HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are some more authentic online forums?

110 points by keiferski ↗ HN
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.

81 comments

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howard941
You should have seen netnews when we had it
kps
Today is Wednesday, the 9507th of September, 1993.
ndidi
The chans? Something Awful? MeFi?
egypturnash
Ugh same. I went out asking if anyone had pointers to a decent comics forum the other month (I make them and miss having somewhere to hang out with other people who do) and all I got were offers to people’s Discords, which feel like the exact opposite of what I want.
grey-area
What do you hate about discord, too chatty and ephemeral?
kradeelav
Another comics creator, here: the fact it's a closed system unavailable to lurkers, on top of those things. Discord's great for some things (support-group kind of interactions that you don't necessarily want bared to the public), but it can create insular cliques real quick.
egypturnash
That’s a good start. I like to work offline so I am always following up on conversations, never having one. BBSs are a ton more friendly to people who log on occasionally.

Being corporate owned, with lots of obnoxious GAMERZZZ branding doesn’t help either. Oh and it being a web app that ships with it’s own memory-hungry and cpu-chewing browser is a nice touch too. Using Ripcord helps all but the “real-time chats suck” and “corporate owned fora suck” but those are still some pretty big sources of suck.

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.

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.
IronWolve
The 2nd sub was created due to the primary sub pushing left-wing politics during the elections and just kept going farther left with approved/trending posts. Then the 2nd sub became right reactionary and pushed all the news the main sub would exclude due to leftist politics, pissing off the people who fled the primary sub due to politics. The posters are a small subset of the readers, if you think only 10 posters are conservative in one of the largest cities in the US, you are mistaken. The sub says Seattle Metro area which includes many conservative cities in King County.

Maybe when people read /r/seattle they dont want to read about more lawsuits the local government and state government have against conservatives, gun owners and business owners. The sub has become a damn PR sub for left wing politics. I read more Seattle based tech news on HN now. HN seems to at least balanced compared to reddit. (mostly, ymmv)

seattle_spring
> if you think only 10 posters are conservative in one of the largest cities in the US, you are mistaken

What I said was that there are 10 people who are the most prolific posters, and they insist on posting right-wing inflammatory garbage regardless of the actual topic.

Thread on the best restaurant? Guy 2 of 10 comes in and posts about the homeless. Guy 4 somehow ties it to gun rights.

Thread about transit? Better make it about Hillary's emails somehow! And hey, let's throw gun rights into the mix again.

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.

hnick
That's probably because most people don't care one way or the other and skip the whole thing.

Anyone who cares enough to frequent a sub about their home town probably has fairly intense feelings for better or worse. That will naturally lead to strong emotions and clashes.

Pretty much Web 2.0 in a nutshell.

viraptor
r/Melbourne sounds relatively nice in that case. It has some terrible people of course, but it's largely: old photos of the city, road accidents, "what did just fly over Xyz", sky/weather photos, train fault info, funny stuff.
joenot443
/r/toronto is awful for this. For a city of generally polite, kind people, the denizens of its most popular forum come off as downright miserable.
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.
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.

rcavezza
A lot of people still communicate on messageboards - especially in specific niche communities. A fantasy football website I frequent has a messageboard and so does my favorite football team.
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.
cjf4
If you're into fantasy football, footballguys is still very active, and tends to be a mature forum.
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.
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.

scottlocklin
Thanks for the update; I no longer roll and don't follow the sport very much, but it makes me sad to hear that all-devouring reddit is eating Sherdog.

I suspect the future of forums is going to be stuff which is kicked off of platforms. For example: right wing people kicked out of reddit, or nude enthusiast types formerly of Tumblr or whatever. There's probably a r/bodybuilding reddit, but I bet it's tame and lame compared to the forum.

ClintEhrlich
Thanks for giving me an excuse to discuss Sherdog on HN!

They're the two places I hang out most.

