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Welcome to the Sleep Apnoea Forum!

The Irish Sleep Apnoea Trust (ISAT) regrets the forum has had to be discontinued for the time being.

Please NOTE
We regret the ISAT Forum has had to be suspended because of the high volume of spam and the limited use being made of the resource, which resulted in time consuming effort to remove and administer same by already depleted resources.

We hope to bring a new more secure forum online with a new website in course.

All you wanted to ask about sleep apnoea and other sleep disorders but had nobody to ask.  Open the ISAT Forum on sleep apnea.  The Irish Sleep Apnoea Trust (ISAT) has links to many relevant sites. 
Come on in - Tar isteach.

The Irish Sleep Apnoea Trust Internet Forum is a web based application which provides discussion in combination with other individuals and online communities.  Discussion topics related to obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and any other sleep related disorders can be entered into by individuals seeking help and assistance from others in the same boat or indeed communities, regarding their experiences with sleep apnea, use of CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) use of masks, chin straps, drug repayment scheme, medial cards, etc…. The forums are available for any number of different topics in the broad and ever expanding area of sleep related medicine.

The basic definition of a forum is the ability for people to start online discussions topics (threads) and reply to other people's threads.  However, most forum software provides considerably more than this.

Forum software can be broadly divided between those which allow visitors to post anonymously, and those which attribute posts to a registered username.

The ISAT sleep apnea forum utilises username-based software.  Visitors register using a username and a password, and possibly an email address for validation purposes.  In these types of forums, the members are often able to customise both how their posts display to others (for example avatars, user profiles and signatures) and how the board appears to them (such as different themes).  What is an AVATAR, you may ask?   An avatar (sometimes AV or av) is an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality.

The ISAT OSA forum will have an administrator.  The administrator will have the ability to edit, delete, move or otherwise modify any thread on the forum.  These moderator privileges are often able to be delegated to other forum members.  The reasons for having these abilities are often to allow peace to be maintained and the rules to be enforced.  The ways in which the moderation system works depends on the board software - for example, they can be directly appointed by the board administrator or chosen by a automated process combined with meta-moderation (moderation of the moderators).  Many other systems exist and the board administrator is free to choose rules for their own forums.

Forums, unlike wikis, do not allow people to edit other's messages.  Some users, however, may be given this ability in order to moderate content (for example, if spam is posted to the forum).  A wiki (pronounced [wi:ki] or [vi:ki], is a web application that allows users to add content, as on an internet forum, but also allows anyone to edit the content. 

Forums differ from chatrooms and instant messaging because they usually deal with one topic and personal exchanges are typically discouraged.  Participants in Internet forums should realise that what they have to say will be public knowledge for years to come.  For example, Google's Groups (formerly DejaNews) is an archive of Usenet articles dating back to 1981.  Forum archives are sometimes the best way to find an answer to very obscure questions, such as how to assist with or solve a particular sleep apnoea or other sleep related problem.