See also: Internet forum
The osu! forums are a place for conversations where messages are grouped by subjects, and no quick response is expected. The discussions are searchable, stored forever, and may be revisited at any time, which makes them different from the near-instant messages in osu! chat. As a result, forum messages are longer, contain more information, and typically provide more details than chat messages would.
The osu! forums provide features similar to most internet forums: BBCode markup, polls, pins and subscriptions, private messages, and moderation.
Each of the osu! forums contains a variety of topics, sometimes called threads, as well as smaller categories, or subforums. Most of the forums are English only, but there also exists a number of language-specific forums for local communities that are large enough.
While some forums, such as Mapping Discussion, have specific requirements or guidelines, all of them follow the community rules.
Some users may belong to one or several custom groups, based on their community tasks, access rights, or past activity. A full list of user groups can be found at User group.
In addition to user group badges provided by group membership, users may have custom user titles displayed under the avatar in each of their posts.
See also: Reporting bad behaviour § Forum
Moderators are users who keep the forums clean and appropriate, and answer concerns related to that. Moderators can edit or delete inappropriate posts or topics, pin topics and move them between different forums, and temporarily prevent offenders from posting by silencing them.
Some of the forums have different purposes that are not limited to discussion. As a result, they have extra rules and/or technical capabilities.
Additionally, there are other forums similar to Abandoned Wasteland, which serve technical or managerial purposes and are therefore hidden from the general public.
The first public forum post is dated August 28, 2007, and belongs to peppy. During that time, the osu! website used phpBB as its forum engine, which over the years has been significantly expanded to suit the game and community's needs. Some of its customisations included:
After the new osu! website was brought up and running, phpBB had been slowly phased out in favour of the custom forum engine used today.