Discussion group

A discussion group is an online forum for individuals to discuss various topics. People add their comments by posting a block of text to the group. Others can then comment and respond. In the early days of the Internet, USENET was the most popular type of discussion group, but now discussions mostly take place over the World Wide Web using special server software. The term discussion group encompasses web-based forums, bulletin boards, listservs, mailing lists, and newsgroups.

Discussion groups differ from chatrooms and instant messaging because they usually deal with one topic and personal exchanges are typically discouraged. Discussion groups are often archived. These archives may be organized by thread, which means all the messages that reply to a starting message can be read in some order.