I have noticed some sites, like video communities, have no way to contact
staff... They have all those "forms", why not actually allow members to
contact staff via e-mail? Also, timely responses are needed!!
A form is basically a way of being able to send an Email to the site without actually having to open any mail client of anything. Mostly powered by php or cgi.
If it's not an email, the contents of the form would be submitted to a database and then automatically printed to a private page.
^I know what he means though, ive seen several "questionable content" sites that dont have a contact area. Then, when you pull a whois, the record is covered like BlueHost and such do...in which case you have to dig around even more.