Are there any discussion forums left?

June 18, 2018 7:59 AM

I know a lot of forums have migrated onto Facebook or shut down altogether these days, but I still prefer the interface of forums. Can you recommend some forums or other discussion spaces online, such as blogs with lively comment sections, that have intelligent, high-quality conversations?

I prefer forums that have a stronger sense of community and thoughtful contributions versus those with lots of random drive-by commenters (so, for example, for travel, Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree isn't really what I'm looking for). I'd like places where conversations remain generally civil and respectful but with a wider range of opinions welcome than are generally aired on Metafilter (per the recent Metatalk thread).

Here are the kinds of things that interest me: history, archeology, anthropology, science (including astronomy, biology and space travel but not techbro stuff although I realize there may be some overlap), literature, travel, film, running, hiking, food/cooking. I'm open to subreddits too if you know of good ones. Feel free to recommend forums on other, similar topics. No interesting in gaming or computer topics and I'm very anti-woo. Thank you in advance!

posted by tiger tiger to Grab Bag (15 answers total)

r/AskHistorians is a strongly-moderated low-noise subreddit on history
r/CampingandHiking, r/PNWhiking, and r/WildernessBackpacking are decent subreddits on hiking & backpacking (depending on your location, you may or may not be interested in PNWhiking which covers the Pacific Northwest)

If you happen to live in Oregon, the forums at OregonHikers.org are a good source of trip reports and trail info.
posted by elmay at 8:24 AM on June 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

There's a good health related forum called neurotalk. City data .. Wait .. Citidata? Used to be a well populated one. I'm with you, i miss the old internet. I loathe facebook with a deep and abiding passion.

I also follow some fine art blogs. One called lines and colors and my favorite, gurneyjourney .. Sorry for the lack of links im on my tiny-screened mobile .. But they're all easy to find/first search result.

Also believe it or not active list servs still exist.. But you probably know that. A lot of them, especially in academic fields, are hosted on university servers and have been running for decades now.

I'll curious to see what others chime in with : )
posted by elgee at 8:59 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

It’s not that established yet, but you may want to check out tildes.net. It’s a general forum with sub groups, like reddit, but with greater emphasis placed on good community norms. It’s also being run and built by a former reddit admin, “Deimorz.” Again, just getting started and time will tell if it gets it’s sea legs, but if you want to shape the course of a new site from the ground up...
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 10:49 AM on June 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's a shame you said 'no gaming', because Gamers with Jobs is one of the best forums I'm on (that's not Mefi, of course). It has an 'Everything else' subforum if you want to discuss stuff with people who happen to also be into computer games.
posted by Happy Dave at 10:49 AM on June 18, 2018

Techdirt is still operating like it is 2006.
posted by COD at 10:49 AM on June 18, 2018

Rick Steves Travel Forums have good quality discussions.
posted by cnc at 11:43 AM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

City Data forums offers a good variety of topics.
posted by cwarmy at 11:46 AM on June 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I follow a number of wordpress blogs in farming, environmental, naturalist and design and have many real conversations with real-world interaction a likely near-future possibility. It's funny how communication with a dairy farmer in Southern Kansas can lead to potential client conversations back here in NZ. More like microforums I suppose, but as real as conversations on here.
posted by unearthed at 1:22 PM on June 18, 2018

The Fogbow is a friendly forum I spend a lot of time on. It came into being as a result of the birther madness surrounding President Obama, and its primary focus continues to be politics and kooks of all flavors. But there's a lot more besides that - threads on religion, family, gardening, pets, farm animals, recipes, etc.
posted by Lunaloon at 3:38 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

SlateStarCodex is at times extremely intelligent and at times extremely problematic. Many of the topics you mention are covered.

If you're into things wood, the Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community is a good place to visit.

The paddling.com forums are good if you're into kayaking, canoeing, or wilderness travel.
posted by clawsoon at 4:22 PM on June 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you like ebooks, Mobileread is terrific. If you don't like ebooks, it's useless; it's a one-topic site, but it does cover all aspects of that topic - news, gossip. recommendations, tech, book sales, reading clubs, and an off-topic area.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:43 PM on June 18, 2018

Response by poster: Wow, so many great suggestions here! I can't pick a best answer because I'm going to try them all. A couple on here I'd forgotten about like the Rick Steves travel forum but the vast majority of these I've never heard of before. Thank you all!
posted by tiger tiger at 8:22 AM on June 19, 2018

I've found that forums are still out there, still active and often excellent, but Google has gotten very bad at finding them unless you know exactly what you're looking for.
posted by clawsoon at 8:34 AM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you're into sustainable energy (wind, PV, microhydro, combinedHeat, heatpumps, flywheels and way more) Fieldlines is the place to go. Run by Otherpower in remotest off-grid Colorado.
posted by unearthed at 11:09 AM on June 19, 2018

Not really relevant to your particular interests, and Captain Awkward and Ask A Manager are both advice columns, but I find the comments to be super high-quality and engaging. Sometimes the conversations get heated but generally there's a good diversity of viewpoints (aside from like, bigotry which isn't tolerated), and the mods generally only delete major derails or hateful stuff.

Ask A Manager is focused on job advice but has non-job open threads on the weekend, where folks share about their lives/ask questions. Captain Awkward has less emphasis on people's personal lives in the comments, but there are also associated forums (Friends of Captain Awkward) that have more off topic discussions/community-building.
posted by jouir at 11:32 AM on June 20, 2018