Other Forums Like the Straight Dope?

I’ve searched far and wide for similar communities that have the same sense of fraternity while still maintaining the broad and varied discussion (the ones I found were weak sauce). I really dig this forum, but it doesn’t always update as fast as I would like it too (I understand it’s mostly confined to a small geographical area. I stumbled across this site only through the luckiest of obscure Google searches).

Anyone else care to take a crack at finding another forum as brilliant as this? Do any of you already a number of forums you visit daily?

What do you mean that it’s confined to a small area? There are SDMB members from many places around the world. What do you mean that it doesn’t update as fast as you would like it too?

Apparently he wants it all to update as quickly as when Americans are at work (specially taken in the continental sense, they do make up most of our population).

All I can say is that the amounts of corn which have grown all over the place since I left on Friday would give me material for a week if I happened to care for corn. Sometimes it goes fast, sometimes it goes slow.

I recommend searching for threads started by Sampiro and Master Wang-Ka, not replying to them, and following links around. Eventually you’ll find the Ron threads, but those are hard to search for, since Ron is a three-letter word.

The SDMB is the second-fastest moving forum I know of. It’s also not remotely confined to Chicagoland, not mostly or even partially. There are tons of international members and people from all over the US. It *started *in Chicago, but most of the people who post here aren’t even from Illinois.

Of the other forums I’ve frequented, Somethingawful is the fastest. You won’t find a sense of fraternity there, though. There are just too many people, and the attitude in most of the subforums is fairly adversarial (especially to clueless newcomers). There’s a loose sense of community since it’s pay-to-post, but that’s confined exclusively to subforums. Most people only post in a couple subforums on a regular basis, because the place is so enormous. A lot of the rules are arcane and/or arbitrary. It’s very autocratic, due to the enormous number of active accounts; you can’t argue with a mod decision, ever. Rules are often bent or broken for the sake of comedy. If you don’t lurk for at least a few months before posting, you’ll probably be banned for breaking a rule you didn’t know existed, and they are unlikely to unban you more than once. If I had to describe the place in one word, I’d say: Arbitrary.

XKCD’s forum has a good sense of fraternity, but as a latecomer you won’t be welcomed unless you’re an ultra-liberal like the board leadership. It updates fairly often, but not as fast as here. They don’t ban people for making mistakes or having unpopular opinions, but most newcomers end up getting ostracized. I’m very liberal, and I still wasn’t liberal enough for that place. For example, most of them believe that guns should be banned everywhere and that atheism is the only acceptable spiritual alignment. If I had to describe the place in one word, I’d say: British.

Although I don’t play World of Warcraft anymore, the WoW forums had a decent sense of community. But you need to pay for a subscription to post anything. And most of the topics are game-related, anyway.

I don’t even know what street Chicago is on.

I believe Nava identified the geographic issue the op was referring as being North American rather than rather than Chicago. This is well demonstrated by the term ‘ultra-liberal’ which would only possibly come from a resident of the USA. To the rest of the world ‘liberal’ is not synonymous with left (and never far left).

Well, not to sound like a whiny bitch, but the sense of community in the SDMB is overrated - to be charitable, let’s say maybe as time goes by and u happen to say things that some lurkers & trolls like, ull be accepted into the ‘community’. I had an extremely annoying experience in 1, where I brought forth some unsolved issues of science, and got repeatedly flamed because ‘they’ were sure ‘their’ version of science & history had already answered said questions. I’m a relative newbie, and were I a thin-skinned emotional type, it’d be extremely dissuasive to further participation. Nevertheless, think of it like a crowd of people anywhere; nothing special here for this newbie yet. Or, it could be they’re just Cecil wannabes.
There were a couple of very smart posters who answered 2 of the issues I brought up, & I thanked them for it. But the immature personal attacks that followed mature discussion, & after having gone to great lengths to illuminate my point, was annoying. I gotta wonder about the moderators too; it’s like they’re saying, ‘we don’t want newbies here to participate, just observe’. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my malcontents were charter members (do they pay a lot more $$$ to be active members?), and I’m just a lowly scum-sucking guest. The malcontents in question made an impression, so now when I see anything by them, I know an immature flame is coming, nothing that’ll elucidate the issue being discussed. But if ur the sensitive type, be very careful about what u write; especially if it doesn’t conform to their ‘everybody knows this already’ version of science or history, ull get savagely flamed.

:slight_smile: expecting mocking copy of my words, saying ‘ur a whiny bitch’ :slight_smile: Really, some of these guys never left high school.

Benbo, were you the one who posted all the “strange anomalies science hasn’t figured out yet”, including the Bermuda Triangle? You kinda deserved that one. :stuck_out_tongue: They weren’t “sure” - they were right. I welcome getting corrected here, and getting called out on things I once absolutely thought were true. I was going to respond to you myself there but so many people already had so I didn’t. I didn’t see much flaming. Just bluntness. People are very blunt here.

Charter Members paid that fee once. I left high school in 1989.

The other boards I post on are special interest boards, but I do read somethingawful.com. Just haven’t paid for the pleasure of posting there.

