Wednesday, October 7, 2015

LIFE SKILLS

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LIFESKILLS EDUCATION  
Adolescence, a vital stage of growth and development, marks the period of transition from childhood to adulthood. It is characterized by rapid physiological changes and psychosocial maturation. Adolescence is also the stage when young people extend their relationships beyond parents and family and are intensely influenced by their peers and the outside world in general. As adolescents mature cognitively, their mental process becomes more analytical. They are now capable of abstract thinking, better articulation and of developing an independent ideology. These are truly the years of creativity, idealism, buoyancy and a spirit of adventure. But these are also the years of experimentation and risk-taking, of giving in to negative peer pressure, of taking uninformed decisions on crucial issues, especially relating to their bodies and their sexuality. Adolescence is thus a turning point in one’s life, a period of increased potential but also one of greater vulnerability.   
KEY ISSUES & CONCERNS OF ADOLESCENT STUDENTS  
Developing an Identity   # Self – awareness helps adolescents understand themselves and establish their personal identity. Lack of information and skills prevent them from effectively exploring their potential and establishing a positive image and sound career perspective.  
Managing Emotions # Adolescents have frequent mood changes reflecting feelings of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, shame, guilt, and love. Very often, they are unable to understand the emotional turmoil. # They do not have a supportive environment in order to share their concerns with others. Counseling facilities are not available.     
  
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Building Relationships # As a part of growing up, adolescents redefine their relationships with parents, peers and members of the opposite sex. Adults have high expectations from them and do not understand their feelings. # Adolescents need social skills for building positive and healthy relationships with others including peer of opposite sex. They need to understand the importance of mutual respect and socially defined boundaries of every relationship.  
Resisting Peer Pressure # Adolescents find it difficult to resist peer pressure. Some of them may yield to these pressures and engage in experimentation. # Aggressive self conduct; irresponsible behaviour and substance abuse involve greater risks with regard to physical and mental health. # The experiment with smoking and milder drugs can lead to switching over to hard drugs and addiction at a later stage.  
Acquiring Information, Education and Services on issues of Adolescence   # Exposure to media and mixed messages from the fast changing world have left adolescents with many unanswered questions # The widening gap in communication between adolescents and parents is a matter of great concern. # Teachers still feel inhibited to discuss issues frankly and sensitively. # Adolescents seek information from their peer group who are also ill informed and some may fall prey to quacks. # Fear and hesitation prevents them from seeking knowledge on preventive methods and medical help if suffering from RTIs and STIs.  
Communicating and Negotiating safer life situations  # Sexually active adolescents face greater health risks. # Girls may also face mental and emotional problems related to early sexual initiation. 
  
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# Resisting the vulnerability to drug abuse, violence and conflict with law or society. 
Understanding Life Skills – A Teacher’s prospective   
Life skills have been defined as “the abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life” (WHO). ‘Adaptive’ means that a person is flexible in approach and is able to adjust in different circumstances. ‘Positive behaviour’ implies that a person is forward looking and even in difficult situations, can find a ray of hope and opportunities to find solutions.   
The terms ‘Livelihood skills’ or occupational/vocational skills refer to capabilities, resources and opportunities to pursue individual and household economic goals and relate to income generation. Thus, Life skills are distinct from livelihood skills.    
Key Life Skills  
Life skills include psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with managing their lives in a healthy and productive manner. Essentially, there are two kinds of skills - those related to thinking termed as "thinking skills"; and skills related to dealing with others termed as "social skills". While thinking skills relate to reflection at a personal level, social skills include interpersonal skills and do not necessarily depend on logical thinking. It is the combination of these two types of skills that are needed for achieving assertive behaviour and negotiating effectively. “Emotional” can be perceived as a skill not only in making rational decisions but also in being able to make others agree to one's point of view. To do that, coming to terms first with oneself is important. Thus, selfmanagement is an important skill including managing/coping with feelings, emotions, stress and resisting peer and family pressure. Young people as advocates need both thinking and social skills for consensus building and advocacy on issues of concern.    
  
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The Ten core Life Skills as laid down  by WHO are:  1. Self-awareness   2. Empathy 3.  Critical thinking   4. Creative thinking 5. Decision making   6. Problem Solving 7. Effective communication  8. Interpersonal relationship 9. Coping with stress   10. Coping with emotion  
 Self-awareness includes recognition of ‘self’, our character, our strengths and 
weaknesses,  desires and dislikes. Developing self-awareness can help us to recognize when we are stressed  or feel under pressure. It is often a prerequisite to effective communication and interpersonal  relations, as well as for developing empathy with others.  
 Empathy - To have a successful relationship with our loved ones and society at large, 
we  need to understand and care about other peoples’ needs, desires and feelings. Empathy is the  ability to imagine what life is like for another person. Without empathy, our communication with others will amount to one-way traffic. Worst, we will be acting and behaving according  to our self-interest and are bound to run into problems. No man is an island, no woman either!  We grow up in relationships with many people – parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles  and aunts, classmates, friends and neighbours.   
 When we understand ourselves as well as others, we are better prepared to communicate our  needs and desires. We will be more equipped to say what we want people to know, present  our thoughts and ideas and tackle delicate issues without offending other people. At the same  time, we will be able to elicit support from others, and win their understanding.   
 Empathy can help us to accept others, who may be very different from ourselves. This can  improve social interactions, especially, in situations of ethnic or cultural diversity. 
  
