What other good forums are out there with an active user base that engages in high-level discussion like here? Not necessarily about tech. Could be law, philosophy, geopolitics, literature, etc.
I remember a point in time were there where actual communities, each one living in their own space, dedicated to any number of topics... Just around the time search results were not just ads... I suppose using the Discord search functionally, once you've created an account, can render some specific results... even then, that's more akin to a chat, that an actual community where topics matter....
Forums are terrible as a medium for discussion. So much noise between the pages you need to scroll through, the huge signatures, the reposts/quotes of prior content just to add a simple message.
I much prefer the HN/Reddit format. It also lets the community bubble-up a good response to the top.
I have been big in the car community since before I was old enough to drive. Forums are a nightmare when it comes to finding an answer to a problem.
All this being said, L1Techs has a decent forum for what I would consider professional hardware nerds.
There are a few people on Hacker News I recognize, because they're often commenting on the same subjects: for example, pjmlp, lispm, kazinator, Rochus. Other people I recognize because they use their real names and they're famous: for example, steveklabnik and WalterBright. However, this is an asymmetrical relationship.
Edit: Hopefully this doesn't seem like I'm creepily stalking online strangers. I just notice their usernames a lot!
Yeah discord and slack are the only places I recognize people anymore.
Reddit is a hellhole. I lived on Lemmy for a while and its really just as bad.. maybe worse because you have to deal with the insufferable open source hardliners.
For actual information, hacker news, rss feeds, podcasts, and medium posts are the only things I can stomach anymore.
I've been a member of my school's paid Rivals.com forum for over 20 years. It's great. Generally localized to my area with people who went to my university. The fact that it's paid keeps out bots and spam traffic too.
Over the years it's been great for local events, national, sports talk (of course), contractor recommendation, general life advice, people going through tough times getting support. Even saved one member's life who was deeply depressed after a divorce.
Highly recommend it. People these days seem to really take for granted to community bonds that collegiate sports create.
> Forums are terrible as a medium for discussion. So much noise between the pages you need to scroll through, the huge signatures, the reposts/quotes of prior content just to add a simple message.
All of the above is preventable with moderation and the enforcement of proper forum rules.
Car forums don’t help either when most answers are “use the search function”. Which I understand, but some things have changed and/or people have learned better since the early 2000’s when those questions were originally asked :)
Niche subreddits can be good. But man the site overall has fallen so far. I also left with tons of others when they pulled the API, so maybe it all sucks now?
There are still some good communities on Reddit but the user experience of the web app on mobile and the iOS app are abysmal to say the least. I found myself using Reddit less and less when I couldn't access Reddit via my client of choice (Apollo) earlier this year and these days I hardly ever use Reddit anymore. If I ever need to revisit an old thread I do so on desktop via old.reddit.com.
I have a 15 year old reddit account, and when reddit was good, it was so good. Now, it's a rotting carcass. They blocked it at my work and I am sad to say I don't even really miss it.
apollo was the only way to possibly consume reddit without losing your mind: i had a filter list with words like 'dead, death, kill, killed, shot, murdered...'
this actually turned Reddit into a wonderful place where I learned a lot about my favorite tech and microcontroller platforms and still got a good dose of cool memes
i genuinely feel like i haven't been able to participate in a lot of things anymore because the generated noise from their current metric, 'if it bleeds, it leads', is too high
I watched a YT video about the apollo endgame last year and wondered "why didn't he steal that inertia and just launch his own social network?" It would have been so appropriate given reddit was started with a massive outflux from a previous link aggregator.
I wondered the same thing - I presume there’s just no money it a Reddit replacement unless there’s a subscription fee, but I think his users would’ve happily paid it. Plus it’d act as a cover charge to keep out bots and trolls.
yup, one of my favorite forums had a system that was open to view but had a five dollar invite fee to upgrade your account to post things, plus any penalties for infractions made by an invited member beyond a certain 'egregiousness' traversed up the invite tree
The upvoting system there seems to tune everything to become an "average redditor", who I find I don't really have a lot in common with. Even niche subs seem to suffer from it.
> Niche subreddits can be good. But man the site overall has fallen so far. I also left with tons of others when they pulled the API, so maybe it all sucks now?
Content quality in niche subreddits is falling as well. Most technical or semi technical small subs I follow are flooded with single picture posts asking "what's this?" or "how to fix?" "pls help" and so on. The overall level of discussion has dropped to almost zero.
The problem is once you follow that prime directive, there really is not much to talk about. I also used to follow various FIRE subreddits but got bored for the same reason.
+1 been an active user/contributer for 10+ years now. The beauty of the forum is that it engages to the extent you are comfortable with. But yeah, no religious, political and crypto talk allowed :-)
Papertrail is a service for taking digital notes for books you read in print in a way that is accessible, sharable, and optionally public-facing. It operates a smidgen like a forum where each book is its own kind of subreddit. It does, though, require having the book in question and actually reading it in order to participate in and contribute to discussion, but that’s not always a bad thing.
