They are an option on the search menu. What and where are they?
There aren’t any on the Straight Dope, it’s just a feature the forum software has. We could have, for example, Cafe Society split into seperate sub-forums (fora?) for music, movies, tv etc. Or GD divided into religion, politics etc.
Not really needed here since we’ve only got nine forums, but a site that is split up into many more areas could use it to keep them more organized and easier to follow. Take a look at This site for example. It’s split into four main categories, and each one is further split into sub-categories.
The SDMB could use sub-fora if it wanted to separate posts rigidly by topic, something that goes against the grain of general SDMB culture and policy. We generally like rather diverse fora under a common, loose rubric, instead of mazes of twisty little fora, all different.
(Hell, some people can’t quite grasp the distinctions we do make. It would be impossible to keep everything sorted if the fora sub-specialized.)
When we first started, there were only two forums: Comments on Cecil’s Columns and Other.
And then they mutated and metastasized… :eek: