In the context of
mailing lists,
discussion groups
A focus group is a group interview involving a small number of demographically similar people or participants who have other common traits/experiences. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are ...
,
discussion forums
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
,
bulletin boards,
newsgroup
A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinc ...
s, and
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
s a contribution is off-topic if it is not within the bounds of the current discussion, and on-topic if it is.
Even on very specialized forums and lists, off-topic posting is not necessarily frowned upon, but a common
netiquette
Etiquette in technology, colloquially referred to as netiquette is a term used to refer to the unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet which is used to regulate respect and polite behavior on social media platforms ...
convention is to mark a new off-topic posting or email by beginning it with "OT"
''"It is appreciated if articles that have absolutely nothing to do with Tolkien have subject lines beginning with "OT:" ("Off Topic")."''
The Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ - for example in a forum discussing the Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
operating system someone might post: "OT: Did anyone else see that giant skunk?".
Posting off-topic messages to deliberately aggravate other members is a form of trolling
In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the i ...
.
See also
* Netiquette
Etiquette in technology, colloquially referred to as netiquette is a term used to refer to the unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet which is used to regulate respect and polite behavior on social media platforms ...
References
External links
NewsReaders.com: Getting Started: NetiquetteOff Topic Forum
Internet forum terminology
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ru:Сетевой этикет#Оффтопик