# What are the most popular message boards in the Internet?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 25, 2003, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042 "2003-03-25T16:20:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Kantalooppi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kantalooppi)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/1 "2003-03-25T16:20:36Z")
I got thinking. I searched for ‘large discussion forum’ and got a bunch of forums for people with a large penis. I didn’t check them, but I’d wager they weren’t very popular, comparing.
[SlashDot](http://slashdot.org/) probably counts, as well as [Free Republic.](http://www.freerepublic.com) What else? Is there a list with, say, 10 most popular message boards?
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### Author:  [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/2 "2003-03-25T16:25:48Z")
Well let’s see here, here are my top ten:
1. Straightdope
2)Straight dope
3)StraightDope
4)Straight Dope
5)The Straight Dope Messege Board
6)the straightdope messege boards
7)the straightdope messege BOARDS
8)the SDMB
9)THE sdmb
10)SDMB
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### Author:  [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/3 "2003-03-25T16:29:19Z")
There are others?
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### Author:  [@kniz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kniz)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/4 "2003-03-25T17:45:03Z")
**Phlosphr** , I believe you forgot this [this](http://fathom.org/bbs.html) message board.
[ul]😉 [sup] **I believe it should be #3 on the list** [/sup][/ul]
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### Author:  [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/5 "2003-03-25T17:59:09Z")
I’m betting that any top-ten list would be a WAG at best since most of these sites don’t disclose member totals, much less daily traffic stats. It’s unlikely you could even agree on an appropriate stat (e.g. raw hits, unique visits, members, posts, etc.) for measuring popularity, much less get the data needed to compare unless they all happened to use the same advertising provider like DoubleClick. I’m willing to bet that Slashdot is way up there since the Slashdot effect has become fairly well known even outside its own pages. I think guessing at any others would only expose my ignorance since I’d probably miss some very popular ones I’ve never heard of. Such is the nature of these things.
If you’re looking for collections of this kind of content, I’m willing to bet that Usenet, taken as a whole, dwarfs even the largest forum sites and maybe even all the forum sites combined. I don’t have recent traffic numbers from Usenet, but in sheer number of posts (even excluding binaries), it has to outrank its web-based offspring.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/6 "2003-03-25T18:08:33Z")
The most popular message board? Probably WhatsTheThirdWord [ThatEndsWithGry.com](http://ThatEndsWithGry.com).
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### Author:  [@skaterboarder87](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skaterboarder87)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/7 "2003-03-25T18:11:55Z")
I can tell you IGN has some insane message boards. Upon posting a topic, it’s bumped off the page in minutes.
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### Author:  [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/8 "2003-03-25T18:47:42Z")
Isn’t the pizza parlor popular as well? I’m not sure if it ranks up there with some of these sites mentioned though…
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### Author:  [@MaryEFoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaryEFoo)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2003, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/9 "2003-03-25T23:54:12Z")
Hey, battle some ignorance here. Ends in -gry? IGN? Pizza Parlor?
I think my ignorance is being aggravated…
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### Author:  [@5\_time\_champ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5_time_champ)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/10 "2003-03-26T01:01:02Z")
_There is no Board but Straight Dope-
and Uncle Cecil is it’s Prophet_
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### Author:  [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/11 "2003-03-26T01:31:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> …
> If you’re looking for collections of this kind of content, I’m willing to bet that Usenet, taken as a whole, dwarfs even the largest forum sites and maybe even all the forum sites combined. I don’t have recent traffic numbers from Usenet, but in sheer number of posts (even excluding binaries), it has to outrank its web-based offspring.
Given the decentralized nature of news servers, and the difficulty of typifying who is taking what, meaningful estimates are hard to come by, but a lot of servers do publish their daily statistics. A news server which takes a large number of newsgroups will accept well over a million articles a day:
[http://feedme.news.mediaways.net/html/](http://feedme.news.mediaways.net/html/)
Note the average incoming accepted volume of 12 articles/sec. Many large university servers are accepting hundreds of thousands per day.
Still, I’m not convinced that something like the Yahoo boards doesn’t give it a run for the money. The more or less unmoderated garbage that’s allowed to flow across their company specific stock boards, for instance, runs at double and triple digit per day rates for many heavily traded companies. Then, consider the REST of their boards.
A setup like Yahoo that has a huge number of “forums” to use our terms, must add up, even if a lot of them don’t have that much volume.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/12 "2003-03-26T01:44:25Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by MaryEFoo \*
> \*\*Hey, battle some ignorance here. Ends in -gry? IGN? Pizza Parlor?
>
> I think my ignorance is being aggravated… \*\*
[ul]
[li]“ends in -gry”: In-joke. One of the questions Cecil answered was “What’s the third common word that ends in -gry?” It was a silly question because it’s really a stupid joke perpetrated on yutzes who don’t get it and feel the need to pesker us about it.[/li][li]“IGN” is the Internet Gamers Network, I think. I’m not really a gamer.[/li][li]“Pizza Parlor” is a Christian message board some Dopers frequent that formed in the wake of the board war between us and the LBMB (Left Behind Message Board). It’s a neutral zone currently friendly to people originally from both sides.[/li][/ul]
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### Author:  [@biker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biker)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/13 "2003-03-26T02:28:46Z")
it’s not a message board in the strict sense, but [fark.com](http://fark.com) is right up there in massive popularity.
and for politics it’s [bartcop.com](http://bartcop.com).
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/14 "2003-03-26T02:43:04Z")
**biker** : Fark is more like the fake news version of Slashdot without the message board section. I don’t think it counts.
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### Author:  [@Joe\_Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Cool)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/15 "2003-03-26T04:56:54Z")
I don’t know how this compares to other boards, but Off-Topic has averaged 22MB per hour over the last 11 days, and I hear traffic has been very light lately.
according to [http://forums.off-topic.net/sysinfo.php](http://forums.off-topic.net/sysinfo.php)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/16 "2003-03-26T07:24:38Z")
I’m not sure of numbers, but [Ars Technica](http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=cfrm&s=50009562) might be up there, too.
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### Author:  [@MaryEFoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaryEFoo)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/17 "2003-03-26T08:56:24Z")
Thank you, **Derleth**!
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### Author:  [@mooka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mooka)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/18 "2003-03-26T11:17:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Derleth \*
> \*\*[ul]
> [li]“Pizza Parlor” is a Christian message board some Dopers frequent that formed in the wake of the board war between us and the LBMB (Left Behind Message Board). It’s a neutral zone currently friendly to people originally from both sides.[/li][/ul] \*\*
Why was there a board war between SDMB and LBMB? Who are the LBMB? What happens in a board war anyway? Precision guided cluster postings? The hijacking of strategically important threads? Was there much collateral damage?
Must have been pretty vicious if it was felt the Pizza Parlor needed to be set up as a demilitarised zone between the two boards.
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### Author:  [@mallocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mallocks)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/19 "2003-03-26T12:15:02Z")
**IGN**
Total Boards: 259 | Total Messages: 51,341,931 (2,771 posted today)
Although that’s obviously way more messages in total, theres a fair few boards, and I think the messages per day, at least on this one, are less than this one. (Correct me if I’m wrong)
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### Author:  [@TheMadHun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMadHun)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2003, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-popular-message-boards-in-the-internet/164042/20 "2003-03-26T12:30:59Z")
The Football365 forum at [http://213.177.198.167/default.asp?sid=1604&p=16](http://213.177.198.167/default.asp?sid=1604&p=16) gets a staggeringly disproportionate amount of traffic.
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