Terminology: Forum or Board

[melissapotvin]

 I’m finding the term ”Forum” and “Board”  are  used interchangeably and I can’t decide which I prefer best to use on our community.  

Is there any best practice on this?  which term is more recognizable globally ?

 any other thoughts I might consider? 

[Parshant]

Hi @melissapotvin,

Boards are where community members interact as they read and post messages. Boards are another type of container. They contain discussions and different types of boards (forums, blogs, knowledge bases, and so on) provide different feature sets and interactions depending on the type of discussion that the board manages.

Discussions have a discussion style (also referred to as interaction style or conversation style), one of discussion style is Forum.

You can see more information here :

https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Forums/About-forums/ta-p/109153

https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Community-structure/Create-a-board/ta-p/108491

https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Forums/Create-a-forum/ta-p/109149

[CarolineS]

I use “board” for an individual discussion area - like “this thread is better suited to the Security board, so I’m moving it there,” while “forum” seems more appropriate as a term for the whole community - “take a look at our technical forum!” (When the word “community” doesn’t seem quite right for whatever reason, like you’re explaining what the community is, or you’re talking specifically about the discussion-heavy areas of the community). I suppose I think of a forum as a collection of boards. Dunno if this terminology use is common / standard, but it has worked for me. 

[JasonHill]

Yep, I'm with @CarolineS.  A board is singular, a forum is plural - a collection of boards. You'll often see "community forum" or just "forum" used to describe an entire site. 

Jason

[Wendy_S]

Ditto that.

Forum/community is like a house/home where the boards are like the rooms where people have different discussions.

Reminded me of the Friends series a little where groups of people have different discussions in Monica's house.

Cheers

Wendy

[AbhishekIlindra]

Hi @melissapotvin: 

Normally we use Board as the suffix for all interaction styles.  We use Forums or Discussion for it.

Thanks,

Abhishek 

[melissapotvin]

Thanks, I understand how they are different. My question is more around usage of terminology and what is more understood globally.  I would not expect members not experienced with Lithium to care care about the method by which Lithium requires we set up our structure.   

[melissapotvin]

lol, can't go wrong with a friends analogy 🙂