I have been using forum boards for only the last 15 years. I know they have been around longer. A lot longer than many realize. Pulling a Ripley's Believe It or Not, forum boards have been around since 1981. They were known as Bulletin Boards until the WWW went up in October 1993. Or was it officially January 1994? I forget and rightly care anymore. If the latter, then the WWW celebrates its 25th anniversary this coming January. If the former, then this October, two months from now.

Anyway, I have posted a few times what I call my Third Commandment of Forum Board Reading/Perusing. Here is the list I had started compiling starting way back in 1992 and just never finished; the DOS-ASCII text file was date/time stamped 19920515143446, and for those who do not know, the format is YYYYMMDDhhmmss.

Rule #5 below has been updated already. Back when this was started, the posts were added sequentially, meaning you could not reply to a specifice post. If you were replying to a specific post, we had to actually write the text down by hand, then type it back in, then use the "@ [username]" method. Kind of like today at AR, but we did not have the "linking" capabilities offered by HTML. Remember, until 1994, we only had FidoNet (Wikipedia and Official Site) and BBS software using regular phone lines.

Any others?

1) Until proven otherwise, all persons on a forum board are idiots. Including, and especially, thyself.

2) Always refer to First Commandment when in doubt.

3) Thou shalt not be drinking or eating whilst thou art perusing forum boards for thou shalt never know when a post may cause great spewage.

4) Thou shalt be patient for everyone has a life and may not login every day. Just because thou mayest not have a life, does not mean everyone shall respond immediately.

5) When addressing or commenting on post/poster, always begin thy post (or the specific section of thy post) directed to the username by using the "at" (@) symbol, followed by a single space, then the username. Now that such exists, better to also provide a link back to the specific post by using the anchor tag and the text "Reference" or Reference Link" or "Reference Post."

Thanks.

rmfr