Searching Message Boards and Forums, Two Specialty Databases Can Help
Over the years, we've written about two excellent specialty databases to search discussion boards, forums, and related groups. However, (oops) we failed to mention that a few months ago, one of these sites launched a public beta with of their service.
These days lots of people forget that message board and forums (aka "old school" for many), often focused on a specific topic, remain excellent places to go to find information, views and opinions, experts, etc. Unlike, other types of online groups, some are well maintained and even moderated. The two sites we've written about are:
+ BoardReader, also now offers image search as well as forum and discussion group search.
Both dbases track tens of thousands of boards and forums and some allow a bit of personalization and tracking.
Also, both dbases have extensive archives of posts.
No database is perfect but when looking for people or comments, often from experts, message boards can still be of value.
BoardTracker Features
+ Directory of over 32,000 forums
+ My Threads (Registration Required)
+ Alerts (Registration Required)
+ Keyword search by word or by tags
+ Wildcard Searching
+ Author Search
+ Graphs
+ Tag Cloud
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
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