HN Explorer

Ask HN: What other good forums are out there?

81 points by apantel ↗ HN
Hi HN, just wondering:

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.

87 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread
Workaccount2
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?
_vmw1
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.
Vilian
A few communities migrated to lemmy, you can check there
jareklupinski
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

gosub100
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.
Firmwarrior
Yeah man, I know this is another HackerNews "Why not simply.." but it feels like he really did have a golden opportunity to hijack Reddit

I'd much rather post on an open version of Reddit with my clients of choice than the mainline TikTok-ified trash version

seuraughty
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.
jareklupinski
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
prometheus76
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.
raydev
What's the problem with the iOS app? I use it all the time, don't have any issues.
kolme
Hey there, I also jumped ship after they pulled the API.

I found an alternative in the Fediverse, for programming subs, at least: https://programming.dev/

j4yav
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.
gaws
> I also left with tons of others when they pulled the API

Where did you go?

captaincrisp
I'm not the person you're asking, but at least for me: I went nowhere. I don't have something that is as good as Reddit at keeping me informed now.
thefz
> 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.

sumnole
indiehackers is a good forum full of solo founders, bootstrappers, sbo types.

lobste.rs is a growing hackernews clone.

metafilter has some interesting talk from time to time.

that_guy_iain
> indiehackers is a good forum full of solo founders, bootstrappers, sbo types.

It was good. Now not so much.

jabroni_salad
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.
jamager
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.
pelagicAustral
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....

Can we please go back to forums?

phone8675309
Some of us never stopped posting on forums
coldpie
Yup. They're still out there. I've been posting on the Something Awful forums for over 15 years.
qup
twoplustwo.com is a great example from the poker world
phone8675309
One of my forum accounts turned 18 this year, which was surreal to me.
whalesalad
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.

brightball
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.

xnorswap
What you describe as "noise", others would recognise as "culture".
weystrom
Actually recognizing people posting is something that i dearly miss. Now you barely even notice the usernames.
trealira
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!

satvikpendem
Now those fora are on Discord. In the servers I'm in, I too regularly recognize people posting.
thelastknowngod
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.

thefz
> 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.

jawmes8
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 :)
raspyberr
They still exist... sounds like you're addicted to big tech.
Karawebnetwork
Not forums, but some blogs have interesting comment sections. One that comes to mind is Schneier on Security's.
5ADBEEF
If you’re into electronics and can sweep aside some crusty EE opinions, the EEvblog forums are quite fun and informative.
jensgk
Audiosciencereview.com
jabroni_salad
If you like the artsier side of hardware, the hackaday community is really nice
hardware2win
Usually popularity doesnt increase quality, so promoting them here may be harmful for those small communities
admissionsguy
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.
deadbabe
If you own a car there is probably a forum for it with good discussions.
vikR0001
Is there a good forum for React users to ask questions and discuss best practices?
jacobkg
Bogleheads Forum has been going strong for 15+ years. Straight-laced investing talk: buy and hold, index funds, etc.

https://www.bogleheads.org/

taway1874
+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 :-)
skydhash
I'm all for thematic forums and aggressive censorship/ban for everything that falls [outside of the whitelisted/inside the blacklisted] themes.
imakwana
+1000. Probably the best forum on the planet for no-nonsense personal finance & investing topics.
satvikpendem
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.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
era86
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.
robohoe
Car forums are really popular and somehow seem to survive the tests of time. For example, Rennlist has been around for decades now.
jawmes8
That forum was a godsend and really supportive when I converted my prerunner to 4wd!
crossroadsguy
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)

blockwriter
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.

https://papertrail.biblish.com