Ask HN: What are some more authentic online forums?

[keiferski]

I grew up in the late 90s on obscure message boards and in many ways it was my real introduction to the Internet. I really miss the community and authenticity of that world, which seems to have been replaced entirely by monocultural mass social media like Reddit.

[scottlocklin]

There's quite a few I can think of, but most of them I'd rather not mention so the eye of Sauron passes them over.

Larger ones I don't mind mentioning:

I think bodybuilding.com is still what it was back in the day.

Sherdog is probably also still decent though I don't follow it.

The surviving /chans capture a lot of the spirit of old timey Usenet as well for better and worse.

If you're into nice wristwatches watchuseek is same as ever; amazing the energy that goes into such a niche thing.

Men's clothing/accessory forums are also quite active and good; askandyonclothes, styleforum and ... tho I haven't checked lately fedoralounge used to be good. These are kind of remarkable in that they, like the watch forums, could be monetized in various scumb bag ways, but somehow remain good communities oriented around consumer goods.

I think lot of energy still goes into old school email lists for special interests as well. Though I don't follow it as I should, the J lists are extremely high bandwidth/quality. IMO these are vastly better than platform things on discord, reddit, discord, as they're always backed up and uncensorable. You can get kicked out, but you'll still be able to read most of them.

[ClintEhrlich]

Sherdog has suffered a lot from losing traffic to Reddit. The main forum still has enough users that it superficially seems similar to how it was 10+ years ago, but the subforums are dying.

F12, the grappling forum, used to be one of my favorite places on the internet. It barely has new content anymore. There has, for reasons I don't fully understand, been a mass exodus to r/BJJ.

I can't overstate the loss of community that occurred as a result. On reddit, the fact that usernames aren't prominent and there are no avatars makes it impossible to build "characters" in your mind. People are friendly, but they are perpetual strangers.

Previously, I thought the upvoting and downvoting structure of Reddit was great. But, when applied to a hobby I love, the results were soulless and depressing. Opinions seem to be tailored to the crowd in a way they never were on the F12 forum.

A lot of that may be that Reddit attracts younger people who are newer to the sport. Whatever the reason, it's sad to see a great forum whither away.

Don't take online communities for granted. They seem immortal until they die.

[catacombs]

> There's quite a few I can think of, but most of them I'd rather not mention so the eye of Sauron passes them over.

You've piqued my interest. What are they?

[dcchambers]

  Mechanical Keyboards - https://geekhack.org
  Watches - https://forums.watchuseek.com/
  Role Playing (Video) Games - https://rpgcodex.net/forums
  Minecraft - https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums
  Linux - https://www.linuxquestions.org/
  Apple/Mac - https://forums.macrumors.com/
  Biking - https://www.bikeforums.net  & 
           https://forum.bikeradar.com/

Honestly, just pick one of your hobbies and go down the google rabbit hole. Many forums still survive today for archival purposes and most hobbies have very active independent forums.

--

I'll admit I fell into the Reddit hole in the early 2010s and while I think it has some value and I have discovered some cool communities I don't think I ever would have known about otherwise, I do miss the "pre-reddit" internet with more independent communities.

Lots of small groups seem to be migrating to Facebook as well - which really sucks because the facebook groups interface sucks as a traditional discussion forum.

[fiftyacorn]

cyclingnews forum is good too - i even like reading the posts in the clinic

[jvagner]

I'm particularly perplexed by [location] sub-reddits. No one uses the FAQs, search, or Yelp. Everyone wants to post a daily request for a good place for a drink, and a good hike, for just about every city on the planet.

The annoyances in those threads seem to keep other participants away. It'd be nice to have a forum, message board, etc for people who are willing to try one tick more than the masses.

[tidepod12]

It's not just the constant "anyone have good ____ recommendations?" posts. For whatever reason, there is a tendency for local subreddits seem to be much more vitriolic than most places on reddit (and that's saying something). Threads about local happenings or even something as simple as posting a picture of the skyline seems to bring immediate, intense ire from some always-lurking posters. And God help you if you post an article about local politics.

r/Austin is particularly bad about this, but I've frequented several other city subreddits and noticed the same.

[seattle_spring]

The Seattle subreddits are so bad about this. There's one with ~200k subscribers that is basically only sunset pictures and requests for good food. There's another one with ~100k subscribers with slightly better submissions, but every comment thread has the same 10 people brigading from a THIRD Seattle sub that focuses on alt-right politics.

[hnick]

This is a culture issue and is only ever really fixed with moderation in my experience. It happens to a lot of gaming subs too. Those of us who want decent discussion get sick of answering the same questions ("Use the [terrible] search function!!") but the mods seem scared to look too harsh and drive away newer users, or turn the sub into a ghost town when there's not much else to talk about.

