I see a lot of people saying online that “forums are dying off because of discord and reddit”
yet other people reply: “Well, I’m still using my forum/IRC.”
So I have to ask, what forums that are decently big still exist? Only one I can think of is Nomutantsallowed for fallout related content.
- love2d forums: https://love2d.org/forums/
- luanti forums: https://www.luanti.org/get-involved/
- joplin forums: https://discourse.joplinapp.org/
- All these prior links are very specific to one piece of software. So as you see, they all seem very focused and it depends on your interest in them.
- ramble https://ramble.pw/
- cant be really called a forum, but it is a link aggregator on tech-news https://news.ycombinator.com/news
Usually something hyper specific. This was a few years ago but I found a very bustling community forum for appliance repair. I posted a question on how to fix my oven and got very detailed answers and technical info involving the circuit board and heating element and troubleshooting steps. Unfortunately the general consensus on there is that for a lot of appliances, the board needs replaced which may or may not be available, and if it is, costs damn near what a new appliance does. Which is obviously done on purpose to drive sales.
The other one I know is my friend will participate on one for modding Toyota Yaris cars.
Bodybuilding / fitness forums are still pretty active.
All of these tend to have subreddit or Lemmy equivalents however.
I regularly visit https://vogons.org/ to talk about retro computers.
It seems that this might be useful to add to this pile of information:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/federation-support-for-discourse/90921
cs rin.ru and ltt foums
There are a few cannabis related ones, though activity is here or there on one or two. UK420, THCTalk, ICMag, GrowCity, etc.
There are so many niche forums.
Here’s one I found a while ago when I was looking at repairing an old electric fan I found: Antique Fan Collector’s Forum.
In the way that people would always add “reddit” to their searches, try just adding “forum”.
Does anyone remember Megalinks on Reddit? They started a forum after it was shut down, I was lucky enough to get invited before they closed registration. The forums are still very active and it’s the best community I’ve experienced online. I spend as much time there as I do here.
I used to use RPG.net a lot. They have pretty strict moderation, which keeps the place from turning into some kinds of shit holes. But you also can’t tell someone they’re a fool, or all Republicans are traitors. Takes some getting used to, but is probably worth it.
Gbatemp is one.
The Android rom ones like xda forums are active.
This is definitely not what you’re looking for but college sports forums are active if you want to read the dumbest shit ever.
I’m from Louisiana so I’ll pick on my own team and link to to Tiger Droppings:
https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/lsu-sports/
The recipe posts are actually good. It’s basically a forum for insane people who get mad about LSU gymnastics recruiting but then post an alligator sauce picante recipe that’s better than anything you’ve ever put in your mouth.
Here’s the food/drink topic section:
https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/food-and-drink/
It’s insane (compliment) and also insane (derogatory).
A jambalaya v.7.3 ratio spreadsheet exists:
Incredible
I love how Whirlpool has stuck to it’s guns with regards to staying text only.
It survived a world of phpbb, avatars, and animated GIFS and is now surviving a world of social media and “engagement”. It’s like Usenet with moderation and no binaries.
Helps that it’s fast as blazes too.
https://tildes.net/ is still quite active and while the interface is similar to old reddit the focus is more on discussions than sharing links.
