forum
1. (in South Africa) a pressure group of leaders or representatives, esp Black leaders or representatives
2. (in ancient Italy) an open space, usually rectangular in shape, serving as a city's marketplace and centre of public business
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
Forum
A Roman public square surrounded by monumental buildings, usually including a basilica and a temple; the center of civic life was often purely commercial.
Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture Copyright © 2012, 2002, 1998 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
forum
[′fȯr·əm] (computer science)
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
forum
forum of Trajan, Rome, circa 110 A.D.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
forum
(messaging)(Plural "fora" or "forums") Any discussion group
accessible through a dial-in BBS (e.g. GEnie, CI$), a
mailing list, or a Usenet newsgroup (see network, the). A forum functions much like a bulletin board; users
submit postings for all to read and discussion ensues.
Contrast real-time chat or point-to-point personal e-mail.
Contrast real-time chat or point-to-point personal e-mail.
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
Internet forum
A website that provides an online exchange of information between people about a particular topic. It provides a venue for questions and answers and may be monitored to keep the content appropriate. Also called a "discussion board" or "discussion group," an Internet forum is similar to an Internet newsgroup (see below), but uses the Web browser for access. Before the Web, text-only forums were common on bulletin boards and proprietary online services. However, Internet forums include all the extras people expect from the Web, including images, videos, downloads and links, sometimes functioning as a mini-portal on the topic.Forums can be entirely anonymous or require registration with username and password. Messages may be displayed in chronological order of posting or in question-answer order where all related answers are displayed under the question (see message thread).
Forums/Newsgroups vs. Chat Rooms
Forums are like Usenet "newsgroups," the original Internet discussion groups, and both systems keep postings online for some period of time. Users can scroll back in time and do not have to be logged in the moment they are posted. In contrast, chat rooms are interactive, real-time sessions, and users must be present to read them. See newsgroup and chat room.
Turn a Site into a Forum
There is a variety of forum creation software for the Web, typically written in Java, PHP, Perl or ASP. The software can be used to create forum-only sites or to add a discussion section to any Web page. See Google Groups and Reddit.
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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Forum
in the cities of Ancient Rome, the main city square, which functioned as the marketplace and the center of political life. In Rome itself, there were several forums that served only as marketplaces. Forums usually contained the temples of the patron gods of the city, basilicas for legal proceedings and other purposes, and buildings for senate or city government meetings. The squares were surrounded by porticoes and decorated with statues. In the imperial period the number of forums increased, and the forum in Rome gradually became a complex ceremonial ensemble dedicated to the military glory of the emperor Trajan.
In a figurative sense, a forum is an assembly or public meeting.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.