However, I've never been somewhere that stays "on topic" so well, so to speak, but then again it's hard to socialize as I don't work in the field and don't have much input that I don't think will make me look stupid.

Slashdot - aggregating opinions from "experts". allowed comments. Lacked accountability so then came...

Digg - allowed crowd source voting. active interaction. complicated and over-engineered upvote algorithm lead to...

Reddit - community inclusion. more open voting (and down voting). subgroups.

So that's kind of where I see it. What gets improved on? Is there technology that can be improved? Is there a missing idea or improvement? Is there a next generation that could improve status quo?

Reddit also has a problem with "super mods" who are pretty fast an loose with their powers.

These seem to be normal problems with trying to appeal to large groups (lame watered down meme low effort crap) and the effects of power on individuals (bans, shadowbans, bias, agenda pushing, etc)

What I like the most about it is that it costs $10 to join, and if you get banned, you have to pay another $10 to reinstate your account. This keeps the lowest common denominator trolls out and discourages shitposting.

Since this is being downvoted, evidence of some of the misandry there: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/11/having-sad.h...

And evidence of the ugly classism: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2016/11/as...

For electronics, check out http://www.eevblog.com/forum/

For computer hardware, check out https://forums.anandtech.com/

You get too big of groups or absent or poor mods and things tend to fall apart. Tens of thousands of users is no problem because most users are mostly lurkers anyways.

Quick plug--low odds here, but if you by some chance happen to know the board game Heroscape, have a look at www.heroscapers.com/community for a well functioning, respectful, fun (not modern looking) niche online community. The game has been cancelled for years, but there's still a good chunk of us active. Lots of site activity takes place in various private sections of the site devoted to various projects so you don't see everything happening but the public stuff is representative of how people treat each other there in private.

However, I found it slow, bloated, very unnecessarily political (in a deeply polarising way, which is bad for something that isn't going to be an echo chamber), and the signal to noise was absolutely atrocious.

I get what they were trying to achieve (and I hope things have improved since I left), but I think there's as much a risk of overestimating what Imzy can achieve as there is underestimating.

If you're specifically looking for discussion on politics, philosophy, and religion, aka the three things that end up on every forum that isn't about them, I suggest reading books and peer-reviewed journals.

These are the top forums I visit

Fitness: http://forum.bodybuilding.com/

Computer hardware: http://www.overclock.net/

Camping and outdoorsy stuff: https://campingbabble.com/

Canadian deals site: http://forums.redflagdeals.com/

Mostly about internet but has some good sub-forums: http://www.dslreports.com/

I won't divulge any specific boards here publicly, but I'd be happy to PM you a nice one.

HN doesn't have PMs.

BTW for all the webdev types there's some cool design coming from here, like fauux.neocities.org

Think the absolute disgust coming out of 4chan is the reason

Yes, 4chan and it's analogues are full of worthless shit and the quality has gone to the drain, but they are also full of different & unique people, some of whom share similar ideas that those of the HN community (privacy, anti-mainstream, anti-corpo, etc; but you can also find the polar opposites in either).

It has in the past also acted as one of the few places with freedom of speech (is there anywhere left in the world now? I doubt it. People with that specific "absolute disgust" frame of mind have made them all disappear: "Let's stereotype a whole community based on a vocal negative minority").

It's also a place not only full of internet history, but also responsible for a big part of it.

In fact, there is no doubt you have enjoyed content, trends, breaking news, memes, etc. that were originally created/generated at 4chan. All other forums/communities have and will continue to pick up content from 4chan & others. Not only lazy, but also kinda hypocrite.

I guess that's the whole point of having these different communities. People quick to judge better stay at the mainstream, where everything is Safe. What you get is something like Reddit, which is now (just like 4chan) completely distorted from its original form and fully bought out, and you have admins (the CEO itself...) changing user's post on a personal grudge. Bravo.

Arguing 4chan is a positive valuable place because they are good at making memes and organizing raids and harassment campaigns is also pretty funny.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Personal attacks are never called for, regardless of the thread. Please keep things civil, particularly when discussing free speech.

7clams (the one before it went public, the one with the good music) was nice.

[0] http://www.city-data.com/forum/

If you happen to play keyboards: http://forums.musicplayer.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/18/1/The...

https://www.hellobox.co

What fields are you interested in?

You can get an account on www.eternal-september.org or news.solani.org.

Solving the problem of shills/astroturfers is IMO the most difficult and important challenge in accommodating public online discussion moving forward.

The problem is rampant and while not new, the recent election cycle has highlighted it greatly.

Propaganda does not spread just from 'fake news' or a heavily biased corporate media. It is co-ordinated & perpetuated online. The links and comments on Reddit and HN are prime mediums to infiltrate and carry this out.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

I don't know about Reddit but we see comparatively little on HN that appears suspicious once we look at the data (e.g. which users have voted on a post). Anyone who suspects astroturfing on HN is welcome to email us so we can look into the matter—which we always do—but not to accuse other users directly, because both the odds and the cost of an unfair accusation are much higher than people realize when they do that.

I listened to that talk you linked to. At the end the speaker mentions four "hallmarks of astroturfing": (1) use of inflammatory language; (2) use of charged language to "debunk myths"; (3) attacking an issue by controversializing the people around it rather than addressing the facts; (4) reserving all public skepticism for those exposing wrongdoing rather than wrongdoers. It seems to me HN is in pretty good shape here: the first three violate the site guidelines, and the fourth seems rather rare and is not received well by the community.

Maybe there are astroturfers getting away with it on HN. If they exist, though, they're being clever about it, so we'd be interested in anything the community can figure out. Just please don't accuse each other directly without real evidence.

a.f.p on the usenet (that's alt.fan.pratchett for the uninitiated) used to be good, but it seems to be nearly dead now. :-(.

Bits of reddit are good. I love /r/adventofcode this time of year (although that's seasonal and event-specific).

If you're looking for proper, real, actual forums, I can reccomend a few. The xkcd forums are still excellent, give or take. If you like dwarf fortress, the bay12forums are good.

And onto the chans: much maligned as they are.

4chan's /tg/ is shockingly good if you like tabletop games (WH40K in particular): it's a blue board, so it's not totally flooded with porn constantly, and it's also got a decent community and isn't horrifically acidic, unlike, say, /g/.

Also, even if you don't like the chan, the wiki, 1d4chan, has a tvtropes-like stickiness about it, essentially being a best-of reel of the entire community. You should at least read The Tale of Old Man Hnderson, as it is one of the most famous in all of RPing.

7chan (http://7chan.org) was created as a reaction to 4chan, and it shows. Posting quality is enforced, and the mods are quite punishing. But as a result, quality is reasonable, AFAICT (although I am not a regular)

Sushichan (https://sushigirl.us) is a "relaxed" chan.

And than there's Lainchan.

Lainchan is a cyberpunk chan (sort of). It also has a strong programming and anime focus (with a name like lainchan, would you expect anything else?) It bears a semblance to HN in some ways, but it's a chan, make no mistake, and quite different in others. Just go look if you're interested.

Of additional interest is lainzine (https://lainzine.neocities.org), lainchan's official unofficial magazine. The typical immidiate reaction to lainzine, AFAICT, is "what the hell did I just read?" and I speak no hyperbole in saying that it is like nothing else on the internet.