Ask HN: Hacker News is for tech, as X is for Y?

[nullptr_deref]

Are there some forums or well moderated discussion groups for other interests and hobbies?

Sure there are subreddits, but what else exists?

[MisterSandman]

I mean, some might cringe, but Reddit can be pretty amazing. They tend to be more QnA based, but you can still learn a lot.

/r/PersonalFinance for not-super-technical-finanace. I'm more familiar with PersonalFinanceCanada which has single-handeldy taught me how to think about money and finance. Can definitely get a bit toxic sometimes.

/r/Guitar is surprisingly small but still fun, and /r/Frugal is another favourite of mine. I also frequent the many FIRE subreddits but I don't think those are as popular as other forums about FIRE.

In a similar vein, Stack Exchange can be VERY interesting. I often casually sift through WorkplaceSE and TravelSE, though I supposed that is more entertainment than educational.

[silisili]

IMO, the bigger the subreddit, the worse off you are. And like some other fora, you get 'expert' cultist like people who parrot terrible advice.

Talking with actual workers in a field is super valuable...I think that's what makes HN great - most of us work in tech.

With Reddit, you get tons of 'oh, I like guitars, I'll join that' people giving advice instead of say, professional musicians or luthiers.

Note: I didn't mean to insult r/guitars, I've never been, just used it as an example.

[shakezula]

Reddit is good if you’re hyper specific about what you follow. It gets veered off course too easily otherwise.

[trinovantes]

I find the sweet spot for a good subreddit is between 10k-100k subscribers. Less than this range results in low activity (posts from 6 months ago still on front page) but more than this range just attracts karma farmers, memes, and witty one liners at the top that don't add much to the discussion

Of course the subreddit still needs to be focused on a specific topic

[bicx]

Reddit is honestly my favorite community site by a good mile. I sometimes forget that the horrible content exists because I’ve honed it so well to quality subreddits. It’s the only place where I can consistently get quality interaction related to my interests. r/programming is my fallback for HN, and sometimes it’s a better source of actual programming content.

In terms of quality, Reddit mods are hugely important. I was a mod for my city’s sub, and it was a constant effort to filter out the low-quality or toxic content.

[Cr0s]

Yeah, reddit can be a good source of info, but after a certain size it tends to turn into an echo chamber of whatever the loudest opinion is.

[spdebbarma]

I would like to recommend checking out /r/ExperiencedDevs/[0] on Reddit. It's a much better place than most other general cs subreddits because the questions are from and geared towards senior engineers.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/

[notRobot]

https://lobse.rs for tech discussions

Top level comments need to be sourced and verified and mod-approved on these, but great places to lurk and learn:

History: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ – also has an amazing weekly newsletter that you can get DMed to you!

Economics: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/

Also, a subreddit exclusively for experienced devs, but nice to lurk for everyone:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/

[gaws]

> https://lobse.rs for tech discussions

Thankfully, Lobsters is invite-only to post and comment. This filters out the usual garbage.

[Claude_Shannon]

I can't vouch enough for AskHistorians.

[bsilvereagle]

Minor typo in https://lobste.rs/

[fy20]

https://knx-user-forum.de/

It's in German but this is a place for nerds to talk about home automation and lighting. By this I don't mean just getting an Alexa and calling it a day, actually automating your home using professional equipment like that used in commercial buildings.

One of the big topics I'm following right now discusses a Chinese lighting manufacturer who makes high CRI tuneable white lights (think a professional version of Philips Hue), and the forum members have banded together to get a set (min order 1000 pieces) of custom lights made.

[ihateolives]

https://forum.language-learners.org/index.php is the place for language learning. There are amazing people there with wealth of experience in any language you can possibly want.

[BitwiseFool]

If there is one for economics, please do share. I solemnly promise to lurk and not to comment for a full year after joining.

[going_ham]

That would be nice! Despite being a CS major, I get so much information from Hackernews on implementation, hacks, industries, motivation. So I believe sites like these would definitely help newcomers get into a completely disparate interest!

[ggm]

Any decent economics HN is going to have to deal with amateurs kindly but also bluntly. (An amateur dilettante btw)

[biasedestimate]

The place where academic economists hang out is econjobrumors. But it‘s anonymous and not heavily moderated and can be quite nasty.

[notRobot]

Great place to lurk: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/

[ffwszgf]

Econjobrumors.com

[toomuchtodo]

/r/econmonitor

[jjulius]

If you're into electronic music, WATMM is and always has been a pretty great forum. Only catch is there's a minimum $3/year membership fee to support the site, but it's way more than worth it IMO.

https://watmm.com/

[ko3us]

I’ve been wanting the same structure of hacker news but for other topics too.

Im currently building one of fashion as it’s a huge interest of mine.

I realised while I’m building this, the solution is not the tech but actually the community providing the posts abs the moderation. I love hacker news because of the highly safe space to be able to have great open discussions.

I get more value from the discussion thread than the link that this shared.

[ksec]

>well moderated discussion

Only if you can create a replica of Dang.

As with other comments, there are plenty of well moderated forums, but most of them are very small and specific. When they are small, it lacks enough diversity. But when they are big or up to a certain size, moderation no longer works at all.

HN is not perfect, but I have yet to find anything that is close to HN.

[tdeck]

Mudcat.org is a real gem of a community for discussions folk music or other types of traditional English language music (e.g. sea chanties).

[mooreds]

I'm on some slacks that are pretty good for specific topics (mostly tech, though). Am on some mailing lists that are okay (some tech, some plants).

My SO spends a lot of time on FB groups that are focused on her niche, so I'd look there.

If you want live discussion/to meet real people, I haven't found anything as effective as meetup.com.

[sydthrowaway]

Is there one which won't devolve into who gets paid the most?

[dvogel]

As Cosmo magazine is to sex ed.

[badrabbit]

This gets asked all the time. HN is pretty special. Moderation is hard but it is the defining feature of a community. Subreddits don't allow enough control and regular forums are not news focused. I've heard loste.rs is similar though.

[docdeek]

/r/peloton for discussions of professional cycling.

Generally high quality and informed discussions, well moderated, every year there is a Tour de France related influx of new users but the older users are kind and keen to educate.

[Doctor_Fegg]

Yes - it’s one of the best-natured subreddits I’ve encountered, and the preview threads are as good or better than anything in the commercial cycling media.

[msmith]

as Bogleheads is for investors

[s_c_r]

Brewing beer/cider/wine: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/

[letitbeirie]

This one is pretty esoteric but if you want to know anything about Mt. Whitney, good luck doing better than the Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board:

http://www.mountwhitneyforum.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist...

[anyfactor]

I would like to know if there are any public facebook groups that is a good place for anything.

[ostenning]

Modwiggler for modular synthesizers