excluding lemmy and not corporate ad slop

PieFed.

Does Ars Technica count? I'm not a member. It's intimidating because the site caters to science nerds. I'm smart among my people, but I feel like (intelligence wise) I'm just a big fish in a small pond, and that forum is like the ocean — same reason I stay off of "Ask Science" type comms on Lemmy. Some of those places (thinking specifically of their counterparts on Reddit) are pretty brutal if you don't have a Ph.D.

Anyway, I'd like to know. I kinda miss forums.

Excluding the Threadiverse?

Hmm.

Probably Reddit, if one goes by the amount of content. I mean, I still search for answers there. I just won't log in or comment any more.

If it's "what forum system would you use if you did want to comment and the Threadiverse is excluded"...probably Usenet. Has an ecosystem of good third party client software. I dunno how much discussion is still happening on there these days. Spam kinda did a number on it back when, but incentive to spam rises with userbase, so I assume that places like Facebook are more-appealing targets. Oh, and binary newsgroups hammering servers were also a problem.

Most Usenet access these days is commercial and not typically bundled with ISP service any more, though last I looked, eternal-september.org offered free accounts for non-binary newsgroups.

checks

Sounds like they still do:

https://www.eternal-september.org/

news.eternal-september.org is a private project providing free access to text-only Usenet News. The server has a 1GBit connection to several Internet backbones and is integrated into the Usenet via more than 40 peers.

EDIT: List of providers:

https://www.usenet.org/providers

In the past, Supernews and Newshosting were major service providers in the US. I'm pretty out-of-date on the state of affairs, though.

EDIT2: Looking at that list to cue memory, Easynews and Giganews have also been major providers in the US.

anarcho-punk.net

Probably Something Awful

I joined a IRC server at the beginning of this year, about 150 users there in total. A few months ago we set up a forum for the server, so I'm gonna say that one, since its the only one that I use, other than lemmy, lol. Its not very active, since there is only some dozens of people using it and not many of them are active, but its our little corner of the internet.

If anyone wants to come check it out, irc.inthemansion.com 6697 is the IRC server, or https://inthemansion.com/ has a webchat, also has the link to the forum there.

redandwhitekop.com aka RAWK

It's a Liverpool FC fan forum that has lots of local matchgoing fans posting and organizing on it.

It even used to have the club secretary as a regular poster.

Historically, Liverpool is a blue collar port with organized labor, and that mentality carried over into the local LFC fan culture.

I think that's not as true anymore, as local fans have been priced out of weekly tickets by the club's huge international audience, and the local season-ticket holding audience has aged and grown wealthier.

But RAWK talks about a lot more than just football/soccer: Lots of Liverpool are culture and news, UK happenings, etc.

Probably https://scubaboard.com/

im from usa but this look scool 👍

I'm from Hong Kong, and currently in the US, and there's definitely a large international contingent in RAWK!

Ya know, as someone mentioned, some parts of Usenet are still pretty good despite all the attacks. Same with some parts of reddit despite Spez (I don't post on reddit any more but I still lurk sometimes). Other than that I'm sometimes on a few niche forums mostly related to nerdery. For technical reasons (i.e. because of some not-great software decisions) I don't like Lemmy all that much, but the community is ok and the implementers' hearts were in the right place.

Penthouse

Mondoprojos for home cinemas and videoprojection!!

Photrio

Used to be phpBB because I spent a lot of time on niche topic ones as a kid, now I think if I were to start one up I think I'd just make a Lemmy community.