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Empathy  can also help to encourage nurturing behaviour towards people in need of care and assistance,  or tolerance, as is the case with AIDS sufferers, or people with mental disorders, who may be stigmatized and ostracized by the very people they depend upon for support.   
 Critical thinking is an ability to analyze information and experiences in an objective 
 manner. Critical thinking can contribute to health by helping us to recognize and assess the  factors that influence attitudes and behaviour, such as values, peer pressure and the media.    
 Creative thinking is a novel way of seeing or doing things that is characteristic of 
four  components – fluency (generating new ideas), flexibility (shifting perspective easily),  originality (conceiving of something new), and elaboration (building on other ideas).    
 Decision making helps us to deal constructively with decisions about our lives. This 
can  have consequences for health. It can teach people how to actively make decisions about their  actions in relation to healthy assessment of different options and, what effects these different  decisions are likely to have.   
 Problem solving helps us to deal constructively with problems in our lives. 
Significant  problems that are left unresolved can cause mental stress and give rise to accompanying  physical strain.   
 Interpersonal relationship skills help us to relate in positive ways with the people 
we  interact with. This may mean being able to make and keep friendly relationships, which can  be of great importance to our mental and social well-being. It may mean keeping, good  relations with family members, which are an important source of social support. It may also  mean being able to end relationships constructively.  
  
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 Effective communication means that we are able to express ourselves, both 
verbally and  non-verbally, in ways that are appropriate to our cultures and situations. This means being  able to express opinions and desires, and also needs and fears. And it may mean being able to  ask for advice and help in a time of need. Â Coping with stress means recognizing the sources of stress in our lives, recognizing 
how  this affects us, and acting in ways that help us control our levels of stress, by changing our  environment or lifestyle and learning how to relax.     Â Coping with emotions means involving recognizing emotions within us and 
others, being  aware of how emotions influence behaviour and being able to respond to emotions  appropriately. Intense emotions like anger or sadness can have negative effects on our health  if we do not respond appropriately.    
  
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ÂImportant FAQs:  
(a) How are Life Skills important for growing minds?  
We find that behaviour does not always follow the mind. This is when incidents of “I know but I can’t help it” occur. What we need is the ability to act responsibly. Life skills enable us to translate knowledge, attitudes and values into actual abilities.  
(b) Why is there a need for Life Skills Education?  
The host of factors that promote high risk behaviour such as alcoholism, drug abuse and casual relationships are boredom, rebellion, disorientation, peer pressure and curiosity. The psychological push factors such as the inability to tackle emotional pain, conflicts, frustrations and anxieties about the future are often the driving force for high risk behaviour. Life skills training is an efficacious tool for empowering the youth to act responsibly, take initiative and take control. It is based on the assumption that when young people are able to rise above emotional impasses arising from daily conflicts, entangled relationships and peer pressure, they are less likely to resort to anti social or high risk behaviours.  
(c) Who needs Life Skills?  
The Life Skills programme is a school based programme where Life Skills are imparted in a supportive learning environment. They are applicable for all ages of children and adolescents in school. However, the age group targeted is mainly 10-18, adolescent years, since young people of this age 
  
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group seem to be most vulnerable to behaviour related health problems. The programme is for the promotion of health and well being and targeted group is all children.   
(d) How are they imparted? The method used in teaching of Life Skills builds upon the social learning theory and on what we know of how young people learn from their environment; from observing how others behave and what consequences arise from behaviour.  
It involves the process of Participatory learning using 4 basic components:  1. Practical activities  2. Feedback and reflections   3. Consolidation and reinforcement  4. Practical application to day to day life challenges   
(e) Peer Educators Approach? The peer training approach, involves one teacher and 3-4 student representatives from each school (forming the core life skills team) at the school. They learn these skills through active learning and participation in a 6 session inter school training workshop programme. They further train their peers at school in these skills through the same process. They follow up with the main resource team for feedback, discussions, training material etc.  
(f) Different methods that can be used to enhance Life Skills in students? Each workshop is specially designed to impart a particular skill and involves all or some of the following techniques: 
  
