A: Message boards are chronological records of people's discussions about a given topic. At Shop Talk, most of the discussions are about medical supply merchants or medical supply products. The basic idea is that one person makes a message board post in one of the boards. S/he is then responded to by another person who is also interested in the medical supply merchant or product. More people read these posts and add to the collective knowledge of the community.

Q: What's the difference between a chat room and a message board?

A: A chat room is a place where you go and engage other people in real-time. Text scrolls upwards on your screen as individuals "talk" to one another. If you find something that someone writes to be compelling, you'll type in a response and it will appear on the screen for everyone in the room to see. Once you leave a chat room, there is generally no historical record kept of the conversation. Also, the topics in a chat room are wide-ranging and generally not as well organized as message boards. Chat rooms are most conducive to lighter, more socially focused conversations.

On message boards each message written on a message board has its own page and shows up alone. People then read that message and have time to think about and respond to it. Message boards are permanent records of the information that can be referred to every day, even weeks or years after it was written. Message boards act more as research and publishing tools than as chat rooms.

Q: How are Shop Talk’s message boards organized?

A: Shop Talk’s message boards are organized based on categories of medical supply merchants and medical supply products. We group all of the medical supply merchants together, alphabetically. Our medical supply product message boards are organized based on Medsupplyfinder’s product categories and subcategories.

Q: How to navigate the Shop Talk Message Boards:

A: Many people who come to the Shop Talk message boards choose to just read other people's posts. Using a specific post in our “Diagnostic Instruments” category as an example, here is what the basic navigation looks like:

Diagnostic Instruments / 3M Littman Stethoscope / Classic II

Clicking "Diagnostic Instruments" sends you to the list of all the diagnostic instruments included in the Medsupplyfinder database.  Clicking "3M Littman Stethoscope" sends you to a listing of all of the 3M Littman stethoscopes in the Medsupplyfinder database.  Finally, clicking “Classic II” sends you to a listing of all the individual messages, in chronological order, that are posted regarding 3M Littman Classic II stethoscopes.

Problem Posts:

When reading a post, you will notice a link that says "Problem Post". You may use this to notify us of posts that require our attention for violations of our Terms of Use Agreement found on the About Us page. Such violations include: spamming, personal attacks, hyping, etc. It should not be used as a forum for disagreements.

Q: How to write a post to the Shop Talk Message Boards:

A: On every Shop Talk product page you are provided with a box in which to type your message. Once you finish typing the message, just click "Submit." Your message will always show up as the last message on the board, in chronological order.

Important: Make sure to read your post carefully before sending it, because once you've posted a message, you can't go back to delete or edit your message.

Q: What does "Unthreaded" and "Threaded" mean?

A: Unthreaded - lists posts in strictly chronological order.

Threaded - Threaded discussions are grouped according to a specific subject. This makes it easy to follow each small discussion on a board. The difference between threaded and unthreaded is that threaded takes the subject into consideration first, and the chronological order second.