I have the same experience as others. For specific topics, like a specific TV series, reddit can be fantastic in the participation of people, but there is no overall reddit community AFAIK. Reddit simply is too large, you can’t keep up with all new topics like you can here. For specific subjects, specialized boards like the previously mentioned stackexchange may be excellent, and sometimes such boards also have some forums for general discussion outside its primary interest. But I find such discussions usually limited, perhaps due to the selecftive membership of such boards.
I did participate actively in NADS back in the day, which was fun but also a very small community (which was part of the fun).
SDMB is indeed still without parallel, I hope that it can keep attracting new members to maintain its diversity of interests, experiences and opinions.
Somewhat similarly, I was referred here by someone on my original fantasy football board, back when I still followed the sport and played the game. You know, I still hang out there because of the I-friends I made and I know that others do, too, long after they’ve stopped participating in ff.
I need to find a card players forum. I assume reddit has those?
@jnglmassiv, I’d like to publicly retract my half-apology and issue a real one. Not “I may have overreacted” but I did overreact. I took a short break from the SDMB a while back because, among other things, I realized I was being too prickly and posting hot takes without enough thought. I’m trying to do better, but, as on this occasion, I sometimes backslide. I skipped right past the possibility of genuine miscommunication and jumped to the conclusion that you were deliberately snipping my post to misrepresent what I wrote and catch me in a manufactured “gotcha”. That was clearly wrong, and it was wrong of me to jump to that conclusion.
I unreservedly apologize to you.
As for the actual topic of this thread, several posters have now more eloquently made the point about reddit and subreddits I was trying to make.
My experiences have been generally bad. I made a thread here about it years ago. I think the term “Sucks Ass” was in the title. Or something like that.
I haven’t found anything at all. Facebook despite its many global flaws, is excellent at niche local groups (e.g. dwarf pig hobbyists of Maine), and I also belong to a couple single-focus international boards, like Fountain Pen Network. That’s it. However, boards like FPN generally have popular ‘chatter’ subfora where you can talk about anything. The boards I use are heavily policed, and generally cursing, sexual topics, all politics, and any kind of snippiness are all forbidden. It’s a lot blander than the Dope. And that is fine.
The only alternatives to the Dope I ever discovered were the Fathom and Snopes message boards - both long gone. I visit the boards at Pinside.com when I need pinball repair advise, but haven’t been there in over a year.
There are two people in this thread who post to a fountain pen message board? The SDMB remains amazing in its diversity. (That’s not sarcastic – you can find experts and enthusiasts of all types here)
Way back in the day The History Channel had a good one. But (around the same time the History Channel dissoveld into reality TV) it dissolved into absolute far right wing craziness to the point where it was unusable. Sorry conservatives of the SD, your sanity levels are way to high to come close to the madness THC message boards dissolved into.
The boards at the IMDb were great, except for the conspiracy theorists who infested anything related to 9/11 and had a hand in prompting IMDb to take the boards down.
ETA: another board I was active on and has since disappeared was for a specific niche of toy collectors. It got completey infested by spammers before TPTB decided keeping it up wasn’t worth the trouble. Ironically, it was the only board I was (temporarily) banned from because TPTB there mistook me for a spammer.
I’ve been an active member of a couple of boards; the first major one revolved around a MMORPG. For the first couple of years it was great with an active, very diverse (politically and socially but probably not racially) membership. I learned a lot from that group and was a moderator for a while (a thankless, impossible job). Interest in the game died down but the “real life” forum stayed active.
The most vocal/active members leaned conservative or hardcore libertarian and over time they badgered the liberal members until almost all of them left. The board became a monoculture; with little to no pushback it started to get ridiculous and it became common knowledge that every liberal was stupid or evil. I finally just had to quit. About once a year I lurk just to see if it’s still so one-sided.
I was a regular on a few gaming related forums for years (and years) but they’ve died off and this is the only traditional forum I spend much time on these days. A number of people from one of the boards that’s largely died moved to Discord and we chat on there instead. I read a couple subreddits but am not a regular poster on any of them and none have a real sense of community or distinctive posters that I’ve noticed. Plus I just don’t like Reddit’s thread style as much as a traditional message board’s.
I wouldn’t mind finding another board to replace the dead ones but I know the format itself is a dying medium supplanted by Reddit, Facebook and other places.
I really miss the IMDB message boards. There are plenty of times when I want to ask a question or discuss something obscure about an episode of a TV show or a scene from a movie, and that was the best place to do it. I can see why they shut it down-- it required moderation and maintenance with no benefit to IMDB itself.
I glance at reddit every day, but mostly for the cute cat/dog pics and videos. Especially the really specialized ones like r/corgiebutts (yup, corgis are really cute from behind) and r/catsinboxes. If you have a cat, you won’t need that one explained. I also like r/cozyplaces and r/OldSchoolCool. Reddit is a place to ask a question, not to have a long, nuanced discussion.
Fountain Pen Network has over 100,000 members. Fountain pen enthusiasts also tend to skew male, older, and tech geeky, like the Dope, so I am not particularly surprised.
This is my take as well. Reddit doesn’t feel like a community; to me, it’s an undifferentiated sea of anonymous voices. I have no idea who the regulars are in the subreddits I visit, and it doesn’t help that usernames are displayed in a tiny, light font. Also, I don’t know what the demographics of Reddit are, but practically everyone there sounds like a twentysomething white male. YMMV, of course—given the vast number of subreddits, I’m sure there are exceptions.
The only other forum I read is the WordReference English Only board for people learning English. WordReference has other boards for other languages/language groups, and for translating, but EO is exactly that – conversations conducted solely in English. The moderators (one in particular) tend to get a little narrowminded when it comes to keeping conversations on track, but there’s a lot of good information being exchanged.
I spend as much time at the Steve Hoffman Music forums as I do here. If you’re a fan of rock/pop music (especially The Beatles, ha!) you’d be hard pressed to find a better place for a discussion. The deep dives into technical/sound/hardware topics are a bit too geeky for me, but helpful if you’re into that kind of thing. There are lots of active threads about movies and TV and also several threads to share interesting photos. One of the most appealing aspects of the board to me is the “no politics” rule.
Definite classic rock bent to their discussions tho.
Another one still going strong would be airliners.net. avsim.com likewise, esp. with the release of MSFS 2020 last year.
The main issue with sites which are hugely busy like those last three is how quickly threads can get buried if they don’t get any activity, even if for just a few hours. [Yeah gotta subscribe to my faves I guess]
I’m part of 2 very active boards regarding my hobby (one for horses in general, the other specific to dressage). Both have general interest subforums and guess which subforum is the busiest. I also take part in a general interest board that is skewed to liberal middle aged women. Discussion tends to center around COVID shots and what pots and pans should I buy.