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ƒ Class discussions ƒ Brainstorming ƒ Demonstration and guided practice ƒ Role plays ƒ Audio and visual activities, e.g., arts, music, theatre, dance 
ƒ Small groups ƒ Educational games and simulations ƒ Case studies ƒ Story telling ƒ Debates 
ƒ Decision mapping or problem trees   
KEY STEPS IN LIFE SKILLS APPLICATION                      
Defining and Promoting Life Skills  
• Defining the skills: What skills are most relevant to influencing a targeted behaviour or condition; what will the student be able to do if the skill-building exercises are successful?  
• Generating positive and negative examples of how the skills might be applied  
• Encouraging verbal rehearsal and action  
• Correcting misperceptions about what the skill is and how to do it. 
Promoting Skills Acquisition and Performance  
• Providing opportunities to observe Life skills being applied effectively  
• Providing opportunities for practice with coaching and feedback.  
• Evaluating performance.  
• Providing feedback and recommendations for corrective action. 
Fostering Skill Maintenance/Generalisation  
• Providing opportunities   • Fostering self – evaluation and skill adjustment. 
  
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MATRIX OF LIFE SKILLS IN A CLASSROOM  
TEACHING METHOD 
DESCRIPTION BENEFITS PROCESS 
CLASS DISCUSSION (In small or large groups) 
The class examines a problem or topic of interest with the goal of better understanding an issue or skill, reaching the best solution, or developing new ideas and directions for the group. 
Provides opportunities for students to learn from one another and practice turning to one another in solving problems. Enables students to deepen their understanding of the topic and personalize their connection to it. Helps develop skills in listening, assortiveness, and empathy. 
• Decide how to arrange seating for discussion • Identify the goal of the discussion and communicate it clearly  • Pose meaningful, open-ended questions. • Keep track of discussion progress 
BRAIN STORMING Students actively generate a broad variety of ideas about a particular topic or question in a given, often brief period of time. Quantity of ideas is the main objective of brain storming. Evaluating or debating the ideas occurs later. 
Allows students to generate ideas quickly and spontaneously. Helps students use their imagination and break loose from fixed patterns of response. Good discussion starter because the class can creatively generate ideas. It is essential to evaluate the pros and cons of each idea or rank ideas according to certain criteria. 
• Designate a leader and a recorder • State the issue or problem and ask for ideas • Students may suggest any idea that comes to mind • Do not discuss the ideas when they a first suggested • Record ideas in a place where everyone can see them • After brainstorming, review the ideas and add, delete, categorise  
  
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ROLE PLAYS Role play is an informal dramatization in which people act out a suggested situation. 
Provides an excellent strategy for practicing skills; experiencing how one might handle a potential situation in real life; increasing empathy for others and their point of view; and increasing insight into one’s own feelings. 
• Describe the situation to be role played • Select role players • Give instructions to role players • Start the role play • Discuss what happened    
TEACHING METHOD 
DESCRIPTION BENEFITS PROCESS 
SMALL GROUP/BUZZ GROUP 
For small group work, a large class is divided into smaller groups of six or less and given a short time to accomplish a task, carry out an action, or discuss a specific topic, problem or question. 
Useful when groups are large and time is limited.  Maximises student input. Lets students get to know one another better and increases the likelihood that they will consider how another person thinks. Helps students hear and learn form their peers. 
• State the purpose of discussion and the amount of time available • Form small groups • Position seating so that members can hear each other easily • Ask group to appoint recorder • At the end have recorder describe the group’s discussion  
  
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GAMES AND SIMULATIONS 
Students play games as activities that can be used for teaching content, critical thinking, problem solving and decision making and for review and reinforcement. Simulations are activities structured to feel like the real experience.  
Games and simulations promote fun, active learning, and rich discussion in the classroom as participants work hard to prove their points or earn points. They require the combined use of knowledge, attitudes, and skills and allow students to test out assumptions and abilities in relatively safe environment. 
Games: • Remind students that the activity is meant to be enjoyable and that it does not matter who wins  Simulations: • Work best when they are brief and discussed immediately • Students should be asked to imagine themselves in a situation or should play a structured game of activity to experience a feeling that might occur in another setting 
  
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SITUATION ANALYSIS AND CASE STUDIES 
Situation analysis activities allow students to think about, analyse, and discuss situations they might encounter. Case studies are real life stories that describe in detail what happened to a community, family school, or individual. 
Situation analysis allows students to explore problems and dilemmas and safely test solutions; it provides opportunities to work together, share ideas, and learn that people sometimes see things differently.  Case studies are powerful catalysts for thought and discussion. Students consider the forces that converge to make an individual or group act in one way or another, and then evaluate the consequences. By engaging in this thinking process, students can improve their own decision making skills.  Case studies can be tied to specific activities to help students practice healthy responses before they find themselves confronted with a health risk.   
• Guiding questions are useful to spur thinking and discussion • Facilitator must be adept at teasing out the key points and step back and pose some ‘bigger’ overarching questions • Situation analyses and case studies need adequate time for processing and creative thinking • Teacher must act as the facilitator and coach rather than the sole source of ‘answer’ and knowledge.                      
  
