Topic thread

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A topic thread (or simply "thread" when used in context) is a group of messages or postings to a newsgroup, mailing list, hypermail, blog or Internet forum, all relating to a single topic. An e-mail client or news client is said to have "threaded topics" if it groups messages on the same topic together for easy reading.

[edit] Open thread

An open thread, which at one time was referred to as noodles, can refer to a blog post where readers may comment and discuss any topic that they choose.

Open threads are usually more useful on popular blogs with large amounts of traffic; they are often used when the author of the blog has no subject matter to post on or when there is a lull in posting.

Open threads are also used to break up the monotony of posts on the main pages of blogs. Comments may build up on content-oriented posts; therefore, authors use the open threads so page load times won't be slowed down.