Message Board

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Synonyms: Discussion Board, Forum, Bulletin Board
See also: Mailing List, Usenet, Internet Relay Chat, Livejournal, ProBoards
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Message boards, discussion boards, or web forums (sometimes shortened to just "forums") are a type of text-based website that enables asynchronous discussion between multiple users. Messageboards, and their precursor, bulletin boards, have been used by many different fandoms since the nineties.

a July 1990 flyer advertising Trek Net

Fannish Use of Bulletin Board Systems

Before the World Wide Web, a precursor to modern web forums existed called bulletin board systems. The name "bulletin board" carried over to some web forums, but the technology is quite different. "A bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer server running custom software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through email, public message boards, and sometimes via direct chatting.... Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social networks and other aspects of the Internet." [1]

While the first dial-up BBSs was invented in 1978, BBSs, as most fans know them, began in the early 1990s. It has been estimated that there were 60,000 BBS systems serving 17 million users in the US alone in 1994. Many people put these BBSs to use for fannish reasons.

See:

These are still decently popular in countries such as Taiwan.

Fannish Use of Web Forums

Despite being an important site of fan discussion and interpersonal connection, they were often considered a poor mechanism for sharing and archiving fanfiction. That said, the main Willow/Tara (BtVS) archive, Different Colored Pens, is hosted on a The Kitten Board message board. Alternatively, message boards were frequently used for Round Robins and roleplaying; there are still some forum-based RPGs ongoing.

The use of fan-run message boards for hosting fanworks lessened greatly with the dispersal of fandom to social networking and archiving sites such as Livejournal and Fanfiction.net, and with the loss of free services such as Inside The Web[2]. But as television and production companies became more internet savvy, discussion forums began appearing on official television show sites[3]. Fan-run sites like Gateworld often have close ties to the producers of the source program. Their discussion forums often host vibrant discussion of the source, fandom and fanworks and, in the case of shows like SGU that never took off in media fandom, these forums have a lot more traffic than their counterparts on journaling sites.

The popularity of the format also varies widely between different parts of fandom. Some fandoms with only a small presence on sites like Livejournal may have large, active forums. This is often cited as a major difference between anime fandom and media fandom.

Collaborative vidding groups often used forums to coordinate MEP signups and submissions. While many of these groups later migrated to Discord, some still use private forums.

Forums such as ones hosted on the Jcink Forum Hosting service were common from the late 2010s and are common now in the early 2020s for a variety of RP types such as crossovers (or panfandom, when referring to a specific type of RP world usually about placing a ton of disparate characters into a plane outside of reality with less powerful natives).

See Also

There have been many notable fandom message boards. Here are some examples:

External Links

References

  1. ^ from Wikipedia
  2. ^ Inside the Web, or ITW
  3. ^ List of TNT forums accessed October 27, 2020
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