A bulletin board, also called a message board or internet forum, is an online discussion website that internet users may participate in. Most of these websites typically require users to register an account before posting, but a small minority does permit anonymous posting.

In the public consciousness, a 'bulletin board' or 'bulletin board system' (BBS) is an early internet discussion zone, while 'message board' and 'internet forum' is typically used for modern bulletin boards. We also have 'electronic bulletin board' (電子掲示板, denshi kejiban) that English-speaking Japanophiles decided to further split into arbitrary categories like 'textboard', 'imageboard', then you have the 'booru' format.

All things considered, we have ended up with numerous terms which all describe the same concept, but with bells and whistles that allegedly makes them distinct. It's like when anonymous communities insist that they aren't social media, when they actually are. To avoid overcomplicating things, I will usually say 'bulletin board' or 'internet forum', but may bring up the appropriate term when necessary.

With the modern internet, there's been a drastic decline in niche internet forums. This can be attributed to the 'megaforum' (e.g. Reddit) as it has killed the need to spread out if you can discuss everything in one place, along with the evolution of messaging clients (e.g. Discord). In addition, you have the downside of preservation where people *will* attempt to archive your embarrassing old posts instead of letting it die.

• On Leading the Anonymous - A small glimpse of what it takes to moderate the worst of the worst.

• Internet forum on Wikipedia