Wrestling Classics Message Board was my first and still “home” on the internet. Incredible knowledge and willingness to discuss minutiae, has survived several eras of moderation and software/hardware, adult interactions (98% of the time), long time community devoted to rasslin’ but wide range of topics discussed on the main board, only thing actively sub-forumed is politics and that is a good thing for every one. I lurked at first late, late 90’s, finally joined but even now a very infrequent poster.
Amazon used to host to host a large number of forums on various topics, ostensibly meant to foster discussions loosely focused on the stuff they sell. There were a lot of interesting threads/debates about aspects of health care.
The forums were discontinued maybe a decade ago, probably for the same reason Amazon recently shut off comments on reviews.*
*The stated reason for no longer allowing comments on reviews was that the function was seldom used, which was far from the case. Evidently Amazon no longer wanted to bother moderating the back-and-forth, which sometimes got heated.
The site exists, but it hasn’t had a post in a couple of months now, last I looked. I check it about once a week these days.
The Reddit setup just plain doesn’t work for anything like these message boards. It’s next to impossible to have multiple discussions on a wide range of topics within one subreddit and still keep track of what’s going on; and every subreddit is a different community with a different group of people and a different set of rules. I don’t want to only look for specific subjects I already know I’m interested in; I want to also see what other people think is interesting that I didn’t already know about. But not what nearly every random person on the internet thinks is interesting, while both having to try to figure out which of an entirely different set of posters are halfway sensible and having to re-investigate the rules for each subject I want to look at!
I’m also on a forum/board using message-board format that started off following a particular comic and its author, and which has been turning into a general-interest board that I do find quite interesting; but the comic author is currently, um, taking their work in directions that most of the forum finds unpleasant, so the board may well wind up losing its original center. It’s independently run, so maybe it’ll survive that; I hope so, but am not counting on it.
That right there is like 90 % of the reason I come here. “Hmmm, what’s on the community’s mind?”
This, but mine’s split in half:
45% “Hmmm, what’s on the community’s mind?” and
45% “Hmmm, what are my Internet ‘friends’ up to?”
There’s a sense of community here (and through the spinoffs) that I don’t think exists anywhere else on the Internet.
Tripler
10% “I’ve been visiting this same website for 20+ years. Why change now?” 
I see it on that other board I referenced in post #103. I expect there are other places that have it; it’s just that they’re off in corners I haven’t come across.
Rightly or wrongly, I come here (and other boards) to advocate for certain policies that I believe in. I’ve certainly been dissuaded of some of them by sound arguments but I also think that I’ve been a tiny part of the larger movements where minds have been changed on things that make the country better. For support, I offer up the way public opinion has changed on some important issues in the two decades or so of social media.
I was once a regular on GardenWeb. Then it fragmented into a zillion forums, many of which had little traffic. GW was sold to Houzz, which screwed up the format and alienated users to the point that a significant number bailed out. I stopped visiting on a regular basis years ago.
I just checked back and surprisingly, some forums still have quite a few active users. Others, like Herbalism (where I used to aggravate the woo crowd) are a dead zone.
As far as gardening goes, Facebook is more user-friendly and there’s a lot more going on.
I used to frequent the AbsoluteWrite forum (for writers) but you can get easily sucked into creative navel-gazing. That’s why it’s so fun! The perfect procrastination tool. Answer 5 billion questions about your protagonist or post your favorite snippet of your work or talk about your process… Delightful waste of time that appeals directly to the creative ego.
Reddit is… Okay. I hate that you can’t really follow users over time, and I hate that people just downvote things they disagree with, it’s a really broken system. But I mostly follow some consistently supportive parenting forums. My favorite is r/oneanddone which comprises people discussing why they only are having one child. I find it validating since I married into a family where tons of kids are the norm.
I browse r/menwritingwomen for the hilarious commentary. I recently joined MensLib which is not what it sounds like. It’s a discussion among men about masculinity, mostly through a feminist lens. I’m just happy it exists so I keep it in my feed for the warm fuzzies.
The problem with every Subreddit is they are so repetitive. Once you’re in a group for a couple weeks you just see the same stuff come up over and over again…
I haven’t been to GB in ages. Maybe I’ll check them out again.
I stumbled over this forum a couple months ago, saved it to my favorites but never really explored it. I think you need to sign up to read posts. Not a recommendation, just passing it along.
I (now) see Horatius mentioned this upthread.
Also, found this a few days ago, same thing…haven’t really explored it but saved it for review at a later date.
I’m not exactly sure what this means, but you can follow users on Reddit. If you do a search on their username, it will give you an option to follow them. You’ll get any comments or posts they’ve created on your front page.
I follow this guy. u/ Lightfiend He posts a LOT of studies on psych stuff. Some people accuse him of being commercial, but meh, it doesn’t bother me.
Stuff like
https://old.reddit.com/r/EverythingScience/comments/mqp3xk/mindfulness_can_make_you_selfish_mindfulness/
or
https://old.reddit.com/r/ZenHabits/comments/mnjeer/savoring_happiness_how_to_prolong_any_positive/
For the people upthread who said they just want to have a community of people where you can find out some people’s opinions, you can create a list of people you like and follow them.
You can also see how many followers that you have on Reddit (but not who they are). I have 42 of them for some reason.
But they’re unlikely to be in a community with each other.
How please. I think there were a few followers on my profile. I was collecting some posts there that people were commenting on. I was taken aback because I thought it was sort of like a save function. or at least I was using it like one.
If you wanted, you could create a subreddit for them and invite them all there. But I would guess they might be influenced in their opinions by your lead. If you wanted to get their opinions in the wild, it might be better to just read.
Go to your profile, and it should show “Followers,” with a number, just below your Karma score.
Why would they show up?
And why would they talk about their wide variety of opinions about a wide variety of subjects in my subreddit, in a format that makes following such discussions next to impossible (we tried that as snopes refugees), instead of discussing things separately on individual subjects which is what Reddit is set up for?
Does it show the number of followers to other people or just to the profile owner? I went to that person I’m following, and there’s nothing under his karma score. I’m wondering if I have it configured out of that view. I use old Reddit.
The same reason people show up to other subreddits, to share their opinions about something.
At one time, I read the sub of a guy who just posted about stuff he was interested in. Other people followed.
Even if they did: see the second portion of the post you were replying to.
It might be just the profile owner who can see this. I just went to another person’s profile, and while I can see their Karma score, I can’t see how many followers they have.
https://www.reddit.com/user/ROO/about/traffic Change “ROO” to your reddit user name obviously. This is how to do it on old reddit.