What are the advantages and disadvantages for bulletin board?

Answer 1

Advantages: anyone (registered) can make comments/answers - and these are visible to every (registered) user immediately (unless moderation is required first). This can result in a very fast response to a question compared with a formal supportprocess/helpline.

Disadvantages: anyone can make comments/answers - they could be wrong. Because there's no formal support process, answers may be slow/non-existant as you rely on the community instead of paid support personnel.

For commercial organisations, formal support should be used if time-critical. For less urgent issues, and where an incorrect answer will not cause any problems (ie answers can be tested first) a BBS is fine.

For general discussion on topics (ie not a q+a BBS like this) they can be very useful and interesting. However, if unmoderated, people may clash and have flame-wars, which detracts from the main discussion.