Web Forums The less than dramatic History of the Web Forums. Axel Huerta Morales. Carlos Alejandro Sánchez González 1
Transcript
Web Forums 1 The less than dramatic History of the Web Forums.
Axel Huerta Morales. Carlos Alejandro Snchez Gonzlez Instituto
Tecnologico de Tuxtepec. February 2014.
Web Forums 2 Abstract. In this document we are going to talk
about the web forums. How many are? The most important forums, the
different types, etc. Were not going to get complicated with this.
We are going to know their beginning as communication media between
people in the Net, some of their contributions to the current
expansion of the Internet and their current fight for existence
against the monstrous social networks like Facebook, Twitter and
Tumblr. Were not going to stop there, we also are going to see more
about this places of conflict, understanding, knowledge, drama,
adventure and laughs, all combined as only the Internet can do it.
Which is the most popular? Which is the oldest one? Which is the
ugliest one? How is that theyre still there despite Mark
Zuckerbergs (evil) Empire? All this questions and more are going to
be answered in the most understandable way possible, in order to
assimilate all this information in the most suitable way for the
readers.
Web Forums 3 Introduction Some of the first web forums were as
old as the Internet itself (between eighties and nineties). They
are descendants of the BBS news systems and existed as complements
of bigger websites, supplying the function that they still are,
being discussion sites. The majority are supported in PHP, PERL,
JAVA and HTML. Their true boom came when systems and tools for
forums began to appear. Anyone with a little knowledge and people
willing to help could get a free domain and host and open a forum
about whatever their minds wanted (even things outside of the Law).
It was all peace and harmony until Facebook and the Social Networks
make their appearance. But well see that part later. The main
motivation when doing this document, aside of getting a good
grading on this subject, is that the people knows a little more
about these places of the Net. That they dont stay with the bad
things traditional media paints on them. That theyre not places
where people shares porn, scams others, uploads pictures of
squashed puppies and more horrid things. They are not like that,
seriously (well, they sometime are in part). We are going to see
the good side of this sites and a little bit of the bad side as
much as the rules of the institution where I study allows me. Were
going to learn what they do in some of them and, as everything in
existence, how to be safe and sound when sailing on these turbulent
waters of the big ocean of the Internet.
Web Forums 4 Whats a forum? I can understand that you ask me
what a forum is, even when the Internet almost has 20 years
existing. Nowadays the first thing that lots of the new web users
do when they open their browser is step on Facebook. An Internet
forum, as the FAQs of the vBulletin community refers (vBulletin
Community, 2013), is a website where people could hold discussions
in the form of posted messages. Forums are not limited to just one
topic, they can hold a lot of them and if the webmaster make it so,
different topics at the same time. The true limit of what can be on
a forum is the storage capacity and performance of the server it is
hosted on. Known parts of a forum. Main page. It contains a short
welcome message to the site and shows about what topics or subjects
the forum is about. The login and user register buttons are in here
too, where you can modify the settings of your account. Sometimes
the sites aesthetics can be changed in here, in case the site
allows the user to do it. Pic. 1. - Main page of the phpBB Spain
forum.
Web Forums 5 Boards All the message threads are inside the
boards; ordered from the thread with more replies or the most
recent reply to the last. Generally the list of boards of the forum
is on the main page. If the boards attend distinct topics, the list
could have a short description for each one. Threads. The main
message of the topic and the consequent replies are contained in
the threads. The reply messages can implement the usage of font
styles and tools such as quotes, embedded videos, pictures, etc.
The users. So far the most important element of every forum and
website. Most of websites sorts their user bases in a hierarchic
rank order. The way this is ordered is decider by the webmaster;
this last one often is on top of the rank order, because or being
the one that manages the site. One more feature an a very important
port of the sense of freedom and the web neutrality, is the
possibility to allow a user to post new topics and messages
anonymously and without registration on the site. This feature can
be a double- edged blade, because it can propitiate the unwanted
spreading of malicious users or plainly annoying users. Well talk
about that later. Pic. 2. - Official announcements posts on the
phpBB Spain forum.
Web Forums 6 BBCodes. BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a
lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message
boards. The available tags are usually indicated by square brackets
([ ]) surrounding a keyword. Can be used to embed videos, post
pictures, change fonts and place quotes. BBCodes must be enabled by
the administrators, but it can be disabled from the message form
too. Pic. 3. - Example of the BBcode for quotes on the website
"Taringa!"
Web Forums 7 How they work? Most of them just open their doors
praying that the search engines bring someone looking for something
to do. If what is in the page is of the liking of the new guy,
he/she comes back with friends. The forums live from their users
and need them, since domain names and hostings arent cheap, and the
free ones sometimes are not good in performance. But where the
money comes? From the users. Sometimes they dont pay a cent for
joining, but if the webmaster gets the hold on, he can place ads so
he can pay the bills. If the site gets full of people, he get paid
more. How you think that Google reached the place on where it is?
