rules detailing the wishes, aim, and guidelines of the forums' creators. There is usually also a
FAQ section containing basic information for new members and people not yet familiar with the use and principles of a forum (generally tailored for specific forum software). Rules on forums usually apply to the entire user body and often have preset exceptions, most commonly designating a section as an exception. For example, in an
IT forum any discussion regarding anything but computer programming languages may be against the rules, with the exception of a
general chat section. Forum rules are maintained and enforced by the moderation team, but users are allowed to help out via what is known as a report system. Most Western forum platforms automatically provide such a system. It consists of a small function applicable to each post (including one's own). Using it will notify all currently available moderators of its location, and subsequent action or judgment can be carried out immediately, which is particularly desirable in large or very developed boards. Generally, moderators encourage members to also use the
private message system if they wish to report behavior. Moderators will generally frown upon attempts of moderation by non-moderators, especially when the would-be moderators do not even issue a report. Messages from non-moderators acting as moderators generally declare a post as against the rules or predict punishment. While not harmful, statements that attempt to enforce the rules are discouraged. When rules are broken several steps are commonly taken. First, a warning is usually given; this is commonly in the form of a
private message but recent development has made it possible for it to be integrated into the software. Subsequent to this, if the act is ignored and warnings do not work, the member is – usually – first exiled from the forum for a number of days. Denying someone access to the site is called a
ban. Bans can mean the person can no longer log in or even view the site anymore. If the offender, after the warning sentence, repeats the offense, another ban is given, usually this time a longer one. Continuous harassment of the site eventually leads to a permanent ban. In most cases, this means simply that the account is locked. In extreme cases where the offender – after being permanently banned – creates another account and continues to harass the site, administrators will apply an
IP address ban or block (this can also be applied at the server level): If the IP address is static, the machine of the offender is prevented from accessing the site. In some extreme circumstances, IP address range bans or country bans can be applied; this is usually for political, licensing, or other reasons. See also:
Block (Internet),
IP address blocking, and
Internet censorship. Offending content is usually deleted. Sometimes if the topic is considered the source of the problem, it is
locked; often a poster may request a topic expected to draw problems to be locked as well, although the moderators decide whether to grant it. In a
locked thread, members cannot post anymore. In cases where the topic is considered a breach of rules it – with all of its posts – may be deleted.
Troll Forum
trolls are users that repeatedly and deliberately breach the
netiquette of an established online community, posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages to bait or excite users into responding or to test the forum rules and policies, and with that the patience of the forum staff. Their provocative behavior may potentially start
flame wars (see below) or other disturbances. Responding to a troll's provocations is commonly known as 'feeding the troll' and is generally discouraged, as it can encourage their disruptive behavior.
Sock puppet The term sock puppet refers to multiple pseudonyms in use by the same person on a particular message board or forum. The analogy of a sock puppet is of a puppeteer holding up both hands and supplying dialogue to both puppets simultaneously. A typical use of a sockpuppet account is to agree with or debate another sockpuppet account belonging to the same person, for the purposes of reinforcing the puppeteer's position in an argument. Sock puppets are usually found when an
IP address check is done on the accounts in forums.
Spamming Forum spamming is a breach of netiquette where users repeat the same word or phrase over and over, but differs from multiple posting in that spamming is usually a willful act that sometimes has malicious intent. This is a common trolling technique. It can also be traditional
spam, unpaid
advertisements that are in breach of the forum's rules. Spammers utilize a number of illicit techniques to post their spam, including the use of
botnets. Some forums consider concise, comment-oriented posts spam, for example
Thank you,
Cool or
I love it.
