Inspired by a thread a few weeks ago asking about favorite non-SDMB boards, I realized that there are three types of boards I’ve never found on the web.
Medical advice - Discuss your symptoms and treatment options. I once found a limited message board discussing some medication. That’s as close as I’ve ever come.
Virtual book club - Discuss not only recent publications, but also a specific older work.
Computer help: beginner level - When I’ve had complicated questions, especially about file sharing, the boards and the helpful souls are there. But for nontechies, (which is what I am 99% of the time) can’t find a thing.
Dropping “War and Peace discussion”, “Moby Dick discussion”, and “An American Tragedy discussion” into Google™ brought up discussion boards for each of them, (although not every hit was a message board–Moby Dick, in particular had the message boards tucked well behind the “school aid” and “teacher” or “student” guide hits).
Interestingly, An American tragedy turned up a whole website devoted to literary discussion, named (with how much irony, I do not know), ConstantReader.com.
I do not know that there are a lot of message boards devoted to medical advice, but a lot of medical associations are providing “ask the doctor/nurse” web pages. Several of them have already been noted, but I have also seen sites linked to most of the major hospitals in the U.S.
I really should just get into the habit of trying Google first. Had an experience recently where I was looking for a certain type of club to hear music and asked every musician I met for about three months with no success. Went to Google and got multiple answers in less than a second.
Virtual book club - Amazon has message queues for every title. Not active, except for this week’s best sellers, but you will eventually get notified of responses.
Computer help: beginner level -
The biggest of these is PC magazine’s