With ads. Tons of them. When the resource is plentiful everything
can be enhanced even more, hiring personnel to help with the
never-ending duty of keeping the site up, kicking out the game the
trolls and spambots and keep providing a nice environment for the
users.
Web Forums 8 How can I make one? I want to make one! Hold your
horses. Creating a forum is easy but not as easy as it sounds. If
we want to have our first forum we need some things like: - Web
programming knowledge - Data Bases knowledge - How to create a
server or buy a hosting and domain or get free ones. - Time,
patience, and dedication. Although you can make one programming
everything from scratch, there are tools that shortens the task of
the forum building.
Web Forums 9 vBulletin. Pic. 4. - VBulletins logo Is a software
used to create web forums developed by vBulletin Solutions Inc. Its
based in PHP and MYSQL. Has great compatibility with plenty of
platforms, very flexible for modifications and offers very simple
management. It was created by James & John Percival Limm in
February 2000 as a rewriting of UBB. Its currently in the version
4.2.0 (released in May 25, 2012). VBulletin is used by many
companies such as Valve, Electronic Arts and Sony for their support
and customers services forums. Sadly for the open source
enthusiasts, vBulletin is a privative tool (costs US249.00). Of
course that there are free tools, were going to talk about that
soon. VBulletin comes with the next features: - Edit and add custom
BBCodes. - Install modifications through uploading; just by adding
files to the forum. - Install languages and translations through
uploading. - Install templates/skins (the aesthetical aspects of
the forum) through uploading. - Template modification through CSS
style sheets. - FAQ customization (Frequently Asked Questions). -
Creation of boards inside other boards.
Web Forums 10 phpBB. Pic. 5. - PhpBBs logo & slogan. PhpBB
is an Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language.
Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is free and
open source software. It was created by James Atkinson (no longer
in the dev. team) as a simple forum similar to UBB for his own
personal site in 2000. Later joined Nathan Coding & John Abela
after the phpBB CVS repository was migrated to SourceForge.net, and
worked in the beginning of the version 1.0.0, which was released
officially on December 9th 2000 (phpBB Group, n.d.). Currently its
on the version 3.0.12, released on September 28th 2013. As main
features of phpBB we have: - Totally free and Open Source. -
Unlimited forum and board creation. - Improvement on the
performance since its earlier version. - User registration and
field customization. - Multi-user private messages and message
folders. - User and post search. - Separated Admin and Mod panels.
- Poll creation with multi-answer support. - Profile for each user
with personal data. - Apply ban for definite or indefinite
time.
Web Forums 11 - Users can have friends or ignore them. Ignored
peoples messages are automatically hidden. - BBCode customization.
- Creation of user groups, moderators and administrators. -
Warnings and reports from user to the mods for inappropriate
content. - Create new fields for user profile info. - Edit from
admin panel the files of the used post. - Multi-fie adjunction. -
Free Mods (modifications, not the moderators) and styles created by
the community. - Easy rank creation and assignation by post or user
group. - Action logs for the users, mods and admins. - Database
backup and restore from the admin panel. As software requirements,
phpBB needs PHP in its version 4.3.3 or later and any of the
following Data Base Management Systems. MySQL 3.23+/4.0+/4.1+/5.0+
MySQLi (MySQL 4.1+/5.0+) PostgreSQL 7.3+ SQLite Firebird
1.5+/Interbase 7.1+ Oracle MSSQL 2000+ MSSQL 2000+ (ODBC) If you
want to learn how to user this valuable tools, in our Annexes
section you can visit the vBulletin and phpBB websites.
Web Forums 12 Existing types of forums. In practice there are
many types. Im not talking about all of them, but Im going to talk
about 2 of them that I consider relevant. Bulletin Boards. They are
built in a hierarchical tree structure; a forum can have many
boards and the boards can have a lot of threads and in the threads
are contained the messages and replies. They keep the usual
hierarchy of these sites. Administrator. Also referred as admins,
they are the ones that manage the technical features of the
website. As such, they are the ones that promote the common users
to moderators and, because it happens too, revoke their privileges
when deserve it. They also create and delete boards, manage the
rules and handle the websites databases to do backups. Sometimes
they work as moderators checking on the topics and assign penalties
to bad users. Pic. 6. - View of a phpBB forum as a moderator.
Web Forums 13 Moderators. Referred by everyone as mods, they
are the ones that moderate the discussions in the forum. They have
access to every thread and board so they can keep the topics in
proper order, spam-free and Safe for Work. The task of the mods
(and the admins) is critical, since their efficiency shows how the
site and user base environment is. From their behaving it depends
the users satisfaction. The final user. By a great margin the MOST
important. By default they have privileges to create, edit and
delete their own messages and posts. They have by only commitment
follow the site rules and report everything against them, either it
be spam, Not Safe for Work or illegal material or bad users.