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TEACHING METHOD 
DESCRIPTION BENEFITS PROCESS 
DEBATES In a debate, a particular problem or issue is presented to the class, and students must take a position on resolving the problem or issue. The class can debate as a whole or in small groups. 
Provides opportunity to address a particular issue in depth and creatively. Health issues lend themselves well: students can debate, for instance, whether smoking should be banned in public places in a community. Allows students to defend a position that may mean a lot to them. Offers a chance to practice higher thinking skills. 
• Allow students to take positions of their choosing if too many students take the same position, ask for volunteers to take the opposing point of view • Provide students with time to research their topic. • Do not allow students to dominate at the expenses of other speakers. • Make certain that students show request for the opinions and thoughts of other debates. • Maintain control in the classroom and keep the debate on topic. 
STORY TELLING The instructor or students tell or read a story to a group. Pictures, comics and photo novels, filmstrips and slides can supplement. Students are encouraged to think about and discuss important (health related) points or methods raised by the story after it is told.  
Can help students think about local problems and develop critical thinking skills. Students can engage their creative skills in helping to write stories, or a group can work interactively to tell stories. Story telling lends itself to drawing analogies or making comparisons, helping people to discover healthy solutions. 
• Keep the story simple and clear. Make one or two main points. • Be sure the story (and pictures, if included) relate to the lives of the students. • Make the story dramatic enough to be interesting. Try to include situations of happiness, sadness, excitement, courage, serious thought, decisions, and problem solving behaviours.       
  
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Life skills-Commandments to Remember  
I read, I forget, I discuss, I remember, I do, I inculcate.  
1. Life skills are essentially those abilities that help promote overall wellbeing and competence in young people as they face the realities of life.  
2. Life skills are the beginning of wisdom which focuses on behaviour change or developmental approach designed to address a balance of three areas- knowledge, attitude and skills.  
3. Life skills enable individuals to translate knowledge, attitude and values into actual abilitiesi.e. what to do and how to do it, given the scope and opportunity to do so.  
4. Life skills however are not a panacea of  “how to do abilities” as they are not the only factors that affect behavour. There are many factors such as social support, culture and environment that affect motivation and ability to behave in positive ways.  
5. Effective acquisition and application of Life Skills can influence the way one feels about others, ourselves and will equally influence the way we are perceived by others. It contributes to perception of self confidence and self esteem.  
6. Life skills for psychosocial competence needs to be distinguished from other important skills that young people will acquire as they grow up such as reading, numbers, technical and livelihood skills.  
7. Life skills education involves a dynamic teaching process. The methods used to facilitate this active involvement includes working in small groups and pairs, brainstorming, role plays, games and debates.  
  
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“We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the foundation of life. Many of the things we need, can wait. The children cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed to him we cannot answer “Tomorrow”. His name is “Today”.   
Gabriela Mistral, 1948 
8. We all use Life Skills in different situations such as:  
a) To negotiate effectively at home, school or work place, we need to have thinking skills as well as social skills b)  When faced with difficult situations we tend to think critically , to analyze all the pros and cons of the situation to think out of box to find a solution to seemingly difficult problems.  
9. Many life skills are required to manage a particular situation effectively. In a way, various Life Skills work best in conjunction. In fact, the appropriate combination of Life Skills in a given moment is an art.  

10. Children learn their Life Skills from parents, teachers and significant others who act as their role model. They gradually learn to use a particular skill effectively in diverse situation to cope with challenges of life.  

Monday, October 5, 2015

Electronic Bulletin Boards

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ELECTRONIC BULLETIN BOARDS

What is the Electronic Bulletin Board (EBB)?

The Electronic Bulletin Board (EBB) is a communication system that allows parties to view pipeline information through personal computers and phone lines. An online connection allows information to be viewed on a screen to the user, and allows the user to react by entering data, requesting new data, and/or requesting files to be transferred. Order 636 mandated that pipelines institute user-friendly EBBs to provide shippers with timely information about available capacity.
Electronic bulletin boards (also known as message boards or computer forums) are communication systems online where one can share, request, or discuss information on just about any topic. While e-mail is a way to converse privately with one or more people over the Internet, electronic bulletin boards are totally public. Any message posted on one can be read (and responded to) by anyone else in the world who has access to the Internet or the particular online service that is providing the message board. A large collection of electronic bulletin boards is known as a newsgroup. Thousands of newsgroups exist on the World Wide Web, each dedicated to a single topic, making it easier for one to navigate through the information contained on it.
Electronic bulletin boards operate in a very simple manner. Any person can start a discussion on a particular topic and then wait for replies. These lines of discussion are known as threads. Some threads can go on endlessly, while other posts run the risk of getting no replies at all. The longer threads tend to find people responding to not only the original post, but to the subsequent replies as well. This can often lead to some confusion, since later posts in longer threads often have nothing to do with the original subject.
The main advantage of electronic bulletin boards is the fact that they are so public. Because of their accessibility, they give users the opportunity to get information from a huge number of sources, each with the possibility of a unique, original, and even global perspective. There are several disadvantages to electronic bulletin boards as well. Since they are so public and often unedited, they are almost like an open invitation for troublemakers whose sole intention seems to be to stir things up. The proliferation of unwanted ads (also known as spamming) is another problem for computer forums. Some online providers like AOL have board hosts whose sole job is to keep the peace and weed out irritating posts and threads. Also, most electronic bulletin boards do not keep an archive of each thread and post. Some may disappear over a period of time as new threads are started.

