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Ask HN: What intelligent forums exist outside of HN?

by skylerwiernik on 2/11/25, 10:16 AM with 48 comments

• by ColinWright on 2/11/25, 2:02 PM

  Mastodon works for me, but you do have to work to build your network.

  Discoverability is a problem, but you follow people on your home server, follow the people they boost, see who they follow and follow them ...

  Then cull ruthlessly.

  Repeat a few times and quite quickly you find your personal feed full of things from interesting people.

  If you don't have "algorithms" to suggest things to you, you need to do the work for yourself. Thing is, it takes some effort.

  That's another thing. Most of the people active on Mastodon have done, or are doing, that work, which is a positive filter.

• by spiderfarmer on 2/11/25, 2:35 PM

  I know you're probably looking for English language websites, but if you just want the satisfaction of knowing that forums are still "a thing":

  This is a Dutch forum for Dairy Farmers. It's at the root of a lot of innovations: https://www.prikkebord.nl

  This is a Dutch forum for tractor enthusiasts. The people there are very helpful and you can basically restore a tractor as a newbie with their help: https://www.tractorfan.nl

  Even though these seem like very specific niches, both websites have tens of thousands of daily visitors.

• by Amfy on 2/11/25, 2:22 PM

  https://bogleheads.org/index.php has given me a good amount of joy as well as https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/

  "All the things personal finance" basically

• by ChrisArchitect on 2/11/25, 3:54 PM

  Some other:

  Ask HN: Sites like HN on other topics?

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37611708

  Ask HN: What are some communities like HN?

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37616919

• by kadushka on 2/11/25, 11:10 PM

  https://www.lesswrong.com/

• by thorin on 2/11/25, 12:26 PM

  Forums are weird now since fb etc took over. You can find information in the strangest places. For instance I frequent UKClimbing forums and you could probably find information on how to fix your car, investments and data science. It's more about the community and moderation which is what makes HN continue to be valuable.

• by dennis_jeeves2 on 2/11/25, 2:00 PM

  >HN is great, but I’m interested in more than just tech and tech people. Any recommendations?

  No recommendations. But can you articulate what you might be looking for? ( certainly not easy to answer f you have not spend time thinking)

• by olavgg on 2/11/25, 2:12 PM

  One of my favorites: https://forums.servethehome.com

• by metalman on 2/12/25, 12:10 AM

  https://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/

• by subpixel on 2/11/25, 1:38 PM

  I lurk on a lot of boating and woodworking and fermentation forums.

  YMMV.

• by testbreakfast on 2/11/25, 2:57 PM

  If anyone can recommend design or UX specific forums similar to HN, I would love to know. I miss Designer News.

• by navigate8310 on 2/11/25, 10:21 PM

  Have you tried https://tildes.net

• by rubenvanwyk on 2/11/25, 12:00 PM

  https://lobste.rs/

• by BMc2020 on 2/11/25, 1:56 PM

  lemmy dot world is similar to the other big forum you mentioned.

  I've tried many but most don't have enough interesting traffic to keep you coming back.

  bsky dot app is taking up more of my time, one of my tech interests, kicad, posts there a lot.

• by markus_zhang on 2/11/25, 3:06 PM

  Just curious, is there any Russian forum that discusses software reverse engineering seriously? Now armed with AI it shouldn't be too hard to read the posts or even participate the discussions, and I know Russians are very good reverse engineers.

  Or any Eastern European language programming forums. In general I believe they are excellent software engineers.

• by aleggg on 2/14/25, 1:59 PM

  NOSTR!

• by seventh12 on 2/11/25, 11:13 AM

  > Twitter has long been declining

  Why do you think so?