Discussion Groups Chat rooms are live, ongoing, interactive discussions. Some are special events, featuring celebrities. Others are constantly open to who ever drops by. You can just listen or participate. You should show the same courtesy and caution in a chat room as you would in any group setting.
Message boards can be very useful.
If you have a problem post it and others will respond. AOL has an exceptionally good collection of these on a very wide variety of topics. There are also groups that exchange discussion and announcements by e-mail. There are thousands of such groups on every topic under the sun. The volume of information, commercial, and entertainment resources available online is mind-boggling.