ELECTRONIC BULLETIN BOARDS AND THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

While electronic bulletin boards are often used for educational and recreational purposes, they also can come in handy for small business owners and self employed persons. Small businesses can discuss strategies and trends in the marketplace, recruit workers, place ads, get technical support, and share information on just about any subject that is pertinent to their business. Businesses can also set up their own electronic bulletin boards to help their operations run a bit more smoothly, but should be aware that messages posted there could lead to a variety of legal problems, including libel and sexual harassment.
Small business owners are also standing up and taking notice as to how electronic bulletin board messages are affecting their companies' standing in the stock market, as well as their reputations and branding image. Negative posts (whether they are true or not) can seriously affect the stock value of a company. As Patrick Collinson mentioned in an article that appeared in Retail Financial Strategies , a British company called IBNet is about to start marketing software which will alert a company each time any mention of it appears anywhere on the Internet. When the company learns that the information is false, they can request that it be removed and seek to identify who is posting the information. Collinson also mentions that Internet detectives can be employed to track down where such information is originating.


Read more: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Di-Eq/Electronic-Bulletin-Boards.html#ixzz3ngZ6EwRl

Internet forum


An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.[1] They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible.
Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; e.g., a single conversation is called a "thread", or topic.
A discussion forum is hierarchical or tree-like in structure: a forum can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as so wish.
Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log inin order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages.

History

The modern forum originated from bulletin boards, and so-called computer conferencing systems, and are a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system.[2][3] From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content.[3][4]
Early Internet forums could be described as a web version of an electronic mailing list or newsgroup (such as exist on Usenet); allowing people to post messages and comment on other messages. Later developments emulated the different newsgroups or individual lists, providing more than one forum, dedicated to a particular topic.[2]
Internet forums are prevalent in several developed countries. Japan posts the most[citation needed] with over two million per day on their largest forum, 2channel. China also has many millions of posts on forums such as Tianya Club.
Some of the very first forum systems were the Planet-Forum system, developed in the beginning of the 1970-s, the EIES system, first operational in 1976, and the KOM system, first operational in 1977.
One of the first forum sites, and still active today, is Delphi Forums, once called Delphi (online service). The service, with four million members, dates to 1983.
Forums perform a function similar to that of dial-up bulletin board systems and Usenet networks that were first created starting in the late 1970s.[2] Early web-based forums date back as far as 1994, with the WIT[5] project from W3 Consortium and starting from this time, many alternatives were created.[6] A sense of virtual community often develops around forums that have regular users. Technologyvideo gamessportsmusicfashionreligion, and politics are popular areas for forum themes, but there are forums for a huge number of topics. Internet slang and image macros popular across the Internet are abundant and widely used in Internet forums.
Forum software packages are widely available on the Internet and are written in a variety of programming languages, such as PHPPerlJava and ASP. The configuration and records of posts can be stored in text files or in a database. Each package offers different features, from the most basic, providing text-only postings, to more advanced packages, offering multimedia support and formatting code (usually known as BBCode). Many packages can be integrated easily into an existing website to allow visitors to post comments on articles.
Several other web applications, such as weblog software, also incorporate forum features. Wordpress comments at the bottom of a blog post allow for a single-threaded discussion of any given blog post. Slashcode, on the other hand, is far more complicated, allowing fully threaded discussions and incorporating a robust moderation and meta-moderation system as well as many of the profile features available to forum users.
Some stand alone threads on forums have reached fame and notability such as the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread on MovieCodec.com's forums, which was described as the "web's top hangout for lonely folk" by Wired Magazine.[7]

Structure

A forum consists of a tree like directory structure. The top end is "Categories". A forum can be divided into categories for the relevant discussions. Under the categories are sub-forums and these sub-forums can further have more sub-forums. The topics (commonly called threads) come under the lowest level of sub-forums and these are the places under which members can start their discussions or posts. Logically forums are organized into a finite set of generic topics (usually with one main topic) driven and updated by a group known as members, and governed by a group known as moderators.[citation needed] It can also have a graph structure.[8] All message boards will use one of three possible display formats. Each of the three basic message board display formats: Non-Threaded/Semi-Threaded/Fully Threaded, has its own advantages and disadvantages. If messages are not related to one another at all a Non-Threaded format is best. If a user has a message topic and multiple replies to that message topic a semi-threaded format is best. If a user has a message topic and replies to that message topic, and replies to replies, then a fully threaded format is best.[9]