[hprotagonist]

1. find a weird and absurd hobby, nerd out into it hardcore, and then go to the off-topic board for that hobby's shitty old phpBB forum run out of some dude's basement.

2. Freenode is still alive and well.

3. Fark, SomethingAwful, etc. are still more or less in good health.

[adingus]

I came here to recommend somethingawful. Lowtax is a gift to the internet with his commitment to keep the board going and not sell out... even while he is in poor health.

[kgwxd]

I got into Atari 2600 homebrew a few years ago. I haven't made anything playable yet, but the community is my favorite of all time. Even though the community is pretty small, the AtariAge forums[1] are very active. Also, there's a twice-weekly, hours-long live show[2] dedicated to playing 2600 homebrew games, and the developers of the featured games are often in the chat. It's on twitch, which obviously isn't obscure, but the channel itself is.

[1] https://atariage.com/forums/forum/50-atari-2600-programming/

[2] https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew (will be live an hour from now)

[vorpalhex]

There are some very nice Discord communities. It's obviously more active than a message board, and some of the better ones are invite-only or you have to submit an application to join.

[yread]

I really like Professional Pilot rumor network for discussion of aviation issues or funny stories from pilots and stewardesses. It has its own slang for example SLF is us passengers (self-loading freight)

https://pprune.org

[janeshmane]

Longecity.org/forum is one I've been visiting for many years. It has some pretty knowledgeable regulars and has never gotten popular enough to attract a ton of corporate interest

[indenturedsmile]

I still think https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/ is the premier forum for homebrewing (as in alcohol) information. All the various homebrew subreddits and other forums seem lacking in either content, organization, or expertise.

[IronWolve]

Australian tech forum that seems to still be going strong. https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

[lachmpatterson]

I occasionally stumble on their internet/networking threads (my house got skipped by the NBN) - I'm surprised how popular the site still is.

[joecool1029]

There aren't too many active newsgroups, but Usenet can be pretty authentic if you do find ones.

I tell people that I visit there to chat with senior citizens bitching at each other. It's great!

For the unmoderated groups, it's left up to you to filter out trolls. No shadowbanning/downvoting.

[bilbo0s]

I could be wrong, but I'd posit that if there were a good place for high quality, genuine, and useful online forums out there, HN is one of the last places they would advertise their presence. There very likely are such forums out there, but I'm sure they don't want the internet showing up at their door tomorrow morning. They probably created their little slice of heaven just so that they do not have to deal with the great unwashed masses and a lot of the inanity and incivility that comes with them.

A corollary to that, of course, is that most of the answers we'd get to this question on HN, are likely not the sort of sites for which we are searching. :(

[AceyMan]

A few of my favorites not yet listed:

Knives & such, https://www.bladeforums.com/ https://forum.spyderco.com/

Tennis String, https://stringforum.net/

Perfumery, http://www.basenotes.net/

Road bicycle hardware, https://weightweenies.starbike.com/forum/

[marczellm]

https://what.thedailywtf.com is a place for IT / software people to rant. If you're into rants. I find it fun.

https://forums.musicplayer.com is a place for musicians, songwriters, mixing, mastering etc. I only visit the keyboardist section, Keyboard Corner. It is an exceptionally civil place, the people are cool, helpful and professional. Some outstanding experts frequent the forum.

[InterimNew]

I love this question. The information density and longevity of old forums is hard to replicate on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook groups.

I’ve been spending a lot of time over at https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/index.php recently. It’s THE forum for modular synthesis in all forms and for me it really scratches the hacker/musician/tinkerer itch.

[Mountain_Skies]

For urban planning and skyscraper enthusiasts, there are the forums on skyscraperpage.com and city-data.com.

[Trixter]

Vintage Computing: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum.php

Very pure community around all things vintage computing; has stayed mostly the same for 12 years (and still very helpful).

[albydarned]

If you're a developer interested in Elixir, check out https://elixirforum.com. It is such an inclusive community and I find most people on there to be quite genuine!

[CalRobert]

I hate saying this because it's the migration from open to closed and corporate controlled, but there's a fair number of good Slack groups. I'm in some for Irish cycle infrastructure campaigning, the local tech community, etc.

[viraptor]

For infra/ops people there's also hangops.slack.com

[palehose]

https://www.phantasytour.com is one of my favorites. Phish in particular has a very vibrant community, if you enjoy their music you can find lots of other people who are passionate about them on just about any social network. For people who are easily offended there is also a forum on phish.net that prefers to avoid hostile conversations. Phantasy Tour has a lot of obscene discussions that most people would find offensive but is tolerated on this forum.