
Ask HN: Which online communities do you hang out most on? - sellingwebsite
Couple of my favorites:<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AskHistorians - All things history. Quality of discussions are way better than on most other subreddits. Highly moderated<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discuss.bootstrapped.fm - bootstrapped businesses<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lobste.rs - kinda like HN but for tech only<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com - it is more blog than a community, but great nevertheless<p>I used to frequent other communties but these are the ones that stood the test of time
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ChefboyOG
HN mods do a fantastic job with moderating. I don't pretend to know how any of
it works, but I consistently enjoy content on the front page of HN, which I
can't say about subreddits, even my favorites.

Besides HN, a handful of subreddits (r/MachineLearning in particular), and I
used to spend a decent amount of time on Product Hunt.

I do miss the hell out of forums though. I feel like i "knew" everyone on a
better level and could burn through hours talking.

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lethologica
Hacker News and a few Subreddits of whichever hobby I'm interested in at the
moment. I do miss the old days of forums, though. HN and Reddit both don't
seem to give me the same feeling for some reason I haven't figured out yet.

~~~
Akinato
Old forums used to feel a bit like a community. They were small and close nit,
and visibility wasn't dictated by voting, so proper in-depth discussions could
happen. They felt more like a collaborative room than a megaphone.

At least, that's my thoughts.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
They also didn't "age out" every discussion to invisibility after a day or
two, as usually sorting was usually by time of last update. Discussion topics
could go for weeks, or occasionally months.

Losing that is my personal bugbear with everything moving to a feed, as it
prioritises consumption over depth.

~~~
Deimorz
_(Disclaimer: my site)_

I definitely agree with this, and on Tildes
([https://tildes.net](https://tildes.net)) the default sorting method causes
topics to bump back up to the top when there's a new comment on them, the same
way forums work. We regularly have topics stay active for days or weeks
because of it, and old topics will suddenly spring back to life when new
discussions start.

Tildes's mechanics have a lot of similarities to reddit/HN-style sites
overall, and you can still choose to sort by votes, strictly chronologically,
etc. if you prefer, but I've always liked that forum-style method. The heavily
time-dependent approaches that are popular now force everyone to need to reply
quickly. On HN and reddit, if you don't get involved in a thread in the first
12 hours or so, you might as well not bother because it'll disappear soon.
Replying to anything over a day old means that almost nobody will ever see
your comment.

Tildes is still young so it's not extremely active yet, but there are usually
a few hundred comments and ~50 topics every day. If you (or anyone else
reading this) is interested in an invite, feel free to email me. The address
and a lot more info about the site is in the announcement post:
[https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-
tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It's the cult of recency that even infects Google search. Last week's news can
still be worth talking about, last year's fact might still be a fact. HN and
reddit also has the tendency that a lively discussion will simply start to
fade out once the story has dropped out of sight.

Nice one, Tilde looks a really interesting mix. Votes are useful as a pre-
filter in discovery, age the best way to organise discussion. I wish you the
very best of luck with it! Bonus points for the dark theme option.

From first impression it looks fit for beta - is there functionality still
missing? I'll take a closer look over the weekend.

~~~
Deimorz
It probably doesn't even really need to be called alpha/beta any more. It's
very stable and has comparable or better features than most of the similar
sites. There's a lot I still want to add, but there always will be.

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Zoo3y
Many of my friends use Twitter and we regularly comment on and retweet each
other's tweets. I've recently been added to a Mastodon group which feels much
more tight-knit. I've been playing dota 2 for the past few years and I
regularly play with the same group of people. I also have a few discords I've
been added to. I tend to lurk on bigger websites like Twitter, Reddit, HN.
Last.fm and Sonemic community are interesting in that they're entirely music
based. The discussion revolves entirely around rating and categorizing music
which is lovely if you think about it.

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vijaykodam
Apart from HN, reddit my new favorite is [https://dev.to](https://dev.to)

~~~
byproxy
I like the bold design, though I find it a tad too large and low-density.
Also, a shame you can only log in with a Twitter or Github account.

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avgDev
HN mostly. The quality of discussion is much higher than reddit. Also, there
seems to be less group think here.

I have yet to find an online gaming community that I enjoy. I tried different
discord servers but it is nothing like good old clan forums back in the day,
where you got to know people.

~~~
Akinato
Honestly, I find the limited user base helps a lot too. You can read all the
view points without scrolling through thousands of jokes.

~~~
lui8906
The jokes and memes make most reddit subs almost completely useless for real
discussion. Even on tragic news events and serious topics jokes tend to float
to the top.

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mindcrime
HN mostly. There are a handful of subreddits I check periodically.
/r/artificial, /r/AGI/, /r/machinelearning being some of the top ones. Some
StackExchange sites, like ai.stackexchange.com, electronics.stackexchange.com,
ham.stackexchange.com, and so on.

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ok_coo
Reddit for gaming. HN for tech stuff. I lurk a lot on both platforms and don’t
like to comment too much.

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_pete_
my own @ [https://thumped.com/bbs](https://thumped.com/bbs)

20 years and counting...

~~~
spdebbarma
Very interesting! Congratulations on building that.

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platoscubicle
4chan /g, /fit and /biz boards

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vinrob92
Productized Startups - a fb group I started just to talk about about
productized services.

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dlphn___xyz
what are some active programming boards? (not reddit)

~~~
throwaway_bad
I don't like /r/programming either but some of the smaller programming subs
are ok.

For example /r/cpp has moderators from the actual C++ standards committee.

In general I wish there's a better way to stalk where these experts hang out.
For example at one point /r/machinelearning was pretty good but then the
famous researchers left and it's hard to track the diaspora (I think those
discussions ended up moving to twitter)

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ineedausername
Path of Exile in-game global chat.

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maxmonlt
HN mostly in the past 4~5 years.

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sellingwebsite
Clickables:

[https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians](https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians)

[https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm](https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm)

[https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)

[https://slatestarcodex.com](https://slatestarcodex.com)

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hdlothia
Biggerpockets Citydataforum