User groups

Internally, Western-style forums organize visitors and logged in members into user groups. Privileges and rights are given based on these groups. A user of the forum can automatically be promoted to a more privileged user group based on criteria set by the administrator.[10] A person viewing a closed thread as a member will see a box saying he does not have the right to submit messages there, but a moderator will likely see the same box granting him access to more than just posting messages.[11]
An unregistered user of the site is commonly known as a guest or visitor. Guests are typically granted access to all functions that do not require database alterations or breach privacy. A guest can usually view the contents of the forum or use such features as read marking, but occasionally an administrator will disallow visitors to read their forum as an incentive to become a registered member.[note 1] A person who is a very frequent visitor of the forum, a section or even a thread is referred to as a lurker and the habit is referred to as lurking. Registered members often will refer to themselves as lurking in a particular location, which is to say they have no intention of participating in that section but enjoy reading the contributions to it.

Moderators

The moderators (short singular form: "mod") are users (or employees) of the forum who are granted access to the posts and threads of all members for the purpose ofmoderating discussion (similar to arbitration) and also keeping the forum clean (neutralizing spam and spambots etc.).[12] Moderators also answer users' concerns about the forum, general questions, as well as respond to specific complaints. Common privileges of moderators include: deleting, merging, moving, and splitting of posts and threads, locking, renaming, stickying of threads, banning, suspending, unsuspending, unbanning, warning the members, or adding, editing, removing the polls of threads.[13] "Junior Modding", "Backseat Modding", or "Forum copping" can refer negatively to the behavior of ordinary users who take a moderator-like tone in criticizing other members.
Essentially, it is the duty of the moderator to manage the day-to-day affairs of a forum or board as it applies to the stream of user contributions and interactions. The relative effectiveness of this user management directly impacts the quality of a forum in general, its appeal, and its usefulness as a community of interrelated users.

Administrator

The administrators (short form: "admin") manage the technical details required for running the site. As such, they may promote (and demote) members to/from moderators, manage the rules, create sections and sub-sections, as well as perform any database operations (database backup etc.). Administrators often also act as moderators. Administrators may also make forum-wide announcements, or change the appearance (known as the skin) of a forum. There are also many forums where administrators share their knowledge.[13]

Post

post is a user-submitted message enclosed into a block containing the user's details and the date and time it was submitted. Members are usually allowed to edit or delete their own posts. Posts are contained in threads, where they appear as blocks one after another. The first post starts the thread; this may be called the TS (thread starter) or OP (original post). Posts that follow in the thread are meant to continue discussion about that post, or respond to other replies; it is not uncommon for discussions to be derailed.
On Western forums, the classic way to show a member's own details (such as name and avatar) has been on the left side of the post, in a narrow column of fixed width, with the post controls located on the right, at the bottom of the main body, above the signature block. In more recent forum software implementations, the Asian style of displaying the members' details above the post has been copied.
Posts have an internal limit usually measured in characters. Often one is required to have a message of minimum length of 10 characters. There is always an upper limit but it is rarely reached – most boards have it at either 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, or 50,000 characters.
Most forums keep track of a user's postcount. The postcount is a measurement of how many posts a certain user has made.[14] Users with higher postcounts are often considered more reputable than users with lower postcounts, but not always. For instance some forums have disabled postcounts with the hopes that doing so will emphasize the quality of information over quantity.

Thread

thread (sometimes called a topic) is a collection of posts, usually displayed from oldest to latest, although this is typically configurable: Options for newest to oldest and for a threaded view (a tree-like view applying logical reply structure before chronological order) can be available. A thread is defined by a title, an additional description that may summarize the intended discussion, and an opening or original post (common abbreviation OP, which can also mean original poster), which opens whatever dialogue or makes whatever announcement the poster wished. A thread can contain any number of posts, including multiple posts from the same members, even if they are one after the other.

Bumping

A thread is contained in a forum, and may have an associated date that is taken as the date of the last post (options to order threads by other criteria are generally available). When a member posts in a thread it will jump to the top since it is the latest updated thread. Similarly, other threads will jump in front of it when they receive posts. When a member posts in a thread for no reason but to have it go to the top, it is referred to as a bump or bumping. It has been suggested that "bump" is an acronym of "bring up my post";[15] however, this is almost certainly a backronym and the usage is entirely consistent with the verb "bump" which means "to knock to a new position".[16]
On some messageboards, users can choose to sage (correctly pronounced /sa-ɣe/ though often confused as IPA: [seɪdʒ]) a post if they wish to make a post, but not "bump" it. The word "sage" derives from the 2channel terminology 下げる sageru, meaning "to lower".

