CSNS Forums is web bulletin board intended to replace the aging ACM Forums. Here are some of the new features provided by CSNS Forums:

Favorite Forums

CSNS Forums has four general forums, and 65 course forums, one for each CS course. A user may choose to show only the forums he or she is interested in by adding the forums to their list of "favorite forums".

By default the general forums are everybody's favorites, and none of the class forums is a favorite.

When students are added to a class roster on CSNS, the forum of that class is automatically added as a favorite forum for the students.

Favorites forums can be managed at the User Profile page.

Forum Subscrptions

A User may subscribe to a forum, which means that whenever a new topic is created in the forum, the user will receive an email notification. For example, a user may want to subscribe to the Announcements forum to receive notfications about important announcements, or the Job Opportunities forum to be notified about job postings.

Be default nobody is subscribed to any forum.

When an instructor adds a section on CSNS, the instructor is automatically subscribed to the forum of that class. When students are added to a class roster, the students are automatically subscribed to the forum of that class.

Forum subscriptions can be managed at the User Profile page.

Topic Subscriptions

A user may also subscribe to a topic, so that when the topic receives a new reply, an email notification will be sent to the user. After the notification is sent, the user will not receive any more notifications until he or she visits the topic.

By default anyone who posts under a topic is automatically subscribed to the topic.

Full Text Search

The Search function perform full text search on forum posts. Depending on where the search is originated, it either searches all the forums or just one of them.

Post Attachments

CSNS Forums allows file attachments to posts. I wanted this feature because sometimes I got job announcements by email attachments in Word or PDF format, and in order to post these job opportunies in ACM forums, I had to either copy&paste&edit or upload the file to somewhere then create a link to it. Post attachment solves this problem.

You can also use attachments to include images in your posts without relying on outside hosting. Right now this has to be done in two steps: first create the post with an attachment, then edit the post and insert the image link using the attachment download link.

Please use attachments responsibly. In particular, posting homework/exam solutions will be considered cheating.

Rich Text Editor

CSNS Forums use TinyMCE, an Open Source, web based WYSIWYG editor. It has lots of features yet is very easy to use, and most importantly, it just works. I'm very happy with TinyMCE and would like to spread the word here about how great it is.

Forum Moderators

Forum moderators can do two things that regular users cannot: pin topics so they alway remain at the top of the topic list, and edit other people's posts (e.g. to remove inappropriate content) in the forums they moderate.

By default the full-time faculty are the moderators for the general forums, and the course coordinators are the moderators for the forums of the courses they coordinate. If you are an instructor and want to be a moderator for the forums of the courses that you teach, please email me. When an instructor adds a section, the instructor automatically becomes a moderator for the class forum of that section.

- Chengyu

This looks much better than the one which we are using right now (the ACM one !)

Thanks Dr Sun.