Web Forums 14 Imageboard. Imageboars are a special kind of web
forum that works by uploading pictures. They were originally
created in Japan, but later began to appear in western. They share
the same purpose of Bulletin Boards; being discussion sites, with
the plus of the picture uploads. They have the same hierarchical
structures; boards and threads, ordered from the thread with the
newest reply to the last. Most important post are kept on top with
a sticky. The same is for the user hierarchies, with the plus of a
forth one called janitor. Janitors, as described by the 4chans
FAQs, are users between the final user and mods. They are given the
privileges to access the sites report system and can delete
messages and threads in their assigned board as well as request
users that deserve it to be sanctioned by the mod or admins (moot,
2003). One of their big features is the anonymity. Its not required
any kind or registration for posting on the site. This has its
advantages and disadvantages that are going to be shown. Pic. 7. -
Pictures thread in the /wg/ board (wallpapers) or the site
4chan.
Web Forums 15 Contributions of the forums to the Net. Without
doubt, the forums and discussion sites have played a starring role
on the evolution and expansion of the Internet, so much like in new
websites as in the web users themselves. There have been
contributions for the good and for the worse, and were going to see
why. The beginning of the social networks. Social Networks are
communications media that centers on finding people for making a
relationship online. They are formed by people who share a
relation, mainly friendship, keep interest, share common activities
or are interested on knowing and explore others likings. Social
network from their beginning have been taking features from forums,
chat rooms and more for integration of experiences and provide a
better service. An example of this is Facebook and one of its many
implementations and improvements, like allowing users to upload and
post replies with pictures; something taken from the Imageboards.
In the general thing the social networks owe other sites an even
others take ideas from social networks to improve and keep their
own user base. Pic. 8. - A message in Facebook with some
replies.
Web Forums 16 Freedom of expression and anonymity: Double-edged
blades. Websites, call it forums, blogs and social networks have
allowed people to express their ideas and opinions without fear to
consequences (part of the time). The anonymity has granted people
endangered by governments and criminal organizations the way to
make known their situation or the one of their city/region/country/
to the world. On the Internet there are no government, nor entity
that can censor the words or the people and will never be, even
with the excuses of the governments for controlling the web like
the fight against terrorism and watch for the security.
Unfortunately, freedom of speech and anonymity can play on the dark
side. Lots have been the cases of cyberbullying, scams and the like
in forums and social networks. People take advantage of these gifts
and play evilly. Why? Because anonymity and the media gives them
security. It makes them believe that therere not going to be
consequences for their actions, when the reality of anonymity its
made evident. Anonymity its not 100% anonymous. There are well
documented cases of people believing that being behind the PC
screen was giving them an invisibility cloak before their victims,
and that simply were followed the little crumbs of information left
behind, until they were found in real life, with IN REAL LIFE
consequences. Pic. 9. - This silly post on the board /b/ (Random)
is one of the safest things you can find in 4chan.
Web Forums 17 Anonymity isnt bad or evil, one just need to the
responsibility its usage entails. And from freedom of expression
you dont take advantage. As I heard once, Your freedom ends where
the others begins. Knowledge is power. Freedom of speech and though
are the main supports of science and the knowledge development.
Without them well be still burning witches and paying indulgences
to the church every Sunday (somehow were still doing that). Forums
and social networks provide the space in where to share new
knowledge nowadays and even an attentive audience that can become
both critics and supporters. Even there can be found people willing
to help too. For each kind of content there its a place for it
where you can show it and even get funds. This necessity gave place
for sites like Kickstarter, where people can find founding for
their projects by means of donations from the user community an
even big investors. In this the creator are 100% owners of their
work (intellectually). Pic. 10. - A scientific article linked on a
post of the scientific sub-reddit of Reddit.
Web Forums 18 The bad guys of the movie: Bad users and their
mess. There isnt a place that lacks someone mean. Its part of human
nature after all. There are evil or every kind, but nothing as bad
as the next ones. The trolls. An Internet troll is a person who
delights in sowing discord on the Internet. He (and it is usually
he) tries to start arguments and upset people (Campbell, 2001). The
consequences of their behavior vary depending on what they do or
say on a post. They just can derail the thread from the main topic,
make users fight each other or against him, or cause the whole post
to be deleted for derailing the main topic and make a complete
disaster from which a lot of people could be banned temporally or
forever, troll included. Sometimes they find their way back,
though. The best way to handle this individuals is not paying
attention. Its their main motivation after all. The mods and admins
can just ban tem permanently, using the IP address to prevent them
from returning. There are instances in where trolls cross the line
of legality, incurring in acts like cyberbullying, hacking, posting
Not Safe For Work or illegal material to generate reactions among
people. They can be reported to the competing authority when the
case. This last one can be complicated if their real information is
unknown. Anonymity playing in the dark site like we mentioned
before. Flaming. Generally caused by a troll or a polemic nature
topic. It is the hostile and insulting interaction between the
users, even becoming profane too. This occurrences are of special
concern for the users coexistence. The best way to handle this is
to have an efficient moderation team, as well as a
Web Forums 19 good report system for the users. The main
consequence of Flaming, as with trolls, is post deletion and user
ban. Spam It is not only a problem of emails. In a forum spam are
post that show content unrelated to the post or advertisements of
some kind (like in Pic 11). It can be links to malicious content
too, and it can affect the naive users. Generally its posted by
Spambots; automated programs that post this messages in quantity.