Stickying

Threads that are important but rarely receive posts are stickyed (or, in some software, "pinned"). A sticky thread will always appear in front of normal threads, often in its own section. A "threaded discussion group" is simply any group of individuals who use a forum for threaded, or asynchronous, discussion purposes. The group may or may not be the only users of the forum.
A thread's popularity is measured on forums in reply (total posts minus one, the opening post, in most default forum settings) counts. Some forums also track page views. Threads meeting a set number of posts or a set number of views may receive a designation such as "hot thread" and be displayed with a different icon compared to other threads. This icon may stand out more to emphasize the thread. If the forum's users have lost interest in a particular thread, it becomes a dead thread.
Forums prefer a premise of open and free discussion and often adopt de facto standards. Most common topics on forums include questions, comparisons, polls of opinion as well as debates. It is not uncommon for nonsense or unsocial behavior to sprout as people lose temper, especially if the topic is controversial. Poor understanding of differences in values of the participants is a common problem on forums. Because replies to a topic are often worded aimed at someone's point of view, discussion will usually go slightly off into several directions as people question each other's validity, sources and so on. Circular discussion and ambiguity in replies can extend for several tens of posts of a thread eventually ending when everyone gives up or attention spans waver and a more interesting subject takes over. It is not uncommon for debate to end in ad hominem attacks.

Liabilities of owners and moderators

Several lawsuits have been brought against the forums and moderators claiming libel and damage. A recent case is the scubaboard lawsuit where a business in the Maldives filed a suit against scubaboard for libel and defamation in January 2010.
For the most part, though, forum owners and moderators in the United States are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

Common features

By default to be an Internet forum, the web application needs an ability to submit threads and replies. Typically, threads are in newer to older view, and replies in older to newer view.

Tripcodes and capcodes

Main article: Tripcode
In a tripcode system, a secret password is added to the user's name following a separator character (often a number sign). This password, or tripcode, is hashed into a special key, or trip, distinguishable from the name by HTML styles. Tripcodes cannot be faked but on some types of forum software they are insecure and can be guessed. On other types, they can be brute forced with software designed to search for tripcodes such as Tripcode Explorer.[17]
Moderators and administrators will frequently assign themselves capcodes, or tripcodes where the guessable trip is replaced with a special notice (such as "# Administrator"), or cap.

Private message

Main article: Personal message
private message, or PM for short, is a message sent in private from a member to one or more other members. The ability to send so-called carbon copies is sometimes available. When sending a carbon copy (cc), the users to whom the message is sent directly will not be aware of the recipients of the carbon copy or even if one was sent in the first place.[example 1]
Private messages are generally used for personal conversations. They can also be used with tripcodes—a message is addressed to a public trip and can be picked up by typing in the tripcode.

Attachment

An attachment can be almost any file. When someone attaches a file to a person's post they are uploading the file to the forum's server. Forums usually have very strict limit on what can be attached and what cannot (among which the size of the files in question). Attachments can be part of a thread, social group, etc.

BBCode and HTML

Main article: BBCode
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is sometimes allowed but usually its use is discouraged or when allowed, it is extensively filtered. Modern bulletin board systems often will have it disabled altogether[citation needed] or allow only administrators use it, as allowing it on any normal user level is considered a security risk due to a high rate of XSSvulnerabilities. When HTML is disabled Bulletin Board Code (BBCode) is the most common preferred alternative. BBCode usually consists of a tag, similar to HTML only instead of < and > the tagname is enclosed within square brackets (meaning: [ and ]). Commonly [i] is used for italic type[b] is used for bold[u] for underline,[color="value"] for color and [list] for lists, as well as [img] for images and [url] for links.
The following example BBCode: [b]This[/b] is [i]clever[/i] [b][i]text[/i][/b] when the post is viewed the code is rendered to HTML and will appear as: This isclever text.
Many forum packages offer a way to create Custom BBCodes, or BBcodes that are not built into the package, where the administrator of the board can create complex BBCodes to allow the use of JavaScript or iframe functions in posts, for example embedding a YouTube or Google Video complete with viewer directly into a post.

Emoticon

Main article: Emoticon
An emoticon or smiley is a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form. Forums implement a system through which some of the text representations of an emoticons (e.g. xD:p) are rendered as a small image. Depending on what part of the world the forum's topic originates (since most forums are international) smilies can be replaced by other forms of similar graphics, an example would be kaoani (e.g. *(^O^)*(^-^)b), or even text between special symbols (e.g. :blink:, :idea:).

Poll

Most forums implement an opinion poll system for threads. Most implementations allow for single-choice or multi-choice (sometimes limited to a certain number) when selecting options as well as private or public display of voters. Polls can be set to expire after a certain date or in some cases after a number of days from its creation. Members vote in a poll and a statistic is displayed graphically.

RSS and ATOM

Main article: Web feed
RSS and ATOM feeds allow a minimalistic means of subscribing to the forum. Common implementations allow RSS feeds to list only the last few threads updated for the forum index and the last posts in a thread.

