Here’s a link to a parody children’s book, with links to other similar parodies (“Brenda’s Beaver Needs A Barber”, that kind of thing).
UseNet is still around in some form. It’s all on-line web sites rather than spread around via modems and uucp these days, but there are several web sites that mirror all the news group discussions. Here is one example that I follow now and then:
Yeah, this was not connected to any specific project, except itself, other than the members generally coming from a specific other board.
As I said above, I was a poster there.
Yes, the rules were very strict. And the number bannable offenses increased over time.
You could be banned just for saying “boobs.”
You could be banned for criticising anything about a recap or expressing a preference for one recapper over another.
You could be banned for starting your post with “umm.”
At one point they threatened to hand out warnings for talking about the name change from Mighty Big TV to Television Without Pity, because people wanted to know the reason for the change and the staff got mad about the questions.
Some of the recappers there were very good, but the boards were treacherous. Also for the popular ahows, people posted so fast and so furiously that it was impossible to follow a discussion.
Ultimately the boards were too much for the staff to handle. And there was a lot of drama. The affiliated boards for Fametracker melted down over something I can’t recall now.
Before that, I was on the BELIEF-L messageboard, because apparently I like to argue about the meaning of life and other random shit. Who knew? I can’t even remember what the platform was anymore – probably USENET.
Umm, just thought you should know I’ve reported this post.
Another snopes refugee. I think the message boards were a victim of the divorce and only got shut down when someone decided to stop paying money.
I don’t remember which board, and it might have been usenet, but I do remember reading posts from Robert Hewitt Wolfe some decades ago.
The Young Turks message board was a lively leftish politics-centric board. It died around 2012 after a site redesign. There were a lot of regulars, and a few villains who liked to show up and insult everyone (okay, all boards have that). I was not a heavy contributor, but at the time it was a fun place.
Couple of boards I read, but didn’t really participate in too much were from webcomics. Ozzy and Millie had a very robust messageboard for a number of years, discussing everything from the comic to current events, science, politics and such. Schlock Mercenary also had a reasonably strong messageboard presence, up until nightstar shut down as it was the only forum still on their servers.
Both suffered from lack of moderation, where it was pretty much just the artist in charge of moderating, and eventually it became too much for them to deal with, so left it to its own devices till it withered and died. Ozzy and Millie’s board lasted a while past the end of the comic, while Schlock’s was shut down well before the comic ended.
I visited xkcd’s forum from time to time, mostly when I didn’t get today’s comic, and went looking for explanations. That got shut down a while back because of some hack or error that wasn’t worth bringing the boards back up, apparently. It did seem to have a decent amount of general discussion, but I never really delved into that side of it very deeply.
A couple other boards I briefly visited were the discussion boards for The Daily Show and Colbert Report, but they were shut down within a couple weeks of my finding them, as they seemed unmoderated and I think the network saw them as a potential liability.
WEEN forum, introduced me to the wild, wild, west of the internet.
The X-Files Official Site messageboards.
I’m still very good friends with quite a few people from there, over twenty years after we met. We’ve gone on holiday together multiple times, one stayed with me for a few weeks when she first came to the UK for a year at college, two live together, and apart from those extremely close friendships there are others I know fairly well but not on best friends basis. It’s amazing what those messageboards led to, TBH.
I remember being on Opal’s FFF board, as well as popping into Polycarp’s Pizza Parlor on occasion.
I used to post on the message boards at disinformation dot com (I think that is what it was- no longer around though). There were some people there who would have made fine Dopers, the rest are likely MAGAts.
I also used to post on the Science and Religion boards at the New York Times. For a couple of years that was great place with lively debates but trolls started showing up and moderation was not up to the task and eventually the NYT shut down all their message boards.
ETA - just breaking a link
Yeah, I was never a huge message board person anywhere other than here.
But I used to participate in a bunch of Usenet newsgroups back in the 1995-2003-ish timeframe, before Usenet sort of withered and died.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, WELL.
eBay used to have message boards, lots of general discussion not just about buying and selling things
Several splinter boards from the Dope, Aussie and UK, FFF
I even ran my own Trekker/Trekkie board when so many Trek Dopers left due to P2P. It was tiring, but fun while it lasted
this topic is well-timed for me.
I was a member of YesFans (a discussion forum for fans of the prog band Yes) for a number of years. The board itself was 20 years old and was very active. It was the only place I could go for my Yes fix during their dry period following their 2014 album.
So when they were about to release their latest album (“The Quest”) in October 2021, I deliberately stopped visiting the forum as I didn’t want to be biased by leaks and others’ opinions of the new album. I finally came back last month, looking forward to seeing what everyone else thought about The Quest, only to see that the forum was gone!
Apparently it was shut down with very little warning in late November. There is a replacement site now with many of the same people, but 20 years of discussion, analysis, and debate was just wiped out. It was heartbreaking.
I just hope that if/when SDMB goes, there will be some effort to properly archive the discussions so that future generations can benefit from our collective wisdom!
Spent over 20 years on the Allakhazam (later just ZAM) forums that originally sprung up around the computer game Everquest. Of course, after a while most of the real conversation was in the Out of Topic forums which eventually had a number of prolific posters who never even played any of the games the boards were about.
Age and changing ownership eventually slowed the board’s activity as well as game companies running their own forums so there was less reason for new blood to discover them. They still technically exist but aren’t linked to the main site pages any longer; you need a direct link to access them. But there’s maybe one post every couple of weeks anyway and I’ve stopped visiting except for when I accidentally click the wrong bookmark.
Ditto the snopes boards.
Not even allowed access via the Wayback Machine.
I have been a member of the soon-to-be-defunct ehMac.ca boards since about 2006. A couple noobs took it over as mods last year and it’s been dying ever since. They would pull threads and delete posts without much rhyme or reason and members started leaving. One or two key members died (natural causes). They started a new rule where you couldn’t start a new thread without their approval. So I took one my threads, “What do you like about ehMac?” and that started a conversation, though perhaps heavy on the sarcasm (“I love how free speech is encouraged”). Then they said we were going off topic by talking about other forums, so I changed the title to “What do you like about ehMac and how does it compare to other forums?” They tolerated that but then banned me for a week for questioning their authority. When I returned, I changed the title to “What do you DISlike…” which they did notice, so they changed the “dislike” back to “like” on my behalf. So then I changed the title to “Buttereflies and Zebras” (like from the Jimi Hendrix song) and they changed the title back again. So then I changed it to “Censorship is Alive and Well” which I don’t think they appreciated because now I’m banned for six months. C’est la vie.
Don’t worry; I would never do that kind of thing here. 