FORUM Tambay

“…the young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions… “, is a quote I have taken from the signature of one member of a local internet forum. There are other interesting signatures, quotes from great men and women, some are excerpts from songs, some with photos of themselves, others of logos, or animated clips. I have learned a lot in the forums I joined. For example, I now know the meaning of EXIF regarding digital photography. I have read very good advice on how to bring up teenagers. I now know the procedure to make “balut”, and lots of other things I wanted to learn more of.
An Internet forum is an application in the web where a group of people can hold discussions and post user generated content. Other terms for this application is web forums, message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards. Forums or fora and boards may refer to the entire community or to a specific sub-forum dealing with a particular theme. Most fora deal with a distinct subject, for example, tsikot.com’s forum is about cars, PCARRD’s message board deals about agriculture, movieforumz.com discusses and rates movies, pitbulls-empire.com talk about pitbulls, etc. But within the forum, members may discuss an array of topics out of the main subject. Some fora have threads like “Anything under the sun”, “Out-of-topic Boards” or “Other things”, where members can discuss out of topic (OT) things. Messages within these sub-forums are then displayed either in chronological order or as individual discussions known as threads.
In a forum, a virtual community is developed when it has regular users or members. They follow a hierarchy corresponding to how many messages a user has posted. The more messages a member posts, the faster the promotion of rank in the forum. A new member may be called a newbie, and depending on the posts will go up to higher levels. For example, in www.baguiocityonline.com’s Dap-ay Forum, one starts out as Dap-ay Newcomer, then Dap-ay Passerby, then Dap-ay Regular, Dap-ay Tambay, Dap-ay Elder and then Lord of the Dap-ay. There are moderators, who supervise particular topics. They watch members’ posts whether they are going out of line and give corresponding sanctions such as banning the member or closing threads. There are also super moderators who supervise moderators. And at the top of the line are the administrators, who have the ability to edit, change, move or erase posts or threads, promote people to higher ranks.
A forum member can choose his own username and avatar. An avatar is an icon that will represent a user’s identity or personality. It can be his photograph, or a 2-D or 3-D graphic picture, maybe still or animated. A lot of usernames are created in accordance to the forum main topic. Example, in PCARRD Forum, someone uses the handle “maisfarmer” when posting messages under the “Corn Farming” topic, in tsikot.com forums, someone has the name “Ladyrider“, another one is “Pajerokid”.
Forums discuss an array of topics. You can read current events, political issues, weather reports, road situations, love and relationships, movie trends, the bestselling books, where to find the cheapest sweaters, formula for duck feed, and so much more. There are also dedicated forum threads where you can post advertisements. One can find the best deals in threads like these. Members are even given discounts. Some threads are for LFI or Looking For Items posts where members can advise you where to find items you are looking for.
Forums do not choose age, color, gender or profession. Anybody can join and be part of one or more virtual communities with members that share your interests. You can be yourself, or you can hide your identity. You can give advice or take some. You can earn friends or enemies. You can be whatever you want. So what are we waiting for? Tambay tayo sa forum!