Other features

An ignore list allows members to hide posts of other members that they do not want to see or have a problem with. In most implementations, they are referred to as foe list orignore list. Usually the posts are not hidden, but minimized with only a small bar indicating a post from the user on the ignore list is there.[18][19] Almost all Internet forums include a member list, which allows display of all forum members, with integrated search feature. Some forums will not list members with 0 posts, even if they have activated their accounts.
Many forums allow users to give themselves an avatar. An avatar is an image that appears beside all of a user's posts, in order to make the user more recognizable. The user may upload the image to the forum database, or may provide a link to an image on a separate website. Each forum has limits on the height, width, and data size of avatars that may be used; if the user tries to use an avatar that is too big, it may be scaled down or rejected.
Similarly, most forums allow users to define a signature (sometimes called a sig), which is a block of text, possibly with BBCode, which appears at the bottom of all of the user's posts. There is a character limit on signatures, though it may be so high that it is rarely hit. Often the forum's moderators impose manual rules on signatures to prevent them from being obnoxious (for example, being extremely long or having flashing images), and issue warnings or bans to users who break these rules. Like avatars, signatures may improve the recognizability of a poster. They may also allow the user to attach information to all of their posts, such as proclaiming support for a cause, noting facts about themselves, or quoting humorous things that have previously been said on the forum.
Common on forums, a subscription is a form of automated notification integrated into the software of most forums. It usually notifies either by email or on the site when the member returns. The option to subscribe is available for every thread while logged in. Subscriptions work with read marking, namely the property of unread, which is given to the content never served to the user by the software.
Recent development in some popular implementations of forum software has brought social network features and functionality. Such features include personal galleries, pages as well as a social network like chat systems.
Most forum software is now fully customizable with "hacks" or "modifications" readily available to customize a person's forum to theirs and their members' needs.
Often forums use "cookies", or information about the user's behavior on the site sent to a user's browser and used upon re-entry into the site. This is done to facilitate automatic login and to show a user whether a thread or forum has received new posts since his or her last visit. These may be disabled or cleared at any time.[20]

Rules and policies

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 American forum software contains such a system.[18][21] 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.[22]
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

Main article: Troll (Internet)
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

Main article: Sockpuppet (Internet)
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

Main article: Forum spam
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 youCool 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. 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

necropost is a message that revives (as in necromancy) an arbitrarily old thread, causing it to appear above newer and more active threads. 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

Main article: Scunthorpe problem
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 anasterisk 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.[23][24] But such auto-censors can make mistakes, for example censoring "wristwatch" to "wris****ch" and "Scunthorpe" to "S****horpe."

Flame wars

Main article: Flaming (Internet)
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

Nearly all 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 theweb application. The process of registration involves verification of one's age (typically over 12 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.[25][26][27] 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,[note 2] 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 in to the new account but may not postreply, or send private messages in the forum.

Internet Forums are used frequently in conjunction with multiplayer online games.
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 though a link such as referrerid=300, the user with the id number (in this example, 300) would receive referral credit if the visitor registers.[28] 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.[29] On these forums, atripcode system may be used to allow verification of an identity without the need for formal registration. People who do not register and/or post are often referred to as "lurkers".

Comparison with other web applications

Electronic mailing lists: The main difference between forums and electronic mailing lists is that mailing lists automatically deliver new messages to the subscriber, while forums require the reader to visit the website and check for new posts. Because members may miss replies in threads they are interested in, many modern forums offer an "e-mail notification" feature, whereby members can choose to be notified of new posts in a thread, and web feeds that allow members to see a summary of the new posts using aggregator software. There are also software products that combine forum and mailing list features, i.e. posting and reading via email as well as the browser depending on the member's choice.
Newsreader: The main difference between newsgroups and forums is that additional software, a News client, is required to participate in newsgroups whereas using a forum requires no additional software beyond the web browser.
Shoutboxes: Unlike Internet forums, most shoutboxes do not require registration, only requiring an email address from the user. Additionally, shoutboxes are not heavily moderated, unlike most message boards.
Wiki: Unlike conventional forums, the original wikis allowed all users to edit all content (including each other's messages). This level of content manipulation is reserved for moderators or administrators on most forums. Wikis also allow the creation of other content outside the talk pages. On the other hand, weblogs and generic content management systems tend to be locked down to the point where only a few select users can post blog entries, although many allow other users to comment upon them. It should be noted that the Wiki hosting site known as Wikia has two features in operation, known as the Forum and Message Wall. The forum is used solely for discussion and works through editing, while the message wall works through posted messages more similar to a traditional forum.
Chat rooms and instant messaging: Forums differ from chats and instant messaging in that forum participants do not have to be online simultaneously to receive or send messages. Messages posted to a forum are publicly available for some time even if the forum or thread is closed, which is uncommon in chat rooms that maintain frequent activity.
One rarity among forums is the ability to create a picture album. Forum participants may upload personal pictures onto the site and add descriptions to the pictures. Pictures may be in the same format as posting threads, and contain the same options such as "Report Post" and "Reply to Post".