Somehow, I suspect the intersection of their user bases is pretty tiny...

scottlocklin
There've been a few guys discussing judo and jiu jitsu on here ... I dunno maybe you were one of them. My own BJJ dojo contained very few people over 30 who weren't Ph.D. in math/science types. Someone's probably giggling at this but they were all 220+lbs and lean; overachievers, goldman trader types - they all went to the best local dojo. We did have one Brazilian waiter guy (one of the best in the dojo), but I really felt like an underachiever in general when I'd enter their doors.

Come to think of it, many of the high ranking dudes in my Karate dojo also had Ph.D. type education (LBNL Arnis club didn't count). Martial arts seems to loan itself to personalities who can grind out difficult things.

stone-monkey
where do you go on sherdog to find good content? My experience with sherdog has always been constant shitposting and inflammatory posts. Of course, my only window into sherdog is browsing the highlighted forum threads on the front page for the past decade, which is probably exacerbating the problem.
arman_ashrafian
r/bodybuilding is actually pretty hilarious, one of the best communities on reddit imo.
IronWolve
Groupthink in popular tech forums is horrible, if someone experiences an issue, the rest of the people reply "I Dont have that issue", and minimize the person's interaction. Too much absolutism in tech being pushed, you can do the same thing multiple ways, depending on the scenario, people need to think in degrees not binary reactions.

I've been on forums for a few decades, and the interaction has gone to downright militant in responses as fact. I've seen so many truths about tech that simply isnt remotely true, but a big tech company says it, so their fanboi's repeat is as fact.

Common knowledge for an enthusiast vs production is another issue. The proper way of doing something might not be the way an end power user uses it, and their usage scenario can lead to all kinds of issues. So downvoting is way too common to exclude/discredit these people.

hnick
> 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.

It's funny, I've had the exact same thought more than once.

If you asked me "Should comments be judged by their content and not the person making them", I would say absolutely. But then you get Reddit. I do miss the characters from various online forums in the 90s-00s.

It's a little ironic posting this reply on HN though :)

viraptor
This seems to be why https://github.com/veggiedefender/hn-friends and some other extensions exist.

I've got some people tagged by companies, or their interests, or names if I happen to learn them randomly (like spotting John Nagle!) It definitely makes the experience more interesting.

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?

tetraca
Unfortunately, you can't just simply tell anyone, because that's how most enjoyable places get ruined.
catacombs
Then why mention it?
rc-1140
Probably indication for the OP that such groups are still out there, rather than leaving it open to interpretation that reddit has finally absorbed the last of such groups.
tetraca
The person above is merely relaying their experiences that these communities indeed still exist. You can read this implicitly as: "having authentic experiences online is absolutely possible, if one is willing to find and seek them out, but you must be willing to seek". And also: that those that aren't willing to seek these things out themselves, will ultimately destroy these communities for they lack that same necessary passion required to have these sorts of interesting and authentic experiences.

Not everything communicated online is intended for the direct and easy benefit of yourself.

dlivingston
To be frank, that's how I feel about HN: it's a little haven of (usually) calm, rational discussion, and I fear that as it gets more popular the level of discourse and content will decrease.
[dead] datavirtue
HN is way too tame. You can't express yourself on here they way you can at a forum like Slashdot. Slashdot definitely has some out there comments but it's easy to ignore them and in no way has HN ever turned me on to new tech or knowledge the way Slashdot has. Not even close. HN is never funny. Slashdot has had me rolling from the interactions. It's because HN is like that boss that declares thier meetings as a safe place to clear the air, and the person is well meaning, but the participants know better than to cut loose.
reilly3000
Does anybody spend a lot of time on a Discourse forum? Our team is working on building one out, and trying to figure out the magic formula for engagement.
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
peruvian
Resetera for gaming and off topic discussion.
finnthehuman
GAF has gotten pretty good now that all the groupthink has moved over to resetera.
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
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
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.
busterarm
The Shacktac forum for that Arma 3 community, though you have to be a member to use it.

Ultimate Metal.

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. :(

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.