I was curious, so I decided to read the thread in question.

It was going just fine; people were *disagreeing *with you, sure, but nobody was attacking you. And then you launched into this post which labelled those who disagreed with you as, amongst other things, “whiny nitpickers”, “incredibly lazy personalities who bitch about others’ claims”, “the inevitable cry of the nitpicker: cite”, “the nitpicking of the claims I put forth are sloppy, misinterpretive of what was written, and poorly researched” and so on.

It then gets even betetr as your next bunch of posts all contain attacks and insults directed at others. People actually put up with it for a while; a damnably patient lot, I think.

So yes, there was flaming going on. By you. And people responded to that.

MetaFilter is pretty good in terms of community and broad discussion, though idle chatter is actively discouraged. (It does have user-founded “satellite sites” for that kind of thing.) Ask MetaFilter reminds me a lot of our GQ forum, with a bit of Café Society and MPSIMS (interpersonal relationship advice) thrown in.

rachelellogram, I understand things will sound different out of context and it may be hard to come up with examples, but could you share a rule or two that you find a bit arbitrary or capricious? I’ve never been to the SA forums before so don’t have any idea of the culture. The pay-to-post will probably keep me away–I’m just curious about other conventions.

Something Awful Forums, as a few others mentioned. It’s mellowed and matured quite a bit over the past few years. The member base is generally younger than the SDMB; predominantly late 20s through early 40s.

As others have said, SA may be too large to feel the same “sense of community” as the SDMB, but that’s the price one pays for the level of activity you might be seeking. The topical subforums seem to be more close-knit, though, and many Goons never stray from them. I don’t think SA subforums have the hostility that rachelellogram claims. Any established message board, including SA and the SDMB is going to have an entrenched member base.

The thing around here is: Use proper spelling and grammar. Anything less is admitting ignorance, carelessness and sloth.

Yes I was the one who posted the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ thread. Actually, no, the ones I was talking about were NOT respectfully and normally disagreeing. I patiently researched and kept posting explanations & clarifications to elucidate, but was met with hostility. it was only after getting repeatedly flamed that I did rail against nitpickers. Obviously they ain’t alone in their confrontational way of thinking; this is what open debate has degenerated into, in this day & age on this board? Very pathetic. I for one don’t get off on making snide remarks when I *think * I’m right; I don’t antagonize and belittle. Even my criticism was limited to calling them nitpicky - hardly deserving of the continuous verbal assault that followed. We’re not even going into the rightness or wrongness of the positions - obviously I and some others think I’m right, and they & some others think not. But by supporting this type of flaming, you miss the whole point of what I was saying about a sense of community. Not for nothing, I was right about the magnetic anomalies, but that’s now besides the point. I participated to advance discussion, and was attacked for my efforts. Hardly encouraging for other newbies, and hardly an environment to bring forth answers. And again as pointed out previously, there were 2 posters who did indeed answer 2 of the 10 points I originally brought up, and I thanked them for their efforts. Look closely how they did it, & compare to the mindless insulting that followed on the other points. If after all that you can’t tell the difference, then any discussion on manners & how to behave in civilized society is pointless. We have free speech, and we’re allowed to yell at strangers in the street too. It’s still grating, obnoxious, and off-putting. I’ve participated in other discussions and never had such a childish antagonism as that ‘unsolved mysteries’ thread.

Is there a reason you don’t use the “Quote” button, benbo1?

didn’t know how to take the quotes from 2 separate posters. Is that you that fixed them?

No, that was me. Please do figure out how to use the quotes - that post was almost unreadable. If you look at the lower right hand corner of each post, there is a quote button and a multiquote button. The quote button sets up a reply with the other person’s post copied into it, and the multiquote button allows you to respond to several posts. Just select the ones you want to reply to and then hit “post reply.”

K, loox like I got it figured out.

Somethingawful is worth lurking. Many of its threads are as good or better than the Dope.

But they have about 10 levels of disciplinary stuff, which they use unhesitatlingly;–“probation”, losing posting privileges for 4 hours, or half a day, or a whole day, or a week, or an outright, permanent ban for the rest of your life. The reasons may be that you didn’t use proper capitalization, or didn’t attach a graphic icon tag to your post (i.e “sports” “scary” “funny”).And if you post something that is not exactly, 100% on topic, the mods will ban you without warning.
It’s not a friendly place.But it sometimes has some very,very interesting threads.For example:

Ask me about being in military prison - The Something Awful Forums
is an ex-prison inmate telling about a side of life that most of us never see, (thank God).

benbo1, here is the entire exchange between me and you in that thread:

To which you did not respond.

If anyone’s behavior was rude or childish, it was unmistakably yours. I don’t think I’ve noticed any of your posts before, so I am unfamiliar with you, but when I jumped into that thread, I immediately suspected that if anyone was in high school it was you. I don’t mean to attack you here, but simply to give you some honest feedback. Particularly the comments like “Sometimes this is too easy” don’t inspire confidence, especially given what if may say appears to me to be some exceptionally errant judgement on your part. And frankly, the point you seem to feel is so obvious from a google search betrays a remarkable credulousness.