Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
- love2d forums: https://love2d.org/forums/
- luanti forums: https://www.luanti.org/get-involved/
- joplin forums: https://discourse.joplinapp.org/
- All these prior links are very specific to one piece of software. So as you see, they all seem very focused and it depends on your interest in them.
- ramble https://ramble.pw/
- cant be really called a forum, but it is a link aggregator on tech-news https://news.ycombinator.com/news
The Android rom ones like xda forums are active.
This is definitely not what you’re looking for but college sports forums are active if you want to read the dumbest shit ever.
I’m from Louisiana so I’ll pick on my own team and link to to Tiger Droppings:
https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/lsu-sports/
The recipe posts are actually good. It’s basically a forum for insane people who get mad about LSU gymnastics recruiting but then post an alligator sauce picante recipe that’s better than anything you’ve ever put in your mouth.
Here’s the food/drink topic section:
https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/food-and-drink/
It’s insane (compliment) and also insane (derogatory).
A jambalaya v.7.3 ratio spreadsheet exists:
Incredible
Spacebattles is still alive.
Nexusmods "forums" and pages still have some social activity.
TBH it’s pretty barren. I noticed that even comment sections are drying up.
TBH it’s pretty barren. I noticed that even comment sections are drying up.
You mean across many websites don't you?
I definitely see a lot of websites with a comment box that it is just a wasteland lol.
I am sometimes like, jeez why even bother to include a comment box 🤣
I love how Whirlpool has stuck to it's guns with regards to staying text only.
It survived a world of phpbb, avatars, and animated GIFS and is now surviving a world of social media and "engagement". It's like Usenet with moderation and no binaries.
Helps that it's fast as blazes too.
tildes seems pretty active
spacebattles as well
and the dwarf fortress forum, too
The Dwarf Fortress forum is most likely full of big bearded dwarves. Also the Elder Scrolls lore community is my magical hangout, Warhammer too.
I know this won't interest most lemmy users, but the forums for most large american colligate sports programs are alive and well.
The EndeavourOS forum to give support (I use base Arch, but they're close enough), the Lutris forums, and Blenderartists. Stackoverflow and similar services, and various issue trackers, if you count those.
Larger open-source projects tend to have forums. Here's a few off the top of my head:
Openstreetmap also has some forums. The main one being community.openstreetmap.org
The only two that I ever still make use of are XDA for custom firmwares and other Android related shit. And Pokecommunity for the ROM hacking / decompilation stuff.
cs.rin.ru
There are so many niche forums.
Here's one I found a while ago when I was looking at repairing an old electric fan I found: Antique Fan Collector's Forum.
In the way that people would always add "reddit" to their searches, try just adding "forum".
- https://budgetlightforum.com/ flashlights et cetera
- so many automotive forums
- https://eevblog.com/forum electronics engineering
- https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/ audio, lots of diy
- https://www.finishing.com/ - metal anodising/plating/finishing. This incredible forum has been running since before the internet, originally a BBS.
- https://www.automaticwasher.org/ washing machines and dishwashers
- https://elektrotanya.com/ electronics repair
This varies a lot by individual, but I have a Newgrounds account and I post to the forums that are there too!
I hope Newgrounds implements activity pub
Blenderartists.org for blender news, learning, and sharing of addons and stuff
Special interest forums still hold.
For me, the Royal Enfield motorbike forums are exceptionally good, and that's largely down to the admin. There's also a Series 2 Land Rover forum that has a unique collection of people with a phenomenal combined knowledge about that car.
I've hosted a few in my time - since the early 90s and Fidonet when BBSs were the thing. But things change. Facebook killed of a whole bunch way before Reddit and Lemmy just because that's where people were already, and it was easier for them to feel involved. Facebook is impossible to search, though, so the post history of a forum that was so useful has gone entirely.
It's sad, but things change. What's constant is people's desire to socialise and discuss topics they are interested in. I'm kind of curious what that will be next.
Car forums are still somewhat active. There's usually one per car make or chassis. For example I use zilvia.net for S chassis stuff and miata.net for Miata stuff which are both active.
Isn't Reddit or Lemmy pretty much just a structured forum?
(early) reddit was the answer to the question "what if anyone could have their own phpbb instance without having to host it?" Then along came Lemmy asking "what if anyone could have their own reddit instance and have to host it?"
https://tildes.net/ is still quite active and while the interface is similar to old reddit the focus is more on discussions than sharing links.
Shared by @Obsidian@lemmy.one on the other thread
https://aftermath.site/best-active-forums-internet-today?ueid=6310597850b065b278e2b143b21b73b5
Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger.
https://forum.language-learners.org/
Language Learner’s Forum is still quite active and pretty large community.
https://latindiscussion.org/ Latin Discussion is still pretty active
If you like Sid Meier’s Civilization then CivFantatics is really quite active very much.
There are the Woodwind.org forums of course but they aren’t as active as the others. I think that Saxophone.org is somewhat active but less so than it used to be.
All the forums I used to go to on any regular basis are dying out or dead - NotebookReview, DSLReports, etc.
I still stop by Linus Tech Tips forum and GBATemp and Overclock.net and ServeTheHome on rare occasions.
Tacomaworld, there is another Toyota forum but the name eludes me at this moment. Vwvortex is still around i think. My guild from a MUD i play on occasion still has a forum, as does the MUD,
SomethingAwful is still very active!
4chan is as well, but it’s been shit since 2009 (inb4 /b/ was never good)
Remember when /b/ was good??
No, because it never was.
Kids confused it with good because it was the equivalent of running around an abandoned building throwing dog shit and broken glass at each other while spraying paint on the walls, because no adults told them not to. But when you tire of that, it's just an empty husk full of dog shit and glass.
Easy there. "Remember when /b/ was good?" is a meme from /b/ itself. The answer even in 2010 was "/b/ was never good".
My first serious romantic partner in the mid-2000s told me “the more I browse /b/, the more I understand you” and in retrospect I don’t know how I feel about that
Yeahhh... somewhat cringe in hindsight, but a core part of old internet.
Does anyone remember Megalinks on Reddit? They started a forum after it was shut down, I was lucky enough to get invited before they closed registration. The forums are still very active and it's the best community I've experienced online. I spend as much time there as I do here.