Ask HN: Which online communities(besides HN) are you a part of? - rayalez
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Someone1234
Reddit: But I use it a lot less now due to all the bigotry and bullying (that
infects all front page subs). Few subs still get my attention. But mostly I
dislike the peole there now.

dpreview: Photography discussions. A lot of specialised sub-forums.

slickdeals: Yes, it is a deals site, but there is a bit of a community there I
guess (a lot of discussion, but it is very consumerist as you'd imagine).

Stackoverflow: I've given up posting/asking questions. The community is pretty
hostile and what was once the very best place to ask questions on the internet
now thinks it is Wikipedia and downvotes almost every question that gets asked
(even if nobody can answer, and even if there is no linked dupes). It now
seems like a badge of honour on that site to mark something as "dup" but often
they link to questions which are absolutely nothing like the original. The
community is mostly toxic.

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api
I have never seen a community that did not get ruined by assholes, whether
physical or virtual.

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tobylane
I'd say I've never seen a community of substantial size where assholes did not
try to ruin it. /r/askscience has fantastic mods and there are many smaller
subreddits like /r/london and /r/unitedkingdom where it's too small to attract
anything worse than a mouthy ukipper.

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brickcap
I like stackoverflow quite a lot. I use quora on and off. I am also a member
of gamefaqs. I have been lurking forever on rpgfan and rpgamer forums.

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hillis
Discoverboard ( [https://discoverboard.com](https://discoverboard.com) ):

An online community focused on quality, thought-provoking conversations about
a broad range of interests. It's a significantly different experience from
other online communities:

-Most members choose to use their real identities on the site, and this information is only available to other members.

-Each member pays a small subscription fee, which helps keep out trolls and spammers. The fee also pays for moderators and serves as our members' commitment to quality and respect.

-Discoverboard doesn't display ads to subscribers or sell their data.

Full disclosure: I work for discoverboard. We would be very interested in
hearing your thoughts about it. I also just created an invite code for free
trials for people on this thread:
[https://discoverboard.com/code/HN](https://discoverboard.com/code/HN)

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mrcold
I've been wanting something like this for a while. But it looks like your
implementation is not that great.

\- Using your real identity is an extremely bad idea. Write something stupid
once and it will haunt you forever. People will speak their mind only when
protected by anonymity.

\- The topics and replies seem pretentious. Most likely because of the real
identity thing. Everybody just tries to sound smart, eloquent and
philosophical.

\- Unless you have some truly smart people initiating ideas and discussions,
it's just the topic of the day kind of thing. It gets boring pretty fast.

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arfar
I use Reddit quite a lot. You do have to spend quite a bit of time discovering
sub-reddits that you're interested, because that's where the only good
discussion ever happens.

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partisan
HN is the only one I participate in. I will likely start to participate in
Reddit, but as with HN, I lurk _forever_ before I participate so that I
understand what I am signing up for.

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Varkiil
Can Facebook be one ? I use the friend system for my personal shares but I am
part of several closed groups with themed communities and shares

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akg_67
Reddit and Quora. I tried Stackoverflow but didn't like it. I also participate
on some niche low traffic forums.

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_1tan
reddit, quora, stackoverflow.

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hutattedonmyarm
Reddit, Stackoverflow, App.net

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kleer001
alt.tasteless