Don't know about high-level discussion, but the only other active forum I frequent other than Reddit is https://www.tacomaworld.com/. Really active user base and a ton of good info about different generations of the Toyota Tacoma.
Here is a great idea: make a forum software that uses AI to turn topics into a wiki article that is periodically updated with new information. You could for example provide relevant feeds and examine those for content relevant to the article. Similar topics could share a wiki article.
Identifying and collapsing chatter/noise could also be wonderful. Sometimes people just want to [shall we say] socialize around a topic, it's fun but also making it horrible to read up on a discussion.
People seemingly forgot the self promotional qualities of a forum. If your high quality contributions generate customers [indefinitely] it all of a sudden becomes worth your time. It takes a good mod to deal with self promotion though unproductive posts. Have to ask: Is this worth reading? If it's not it's harmful to the prestige.
The format of "forums" has been replaced by subreddits,wikis,discorbs and instant messaging,
because forums were a general "jack of all trades" platform for
long-term/short-term discussion.
There were barriers to participation, fickle hosting and lots of ads,
so people flocked into centralized socmedia.
Trying to compete with reddit didn't work out, so these forums are
slowly dying and migrating to centralized services.
Nation-wide or Global Facebook communities for particular vehicles such as cars, motorcycles, planes, helicopters, autogyros, gliders, jetskis, and going down the rabbit hole for particular brands and or model of such vehicles.
And also Facebook communities for particular goods and services (sort by city, local, ZIP)
Many people are in denial, any actionable piece of information will come from such communities, uncool as they are, whereas of course they waste their time on Instagram or the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times or New York Times comment sections.
I would know because I was one of those idiots, and slowly but steadly have been trying to detox from all that performative BS which is nothing but propaganda from people who have enough connections and money to appear on such publications.
I just launched a new kind of forum — Choir, a custom GPT that turns ChatGPT into a collective intelligence forum.
It’s sparse on content right now, and I think I need to find a specific vertical to focus on building a community around, but on the topics which Choir does have some discussion on, such as the impact of AI on the future, it already has some of the most thoughtful discussions on the web.
I like manifold.markets. The discussions under some markets can become quite stimulating. Lots of smart people there, though mostly dominated by very specific demographics.
dxdy.ru welcomes you even if you don't speak Russian but speak English. This is a hardcore math forum with a requirement to use Latex to be able to ask for some help.
There are none left. No, not even MeFi and the likes. Lobste.rs etc. None. Time has changed. People have changed and a lot of the people haven’t even known what it was.
I see posts like this. I myself made few here and other places.
I looked for long. In fact I even tried pretending at few places and wanted to believe. I made peace with it. It’s over. There are no good forums left (that means hn as well of course)
I like it less than I wanted to. The overwhelming majority of posts get 0 votes and 0 comments, even if it is not a site with that much traffic. It feels quite desolated, tbh.
I still visit metafilter to see the links and writeups, but participating in the community is about as pleasant as an HOA meeting crossed with a church sermon. I guess Ask is mostly decent still but the blue can be a little ridiculous.
Most new technical forums on the Internet, while they are still small and relatively unknown -- are great places for discussions with highly intellectual people of "like mind".
Then they become more popular.
Once they become more popular -- they start to attract all kinds of people of "less like mind" shall we politely say, all kinds of people who would rather unfairly criticize and detract from discussions with one or two line carefully worded, yet malicious in intent, comments.
Then they start to attract AI bots -- both non-malevolent research bots, and agenda-driven Deep State AI bots -- foreign and domestic.
The net effect is, now there's a cacophony of stupidity created by AI chatbots and idiots alike.
Observation: There really isn't too much of a difference between a dumber chatbot and a smarter idiot -- sort of like how rangers at Yellowstone National Park discovered "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists": https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/security_is_a...
Anyway, this cacophony of one and two-line stupidity dumbs down the value of any discussion, and ultimately dumbs down the value of the online discussion forum...
You know, like in Billy Madison: "Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
Well, every time I see a one or two line snarky or indirectly sarcastic comment with malicious intent and/or intent to derail a discussion -- I just want to reply to them with "Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard..." -- but out of politeness, I never do...
Point is, there are good forums out there -- but you have to find them! (You know, "Seek and ye shall find", "Leave no stone unturned in your quest for, well, whatever you're questing for!", etc., etc.)
Once you've found a good one -- keep it secret as long as possible -- and then finally when it is broadly discovered by the public -- then that's the time to move on to a new less popular undiscovered one!
Stay a step ahead of the crowd!
Sort of like the way that the Rich and Affulent -- will stay in a country until it becomes so popular that it attracts hordes of people -- then they will leave for a relatively unknown, less popular new country. (Side observation: America doesn't have an illegal immigration problem -- it has a too much popularity problem! :-) <g>).
Well, same concept -- but with online discussion forums!
Anyway, wishing you luck in your online forum search!
Oh, and also, if you find a good one -- don't let me know about it! :-) <g> :-)
Related:
130+ Types of Internet Troll and Online Provocateurs:
(Note: This list was created in 2014 before AI bots were widespread)
Can we please go back to forums?