# Does anybody know German or French Boards

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-know-german-or-french-boards/207539>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 15, 2003, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-know-german-or-french-boards/207539 "2003-10-15T10:00:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![flonks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3ab097/32.png) [@flonks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flonks)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2003, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-know-german-or-french-boards/207539/1 "2003-10-15T10:00:10Z")

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I don’t know if this belongs into IMHO …

I enjoy the SDMB, but for a non-US citizen there is one disadvange: I can’t discuss the politics of my own country (at least not the things which are interesting mostly to the people in my country).

Does anybody know **interesting** _German_ or _French_ boards?

It’s not hard to come up with a list in google, but find the good ones is not that easy …

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**Author:** ![missbunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/76d3ee/32.png) [@missbunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missbunny)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2003, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-know-german-or-french-boards/207539/2 "2003-10-15T14:44:43Z")

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[about.com](http://about.com) has a French one. You subscribe to the email newsletter and then you can connect to the board through that. I don’t know if there’s an alternate method. A lot of the discussion is about French language and culture but there are some politics in there too.

Be advised, I had to sign up for the list about 5 times and it took almost a year for them to get me on it. Maybe they’ve fixed that by now. I think you can find the place to sign up here: [http://talk.about.com](http://talk.about.com)

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**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2003, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anybody-know-german-or-french-boards/207539/3 "2003-10-15T18:05:17Z")

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You might try the old-fashioned way and browse the relevant Usenet newsgroups (available e.g. on [http://groups.google.com](http://groups.google.com) in case you don’t have a NNTP client.  
On Germany:

- soc.culture.german is the relevant English-language newsgroup but it is virtually unusable because, being English-language and about German culture, it is predictably overrun by kooks who project their particular hangups on Germany.
- the more German-language de.soc.politik.misc group is more bearable and seems to be amenable to serious discussions, but the kook load is also high there. A common problem of unmoderated fora.

Web fora:  
[A list on chat and forum sites](http://ch.dmoz.org/World/Deutsch/Computer/Internet/Chats_und_Foren/) in the Open Directory.

The German-language [forum of Die Zeit](http://debatte.zeit.de/WebX) (a highbrowish weekly) seems to be reasonably civilized.