Discussion Board

The discussion board shows the most recent discussion first, as well as the number of replies for each discussion. That way, you can quickly see which discussions have the most recent activity and which ones are the most popular. Members can also customize their own views of the discussion board.

By default, a new Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site already has one discussion board set up. This board is called Team Discussion, but you can change its name and other settings or create additional discussion boards.

If your Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 site is set up to receive e-mail, participants can add items to the discussion board from their e-mail application.

Several options are available for customizing the views and behaviors that are specific to discussion boards. When you create a new view for a discussion board, you must base it on an existing view. The following views are provided, by default:

Subject view This view is available only at the top-level folder (the highest level of a discussion board) and is used to view the names of the discussions and other metadata on a particular discussion. The name of each discussion in the board appears as a link in the Subject column that you can click to go to a lower-level folder that displays the replies to that particular discussion.

Note Although it is possible to use a different view for the top-level folder, such as the flat or threaded view, we do not recommend that. Instead, use the subject view or a view that you create based on the subject view.

Flat view By default, this view is available only in folders of the discussion content type. This means that it is not available to the top-level folder. In this view, the subject of the discussion, all replies to the discussion, and other replies are aligned on one side.

Threaded view By default, this view is available only in folders of the discussion content type. This means that it is not available to the top-level folder. In this view, the subject of the discussion is aligned to to one side, all replies to the discussion are indented slightly, and all replies to previous replies are indented even farther. This view makes it easy to see whether a reply was made directly to the subject of the discussion or to a previous reply.

Ref:
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - Create a discussion board
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA100867281033.aspx?pid=CH101788391033

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server - Customize a discussion board
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA100994901033.aspx?pid=CH101237661033