Whirlpool Forums
The purpose of the forums is to provide a place to discuss broadband and related areas (such as networking). Representatives from many Australian service providers, hardware vendors and merchants use Whirlpool as a strictly non-official support and communication channel.
Some features present on other message boards such as signatures, avatars and in-line images have been excluded by design to keep the site 'clean'. Many of the long term users agree that despite some shortcomings, Whirlpool's differences are beneficial to the forum, and set it apart from "pre-written" forum software.
Whirlpool uses an 'open moderation' policy, so when threads and posts are deleted or moved, placeholders are left allowing users to see the moderation that has taken place. This is different from other forum software, where deleted threads may simply disappear from view, and posts may be edited by moderators unbeknownst to users. As a result, any moderation is more obvious than on most typical internet forums, which use off-the-shelf software like phpBB or vBulletin.
The forum also has very few off-topic areas (known as 'lounges'), which are generally only available to long standing or highly active members of the community.
Until recently, Whirlpool's servers suffered from capacity issues, which were handled by 'cooling down' the server when load exceeded capacity. The cooling down message was affectionately known as a TSOD (Teal Screen of Death, a play on the Windows BSOD) and become part of the forum culture. Whirlpool now has ample server capacity, consigning TSOD messages into history.
Read more about this topic: Whirlpool (website)