I doubt if a five-star poster could tell you anything? Thread Crap = TC, but you knew that?
Not a term I'm familiar with, no
I don't think that TPU is a secret squirrel site?
TPU rules: how is that relevant? BTW, TPU RULES!
You're conflating different meanings of 'publication' here. The definition you're using here is in the meaning of something
being or having been published. The meaning that your definition of article pointed to is separate and different from this; the meaning that makes it roughly equivalent to the two other examples mentioned, newspaper or magazine. I.e. the output of some sort of organization with some form of editorial control over the things published there. It could be a zine, a TV news broadcast, an online news site or magazine, etc. A forum is
run by some form of organization (not necessarily of course - anyone can set up their own forum that they control individually, but once you give it a name and recruit moderators to help you that's an organization in a very broad sense), but there is zero editorial control. Sure, the forums have rules, but those rules are not editorial rules, but rules of conduct within what is mainly a semi-public social space. Of course, nobody is stopping anyone from posting an article in its entirety as a forum post, but at least I've never seen that (beyond some community review sites that can border on a quasi-article form).
Of course this gets us solidly into extremely complex discussions of editorial and authorial control and how this affects things along the lines of "are blogs publications" or "are blog posts articles", which mainly highlights that all such categorizations are a) simplifications, b) generalizations, and c) never entirely accurate in all cases. It is entirely impossible to create perfect definitions and delineations of phenomena such as these. That does not make those categorizations invalid or not useful though - one simply has to accept that place, context and content matters, and judge accordingly. What defines an article as opposed to a forum post is determined by not only where it was published, but the author's relation to that venue, the author's relation to their audience (is it as an author/editor/journalist/commentator, or as an ordinary member of a community?), and applicable context and norms both in society at large as well as specifically for that venue. For example, if an article is posted somewhere with a comments seciton it's entirely reasonable for the author to never take part in the discussion below (though many still do), while it would be borderline absurd for someone to post a thread to a forum and then never take part in the discussion. It happens, but it's extremely rare, and not generally expected. And there are of course lots of weird borderline cases, like when TPU uses their forums as comments sections for their news posts, in which the normal "thread starter is a part of the discussion" norms do not necessarily apply to the same degree (though many on the editorial team of TPU are great at responding to feedback and questions).
Getting back to the point: for something to be a 'publication' in the meaning that what they publish is 'articles', there needs to be some form of organizational structure and editorial policy in place. There will always be exceptions and weird offshoots that don't quite fit this categorizations, but forums very clearly do not fit, and are thus not publications in this way. Social media are not publications either, nor is a town hall meeting even if everyone there can make a statement. If that town hall meeting is livestreamed on Facebook or Twitch that still isn't a publication, but if it's broadcast live on TV or through the web site of a newspaper or other publication, it falls under their editorial purview (though again, responsibility for the contents of live transmission of public debates is not the same as for content created by the editorial team).
Something being a 'publication' in the meaning "something that has been published" does not make that thing an article, as literally anything that can convey information can be "published". Is a post-it note stuck to a lamppost on the town square an article? No, but it is technically a publication in that meaning.
Except the many that aren't ... as in TC'ing. Your above post, how is that linked to the topic of the 6nm PS5 and its alleged tested cooling performance.
Again, you're misunderstanding. Every post in a thread is linked to the thread. Not thematically linked or by their content, but by the HTML (or similar) infrastructure of the forum. Of course this doesn't technically require a forum, and you could achieve the same with just plain old hyperlinks. But the base concept of a BBS, which is where current forums originated, is a codified structure for posting discussions where each post is linked to previous posts and/or the original post for that thread.
The initial post in a thread isn't that an article?
No. It is a forum post. The same text could obviously be an article, but then it would need to be posted somewhere with some form of editorial control (even if only the author's), and not on a semi-public forum.
And Ragnarok. Aww, man. I was never gonna skip it, just deluding myself.
