Can you recommend other forums that are easy to read and somewhat serious where one can lurk and kibitz.
Explore All Home Forum Discussions | Houzz has a few titles, mostly home and household stuff but that is the only other one that I know about that is easy to read, somewhat serious and factual, that is not quite specialized.
I think this is better suited for IMHO than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Let me tell you if you like anything about the technical side of music go to Hydrogen Audio (Dot) Org.
They take their music darn seriously and it’s very interesting to read about the different types and ways music can be recorded and stored.
Another good site if you like gadets of TV, DVDs, High Def stuff is the AVS Forums. The site is a bit busy because it has lots of subforums, but if you want a reccommend about a DVD player to buy or should you be getting High Def over the air, you can’t beat it for knowledge.
Lastly history buffs go to the Axis Forums. Despite it’s name they cover all history not just the Axis from WWII. Though they specialize in WWII they do all eras of history.
What’s especially interesting is the “What if’s” they have in their history section and even better is a lot of the members are not Americans or West Europeans and the views they have are quite interesting. I love the Finlanders on that board that defend their country siding with Germany in WWII. They are a lot of fun to read.
A friend recommended city-data dot com to me. (Spelled that way because links are prohibited. ) She says “It’s HUGE and VERY active. Not only do they have forums for every state and most major cities in those states, but they’ve got dozens of general interest forums, too.”
Some forums she mentions are:
Cats
Games
Politics & other Controversies
Green Living
Gardening
Home Decorating
It runs on VBulletin, but has more features enabled than SDMB does, including things like photo albums and space for 1,000 PMs.
I’ve yet to join that one.
Others I’d recommend are giraffeboards dot com, domebo dot net or cellar dot org. The forums at those sites are set up more like the SDMB forums are.
www.somethingawful.com is an odd mix… some very good , SDope-like stuff, with a lot of trash mixed in.
Beware, though…the members tend to be aged 25- 30. But I suppose that isn’t their fault 
Check out:
the forum called Ask/Tell (which is as good as our GQ or IMHO). And the forum called “debate and discussion”, which can be as good as our GD. Other forums on specific topics of cooking, cars and travel are okay, too.
But… stay far away from some of the other pages on the site, which are either stupid, obscene, or incomprehensible.
(yeah, I’m old. so get off my lawn.)