I enjoy the way forums work and how they’re laid out. I also love how useful they are, especially when so many companies are replacing their entire communities with a Discord channel, which is less than ideal. I only use a few forums, but I’d like to find some more to browse through, it doesn’t matter the topic!
My wee list:
- TIGSource Forums - Video game developers big and small post here, there’s even a section for showcasing work-in-progress projects which is really cool.
- The Metal Archives Forums - The main site is pretty much the gold standard for metal music cataloguing. The forums are obviously about the metal genre, too.
- Cook’d and Bomb’d - This is a comedy aficionado forum. It’s about all comedy, but it originally focused on the work of Chris Morris (Brass Eye, The Day Today).
EDIT: “Meal” to “metal” 🤦
I still frequent XDA Forums for all of my custom ROM needs.
The biggest Swedish forum on the internet, nutorious for having a very uncensored community (they are hosted in the US as Swedish law isn’t as permissive in terms of free speech, not by much, but enough to make it worth it), so you’ll have to ignore a shitload of racism, sexism, homophobia and more crap to read it.
The reason I read it is that they love discussing current events, if you notice something on the news, a shooting or other gang war stuff you will find a thread about it with the location of the incident, information about who lives there if it is a house or apartment building, this information includes names of possible people involved, their vehicles and countless racist/sexist/homophobic/classist/other remarks, I mainly just want the location so I know what area to avoid.
They also have the greatest Swedish forum thread in the history of the internet:
“Dumma saker ni gjort” - “Stupid things you have done”.
This is a thread that runs 131 pages, of glorious posts of Swedish teenagers in the early 2000s talking about stupid things that they have done. As a Swedish millenial who grew up in and around those years, everything is so amazingly familiar to me, making the thread increadibly funny.
I am not sure how well Google translate will work on the thread, becaue there is a LOT of sloppy spelling, which adds to the charm of the posts, but here is the link:
Now I know where to go when I feel like I’m ready for native-level input in Swedish!
I can’t say I “frequent” it, but if you ever have ANY troublesome A/V-related question/difficulty, there are absolute wizards of the exact sort you’re imagining lurking over in AVS Forum.
Therpf.com forums if you are serious about making costumes and replica props.
Tomshardware forums are still pretty decent for tech help.
LS1tech.com if you are working on an LS engine. Everything you could possibly want to know.
There’s actually quite a few Internet forums out there that cater to crowds that may be a little averse to technology and adopting things like discord or using Reddit. Car repair, Automotive, DIY construction and home repair, surprisingly quite a few tech forums like XDA developers or Tom’s, machinists, prop-making, Making in general…. Sometimes they’re not very active unfortunately, but they do have a searchable wealth of knowledge.
Planted Tank is great for planted aquariums, and Fish Lore has an active general fishkeeping forum.
Vortex is a Volkswagen forum but has tons of conversation around other brands, too.
The official LOTRO forums are the only official game forums I’ve found that aren’t super toxic. Great community.
Really, I think old-school forums are best for specific niche interests.
+1 for vwvortex!
Fish lore was great until i got banned for offering to help. No discussion or chance to appeal. Its run by a bunch of abusive idiots if you ask me. The forum and users are great though.
I still find some good answers for questions on my car in some good old, car forums specific to whatever make you may have.
The Fantasy Grounds forum is for a virtual tabletop for TTRPGs that’s pretty active, and it’s been going through a lot of good UI updates lately since the guy from DnD Beyond joined.
That’s because the format itself promotes the accumulation of knowledge instead of the constant repetition from Reddit style forums which are better at generating new content.
I hope we don’t lose them. Or someone is archiving all this knowledge.
I do like Whirlpool, an Australian forum primarily centred on technology. It’s still active despite the general decline of forums, has a lot of useful info to turn up in searches, and I appreciate how it has remained clean and fast without the visual clutter and wasted data of modern web design.
Something Awful
I’ve been tempted to join that site, but it seems to have too many rules.
Still worth it to lurk, they manage the fine line on being edgy without also being annoying.
The stack overflow of PLC programming.
Whirpool but it’s Australian focused
FuckCombustion: a forum about cannabis vaporization.
https://www.thelincolnforum.net/
It’s for maintaining and restoring classic Lincoln continentals. Lots of knowledge both in the content and in the members. You don’t find much outside of the forum.
