An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion platform where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. 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 publicly visible.
Forums have a specific set of jargon associated with them; for example, a single conversation is called a "thread" or "topic". The name comes from the forums of Ancient Rome.
