from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?

by Windson on 11/26/22, 2:30 PM with 18 comments

• by WallyFunk on 11/26/22, 5:11 PM

  I was a member of various bulletin boards over the years, and most of them died out. I'm not talking about these: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system). I'm talking about PHP based boards such as Invision, phpBB, vBulletin, etc

  Over time the admins just grew old and cranky and probably ran out of pocket money to keep the boards alive as they grew over time. The only surviving ones alive today are funded by donations. Also with things like Reddit, Discord, Fakebook etc means much of the conversation has shifted onto those platforms, and they're 'free' so there's no maintenance costs to worry about.

• by mindcrime on 11/27/22, 3:45 AM

  The EEVBlog forums, probably. Some of what goes on there is just amazing. I've posted technical questions about electronics before, and in the span of a few hours had EE experts from around the world chiming in to explain $WHATEVER. I've had people give me (really old) test equipment for the cost of shipping.

  I've watched ad-hoc distributed teams of people from all over the world collectively hack / reverse engineer oscilloscopes and similar gear to unlock features that were software locked to much more expensive models. I've seen people post where they hacked up interfaces to older test equipment (that didn't support modern protocols like LXI) using an Arduino or RPi. I've seen people post free hardware plans for GPS Disciplined Oscillators, reflow ovens, and FSM knows what else.

  And I've laughed my ever loving arse off at some of the insane silliness is that the Test Equipment Anonymous thread. And, yes, at times I've wanted to throat-punch people for being pedantic twits, or for arguing about insane minutia that nobody else gives a fuck about, and so on. No forum / community is perfect. But the EEVBlog forum has an awful lot to offer for anybody who is into electronics.

  Other than that... I guess I'd go with the old Hacker's Haven BBS from back in the day.

• by binbag on 11/26/22, 6:37 PM

  Easy - definitely Quakenet IRC back in the heyday of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. A feeling of community and comedy that nothing online has come close to for me since.

• by alxmng on 11/27/22, 3:26 AM

  GalaxyRaver. It was the goto place to find raves in California in the years before Facebook became the norm, after mailing lists died (~2006 - 2012). It ran on phpBB with custom extensions for calendar and chat (using flash). It was invite only but there were thousands of users. They would pass out flyers at raves, pretty much the whole Bay Area scene was on there at the height of its popularity.

  It was a lot of fun to find raves, attend them, then after make connections with other users who you met there. It was so cool because it bridged online and real life. Facebook groups and events just don’t have the same community feel that galaxyraver did.

• by CrypticShift on 11/26/22, 4:17 PM

  Not what you are asking for here, but whatever, check out Product Hunt [1]. You may find a lot of useful new-gen community building platforms and guides, plus some meta-communities (communities about communities)

  However, A lot of it (but not everything) is growth hacking and marketing oriented. And for that reason, it is not itself the best community I've ever joined... I've not found that one yet.

  [1] https://www.producthunt.com/search?q=communities

• by j4nek on 11/26/22, 4:08 PM

  started going online in ~ 2009 (being 8 years old) so after peak of usenet, bbs or any kind of network that has some kind of entry barrier. (using fb, yt, twr is easy compared to usenet, bbs, irc)

  nowadays HN is the only online community i really enjoy (and use) because of interesting articles (wide range, some non technical stuff that is interesting as well), good conduct in discussions primary and great people in general :)

• by andrewfromx on 11/26/22, 2:36 PM

  early days of BBS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system) circa 1992-1993. Everyone was so nice and thrilled just to be communicating.

• by gjvnq on 11/26/22, 7:30 PM

  The r/transprogrammers Discord server. It is just an amazing place. It feels small, it doesn't have excessively complicated rules and everyone is very similar to each other and experiences similar struggles.

• by imakwana on 11/27/22, 2:12 PM

  Communities related to personal finance & investing that I enjoy reading & contributing to:

  1) Bogleheads Forum (Personal Finance & Investing)

  2) Rational Reminder Community (Investing)

• by leros on 11/27/22, 10:00 PM

  The Anandtech forums back in the 2000s we're awesome. The off topic forum was my main online hangout.

• by jokethrowaway on 11/26/22, 6:00 PM

  some hacking and warez communities around ~2005

  They were solving an immediate problem (whether that was finding a movie online or a 0-day behind a paywall) so it didn't feel like wasting time and there was a constant flux of people.

  I think enjoying an online community is based on a lot of personal factors: I just don't make serious friendships anymore at my age, I won't bother with an online community.

  Do something useful, keep attracting new people, don't be upset when old timers don't give a crap about your efforts.