These Boards or This Board?

Factual Questions
1

I’m always confused when people refer to the SDMB as “these boards”. Isn’t it one board (with serveral forums)? At the top of the page, it says Straight Dope Message Board. Singular.

No nit-picking about forums/fora, either. Both are correct.

2

I’d go for ‘This board containing these fora’.

I wonder what others think about it.

Bob

3

It’s called the “Straight Dope Message Board.” Singular. Cecil would not have made a mistake here. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

4

However, cast your eyes upwards to the URL.

http://boards.straightdope.com/…

That looks like an Ed Zotti kind of mistake.

5

I tend to use “boards,” as in “see you around the Boards” when I’m signing off on an email to a fellow Doper.

6

Let’s not even mention “teh internets” for fear of invoking Executive Privilege.

7

The usage as I understand it is:

Board (singular) = message board, e.g., Straight Dope Message Board

Forum = one subregion of a message board containing material segregated by content or besought mode of response, e.g., General Questions. Occasionally referred to collectively, technically inaccurately but with acceptable colloquial vagueness, as “the boards.”

Thread = one sequence of posts being a given question or proposition and the responses it engenders, e.g. “These Boards or This Board?”

Post = a single response from a single member, contained in a thread. E.g., what I’m typing now for people to read.

8

So what does common usage care about correctness?

9

I’m just curious about where the practice comes from. It seems to be **very **common, so maybe there is some history involved that I’m not aware of.

10

My hunch is that people who visit multiple message boards would be more prone to refer to “the boards” where those whose forum activity is limited to this one would lean toward “the board.” That’s not 100% true, but probably more than 75% so.

Also those with a background in BBS’s (before the internet got up and running as smoothly as it does nowadays) had to dial in to as many different “boards” as they were active in. That could be a carry-over usage from those days.

Other than those obvious possibilities, it’s more like the Coke-soda-pop thing.