I haven’t been to the International Skeptics Forum(formerly JREF Message Board) for a couple of years, but it was pretty lively when I was there last.
If you listen to The Skeptic’s Guide To The Universe podcast, the SGU forums are can be pretty lively.
The Datalounge is an anonymous board and has some of the funniest threads out there. I go back and forth between here and there.
And they allow multiple sock accounts. User name throwawaybecauseimfullofshit type accounts. You cannot tell who might be an interesting person with an interesting post or who is multiple socks boosting each other.
And the whole upvote/downvote thing that determines if your post will even be seen is stupid and prevents opposing points of view. It is like being an echo chamber is ingrained into the board function.
That, and a bit of lurking and you realize that it is 95% young boys fantasies, when they aren’t masturbating, and 5% interesting people whose user name you are unlikely to remember.
Except for shittymorph, who was a great story starter, he would drag you in, and then you hear about well… a professional wrestling incident from 1998. I half expected that he would be revealed as a professional writer. But they put a stop to that too.
I would if it would allow me to register. Every time I try I get back “The letters you typed don’t match the letters that were shown in the picture.”…but the verification is the type where you check off all the pictures of lighthouses or tractors or streetlights in a set of nine pictures. There is no place to type any letters, so I don’t know what the hell they want me to do.
I can’t find a way to contact the mods there to let them know that I cannot register. If you wouldn’t mind, could you tell them that, no matter what I do I get the “The letters you typed don’t match the letters that were shown in the picture.” response?
Urban75 is the main one. Others can confirm it’s still active etc. Mainly UK-centred, left of centre.
If you don’t like being told to fuck off, fuck off. 
It’s the kind of forum that tells people to fuck off a lot for being an idiot, but if you’re in real trouble, and you’ve been there for a while, there’s a huge amount of support.
It’s a good board. As Sam says it’s left-of-centre, and that’s by UK standards, so make sure you know what you are talking about on the political subforums, or you will be eaten alive.
Apart from the communism and the anarchism, it’s a lot like here really. Anti-woo, pro-science, loads of recipes and chatting shit about TV and music and film. HUGE train fans 
I started a thread asking about your problem. In the “help” section there is only this:
I wandered around there some, and whenever I saw something I might want to contribute to, I would see at the top: “27.3K Comments”. When a subject garners thousands of comments, what’s the point of adding to it? I tried the very specific hobbyist subs, and there is no discussion of equipment or methodology. Just “Here’s a picture of me doing [thing]”. Over and over and over.
There are some interesting subs about science, the future and nature, but I just read without commenting.
Can you provide a link to that thread?
I will when I get home. (started the thread on my home computer, where I have my password saved. Don’t know my password so I cannot get in at work)
The support groups are 95% “I just found out I have this, what next”.
Reddit is for reading, not for building a community. All those listicles that are “This group of people relate their experiences related to being in that group” are from AskReddit.
I’d classify most of their forums as cooperative blogs. I suspect that the forums which actually work as a community are so because they’re closed and you have to know someone to get in.
Count me in as someone who would like to find other fora that I might be interested in. (I made the mistake of googling my name on GB, and now the place has left a bad taste in my mouth)
Got a PM from a mod:
Chronicle of the Horse message board. Lots of different horse-related forums (Dressage, Hunter/Jumper, Foxhunting, Western, Trail, etc), a pet forum, an “Off-Course” (not horse-related general forum). Busy, active board - If you look at who’s online right now, there are 530 registered members active at that moment.
StG
That’s a board I occasionally lurk on but I am much more comfortable with The Horse Forum. Much more diverse and far, far, more downhome, while there are still plenty of experienced people. Beginners are helped not sneered at. Heavily moderated, no snark allowed at all (I was a moderator briefly so saw behind the scenes.)Different tone entirely. CoH is dominated by people who apparently routinely drop $5K on a weekend show with their $35K+ horse. Mostly dressage/eventing/jumping (all of these are very expensive sports). It was lurking on CofH where I first heard the word “ammie”. Ammies are those lesser folks who aren’t Pros or BNTs (Big Name Trainers). Not a word used on HF. Still it’s an interesting window into a world I will never actually enter.
One thing you can do is sort posts by “Rising” or “New” instead of the default “Top.” Top posts have already gotten a lot of attention, they are interesting to read but like you said most every comment has already been made. Rising or New posts won’t have nearly as many comments.
Fully agree. There’s something for everyone.
It’s also true that the default subs are enormous and it’s likely you won’t recognize other redditors in the 15k comments. However, it’s also true that there are smaller subs with much more of a small town feel. Subs for smaller hobbies and very local neighborhood info are particularly good for this.
I use a browser for reddit but far prefer old reddit.
http://old.reddit.com
OK, so based on the recommendations here, I just went and checked out the Giraffe Boards.
I’ve grown concerned about how traffic is slowing here on SDMB. I used to be able to pop in every two or three days and see lots of brand new threads in the two fora I habituate. Now, if I come back two days later, not a lot has changed. A bunch of new posts maybe, but not a lot of new threads. So I’m looking for more stuff to distract myself.
I started on the Giraffe equivalent of GQ (Just the Facts, I think they call it). The very last thread on page 1 had something I felt would benefit from my input — until I noticed that the most recent post was put up back in March.
Today is the 11th. The most recent post in that forum was three days ago, and only 6 threads have had updates this month.
Really!!?? Is this how infrequently Giraffe is used?
I mean, the thread currently at the bottom of page 1 of GQ was last posted-to the day before yesterday. Does one really return to the Giraffe after a week away and find only two or three new/updated threads? Or is my computer sorting them wrong or something?
Yea, as said, traditional message boards are done for. What did you think of reddit, though?