Discussion Forums may be created in Folders or Meetings. A Discussion cannot contain anything but Notes -- basically short pieces of text "pinned to a bulletin board" for all members of a Workspace to read and react on. One specific type of reaction is to write another Note that refers ("replies") to an earlier one, as
In BSCW, a Note may reply to several earlier Notes. The author of a Note that replies to other Notes extends and refines a Web of Notes -- inside a Discussion or even across the boundaries of Discussions. This Web of replies linking Notes remains intact when a Note is transferred to a different Discussion, to your Bag or even to your Wastebasket.
A Discussion Forum may contain isolated Notes that do not reply to another Note and have not yet triggered a Note replying to them. Just as well, there may be several independent "threads" of Notes replying to Notes replying to ... in a Discussion.
In the style of a Folder page, the Discussion page shows an entry for each Note in the Discussion. The entries of Notes that belong to a particular thread may be grouped together:
Notes may contribute different types of content to a Discussion, possibly reflecting the author's attitude. BSCW lets you characterize your contribution by assigning an icon to be displayed to the left of the Note name. Different icons to indicate different types of contributions may be available on different BSCW servers. GMD's public BSCW server offers the following icons:
"equivocal" Note
pro -- approval
con -- disapproval
angry -- strong disapproval
important -- significant contribution to the Discussion
idea -- sudden inspiration