Double posting One common
faux pas on Internet forums is to post the same message twice. Users sometimes post versions of a message that are only slightly different, especially in forums where they are not allowed to edit their earlier posts. Multiple posting instead of editing prior posts can artificially inflate a user's post count. Multiple posting can be unintentional; a user's browser might display an error message even though the post has been transmitted or a user of a slow forum might become impatient and repeatedly hit the submit button. An offline editor may post the same message twice. Multiple posting can also be used as a method of
trolling or spreading
forum spam. A user may also send the same post to several forums, which is termed
crossposting. The term derives from Usenet, where crossposting was an accepted practice but causes problems in web forums, which lack the ability to link such posts so replies in one forum are not visible to people reading the post in other forums.
Necroposting A
necropost is a message that revives (as in
necromancy) an arbitrarily old thread, causing it to appear above newer and more active threads (similar to
bumping). This practice is generally seen as a breach of netiquette on most forums. Because old threads are not usually locked from further posting, necroposting is common for newer users and in cases where the date of previous posts is not apparent.
Word censor A
word censoring system is commonly included in the forum software package. The system will pick up words in the body of the post or some other user-editable forum element (like user titles), and if they partially match a certain keyword (commonly no
case sensitivity) they will be censored. The most common censoring is letter replacement with an
asterisk character. For example, in the user title, it is deemed inappropriate for users to use words such as "admin", "moderator", "leader" and so on. If the censoring system is implemented, a title such as "forum leader" may be filtered to "forum ******". Rude or vulgar words are common targets for the censoring system. But such auto-censors can make mistakes, for example censoring "
wristwatch" to "wris****ch", "
Scunthorpe" to "S****horpe or "
Essex" to "Es***".
Flame wars When a thread—or in some cases, an entire forum—becomes unstable, the result is usually uncontrolled spam in the form of one-line complaints,
image macros, or abuse of the report system. When the discussion becomes heated and sides do nothing more than complain and not accept each other's differences in point of view, the discussion degenerates into what is called a
flame war. To
flame someone means to go off-topic and attack the person rather than their opinion. Likely candidates for flame wars are usually religion and socio-political topics, or topics that discuss pre-existing rivalries outside the forum (e.g., rivalry between games, console systems, car manufacturers, nationalities, etc.). When a topic that has degenerated into a flame war is considered akin to that of the forum (be it a section or the entire board), spam and flames have a chance of spreading outside the topic and causing trouble, usually in the form of vandalism. Some forums (commonly game forums) have suffered from forum-wide flame wars almost immediately after their conception, because of a pre-existing
flame war element in the
online community. Many forums have created devoted areas strictly for discussion of potential flame war topics that are moderated like normal.
Registration or anonymity Many Internet forums require registration to post. Registered users of the site are referred to as
members and are allowed to submit or send electronic messages through the
web application. The process of registration involves verification of one's age (typically age 13 and over is required so as to meet
COPPA requirements of American forum software) followed by a declaration of the
terms of service (other documents may also be present) and a request for agreement to said terms. Subsequently, if all goes well, the candidate is presented with a
web form to fill requesting at the very least a
username (an alias), password, email and validation of a
CAPTCHA code. While simply completing the registration
web form is in general enough to generate an account, the status label
Inactive is commonly provided by default until the registered user confirms the email address given while registering indeed belongs to the user. Until that time, the registered user can log into the new account but may not
post,
reply, or send
private messages in the forum. Sometimes a
referrer system is implemented. A
referrer is someone who introduced or otherwise "helped someone" with the decision to join the site (likewise, how a
HTTP referrer is the site who linked one to another site). Usually, referrers are other forum members and members are usually rewarded for referrals. The referrer system is also sometimes implemented so that, if a visitor visits the forum through a link such as referrerid=300, the user with the id number (in this example, 300) would receive referral credit if the visitor registers. The purpose is commonly just to give credit (sometimes rewards are implied) to those who help the community grow. In areas such as
Japan, registration is frequently optional and anonymity is sometimes even encouraged. On these forums, a
tripcode system may be used to allow verification of an
identity without the need for formal registration. People who regularly read the forum discussions but do not register or do not post are often referred to as "lurkers". ==Comparison with other web applications==