Often its a user doing it manually. Meanwhile manual spam can be
solved with the ban or the transgressor users, Spambots are A LOT
MORE faster and the mods might not be able to delete the great
amount of post or ban all the multiple robotic users. If the server
in which the forum is hosted is too small or slow the data could
become corrupted rendering useless the whole site. A great solution
for Spambots is the usage of CAPTCHAS. Pic. 11. - User making Spam
in a forum.
Web Forums 20 CAPTCHA is the acronym for Completely Automated
Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Is a type of
challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or
not the user is a human. The term was coined in 2000 by Luis von
Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper of Carnegie Mellon University
and John Langford of IBM (Engber, 2014). It consist on a deformed
text that the user must decipher and type correctly in order to
post his/her content or reply on a topic. It can be words or random
letters, numbers or symbols. With time people has made algorithms
to solve CAPTCHAs, and the same had increased their difficulty to
keep bots out the site. Pic. 12. - Example of a hybrid CAPTCHA of
text and image recognition.
Web Forums 21 The good one, the bad one and the ugly one. All
good things have their bad side, and this couldnt be more true for
the Internet and web forums. Although we have seen the cases of
trolls, flaming and spam, these are the some of the smaller
problems an even part of a daily basis of a few sites. The problem
comes when all this crosses the line of the legally, morally and
ethically correct. Freedom of expression plays for both sides. A
person can create a forum about cat pictures or advanced
programming, but someone else maybe thinks on one for porn, or
about how to create drugs or WORSE. Some of these sites, because of
their own nature hides on the Deep Web. The Deep Web is just the
region of the Internet that the search engines like Google dont
index on their searches. Google dont index them because they
communicate with different protocols and need special tools to
access. If the Internet isnt managed by any government, the Deep
Web is managed by no one. Being cautious is important for every web
user. There are LOTS of things out there and we dont know what can
harm us, the PC or both. One must walk through these alleyways with
wide open eyes, to see what we found. Even so, one can found new
friends on there. Its just matter of exploring without fear the
neighborhood.
Web Forums 22 Whats future holds for the forums? Very likely
the web forums are going to stay with us for much longer. Their
adaptability to changes makes them very lasting. Social Networks
will come and leave but the people will always like to argue. That
is what has keep them where they are. People always want to argue
about something, hold conversations and found people that think
alike. Whenever there are groups of people with something in
common, theyll want their own place to coexist healthily, or maybe
not.
Web Forums 23 Conclusion. We conclude this writing with the
same reiteration. The forums have been and will still be important
for the Internet. Their capacity for developing the critical
thinking has given to the people the power to understand a little
more the way in both the digital and real world work. It has given
them a place in where express their ideas, whether they are good or
bad, to all the people in the world. It has created the community
of Internet. The great village of the Web. The only one and true
democratic people. The forums, alongside the Social Networks has
given people something more than only watch the news, now they can
be part of the news. Now they can be part of the action. Now they
are part of the Internet. So you are if you have opened the browser
some time.
Web Forums 24 References. Campbell, T. (2001, Julio 13).
Internet trolls. Retrieved from Internet Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011026130853/http://members.aol.com/intwg/t
rolls.htm Engber, D. (2014, Enero 17). Who made that Captcha?
Retrieved from The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/magazine/who-made-that-
captcha.html?_r=0 moot. (2003). FAQ. Retrieved from 4chan:
http://www.4chan.org/faq#whojan phpBB Group. (n.d.). phpBB: A Brief
History. Retrieved from phpBB: Free and Open Source Forum Software:
https://www.phpbb.com/about/history/?sid=ee152fac1885983136e86eb8906
9507d vBulletin Community. (2013, Abril 19). vBulletin Community
Forum - FAQ: What is a bulletin board? Retrieved from
vBulletin.com:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/help?faq=vb3_board_usage#faq_vb3_forum
s_threads_posts
Web Forums 25 Annexes. vBulletin website.
http://www.vbulletin.com/en/ phpBB website (in English)
https://www.phpbb.com/ phpBB website (in Spanish)
http://www.phpbb-es.com/