What community message boards and forums did you frequent?

[div]

Something Awful. I migrated away from the site in the late 2000s because I felt like it was a pretty toxic place a lot of the times. I forgot about forums for years and then when I got into oldweb revival stuff, I wandered around like a vagabond, feeling like no where on the Internet was quite the same as SA. But I kept telling myself, "You can't go back there, that place is a dumpster fire." I finally went back and it feels like the only people left on the forums are people who've decided to grow up. I frequent the forums there again pretty regularly and it feels good.

[cybherspace]

Something Awful. I migrated away from the site in the late 2000s because I felt like it was a pretty toxic place a lot of the times. I forgot about forums for years and then when I got into oldweb revival stuff, I wandered around like a vagabond, feeling like no where on the Internet was quite the same as SA. But I kept telling myself, "You can't go back there, that place is a dumpster fire." I finally went back and it feels like the only people left on the forums are people who've decided to grow up. I frequent the forums there again pretty regularly and it feels good.

That's really good to hear. I was thinking about going there myself to check it out. I'd heard about it a lot back in the day, but it did have a reputation for being pretty toxic, so I never really went there. I took a quick look around and I'm honestly pretty lost.  but that's fine. I might spend more time there and check it out some more.
I was just thinking about this thread, too! I just started up on Flight Rising (like Neopets but with dragons) the other day. Their forums are top notch at least for reference content as a newbie, and there's lots of beautiful dragon art. What's not to love!

[bees]

I used to mostly hang out in smaller forums, which had a more tight-knit vibe and where people could be more thoughtful. I spent years on a sadly gone punk/DIY forum and some band forums. I don't remember the url for half of them, most shut down over time. I'm still in touch with some people I met that way! Fun times.

Something Awful. I migrated away from the site in the late 2000s because I felt like it was a pretty toxic place a lot of the times. I forgot about forums for years and then when I got into oldweb revival stuff, I wandered around like a vagabond, feeling like no where on the Internet was quite the same as SA. But I kept telling myself, "You can't go back there, that place is a dumpster fire." I finally went back and it feels like the only people left on the forums are people who've decided to grow up. I frequent the forums there again pretty regularly and it feels good.

Oh yeah. I never joined SA because of its awful reputation way back when, but I've had some threads come up in search results in the last few years and it looks surprisingly fine. My impression is that it used to be made up of edgelord teenagers/young adults back then, so long time users are probably 30+ now and likely have better stuff to do than harass people online  I've considered joining it because active forums are so few and far between these days but it's still kind of intimidating.

[Misanthropic Monster™]

I used to frequent SO many forums back in the day - E-Groups, EZBoards, etc.

[Badgersaurus]

I don't have an account on any of these (maybe that'll change soon?) but here are some I know about:

Skullbrain is a forum ran by some San-Fran sofubi toy-shop dudes, for discussion of sofubi kaiju and other toys. It's got a pretty insular userbase I think but it's worth browsing every now and again if you like toys.
(Sometimes modern designer toys have sometimes-stylized sometimes-graphic NSFW/gore elements so I dunno if this link is kosher for this forum…)

Birdforum is a forum for birdwatchers (duh!). Very active and it's been around since forever. Seems to be mostly oriented torwards UK birding, but lots of more general discussions about adjacent things (nature photography, documentaries, books, equipment...) It also has an attached bird encyclopedia and some other neat things.

Pinside is a forum (attached to a general purpose website/database/market) all about pinball! Discussion about repairs, history, new releases, events, bizarre pinball-related scams (seriously, go to the Boutique Pinball section's pinned threads, they're incredible)... very active, though you have to filter out the sales and classifieds, and of course it's heavy on the pinball slang and abbreviations.

It's neat how a lot of older forums have extra features attached--databases, marketplaces, virtual pets... Or at least the ones that've stuck around do! I imagine it probably helps their longevity a bit, giving people something else to do on the site. I know the most active forums I lurked around back in the day were the ones attached to virtual pet games, maybe for that same reason?

My favourite forum back in the day was the Scratch forum! I used to be obsessed with the Scratch programming site (it's actually where I came up with my on-line alias!) and so I loved frequenting the forums---I remember fondly the running joke about evil kumquats eating your siggy. :) I checked up recently, and was somewhat surprised, though happily, to find that it still exists! Although I don't imagine that it's active now like it used to be---it seems to be hidden away and not on the main site.

Oh man I remember the Scratch forums too. Was a fun place back in the day.

[lunarrose]

Way way back in the day, I used to be very active on the Chao BBS, which was a bulletin board system on the official Sonic Team website, it closed sometime in 2005 or 2006. I'm still very sad about what that loss meant to me as a child.
Alongside that, I was super super active on SEGA Forums.. probably got banned a few times because I was very into getting into flame wars back then...    There's another forum that's still around that is truly collecting dust, but I'll keep it discreet. It definitely falls along my SEGA fandom interests though.

[prismatic]

my forum experience almost consisted entirely of pokemon forums, one of which i'm still active on. it's rather sad, because you'd think such a popular gaming medium would have lot of popular (or at the very least, activeish) forums to them, but it's definitely not what it used to be. older pokemon forums are dead or feel like a wasteland, or are approaching that post. it's unfortunate, really.

the same for general gaming boards. while they're not a significant part of my forum experience, i do like lurking them from time to time and even those have taken a big hit. nintendolife, for example, seems to be the biggest/only nintendo board around, but i don't feel exactly comfortable there. everywhere else just has an uncomfortable atmosphere that i'd rather not be a part of and lacks that community/cozy aspect and feels very impersonal.

[zj]

I used to be super active on the now-gone The Blockheads forum, centered around the sandbox survival mobile game of the same name. The forum was not just a place to talk about the game, but a place to hang out, play forum games, and discuss anything in the Off Topic section. I have many fond memories of people I used to hang out with there. I wish I could meet someone from there again to reminisce together. I joined in 2013 a couple months before I turned 13, and basically grew up there. That place is what started my love for forums :') . Even now as I look through the wayback machine, seeing the familiar usernames makes me so happy :')

The forum shut down in 2022. Unfortunately it was not archived, so most of the content is lost. At least we have the wayback machine :')

[moonunions]

dang there were some i frequented back in the early 2000s, but i've forgotten the names of a lot of them :S i know there was one sailor moon forum that probably doesn't exist anymore...

the only one i'm sure of is den of angels, which is a ball joint doll forum. unfortunately there's a lot of unnecessary drama surrounding the doll community (i mean, every community has its downsides of course) so i kind of dipped out after a handful of years.

but now that i've mentioned it i think i'm gonna peruse the forum and see what's going on nowadays

[musicobsessed107]

I unfortunately wasn't born yet/way too young to use them during the heyday of message boards, although I'm proud to say that as an 18 year old of this stupid decade that I have accounts across different forums that are still active to this day and use them on a pretty regular basis when I'm online. 

[Slix]

I'm actually on a few forums still, MelonLand (obviously), MacRumors, and my own, Poliwager Forums. But in the last 10 or so years, a lot of forums have died off or I've left them behind (with the possible occasional check-ins I sometimes do).

I guess my first forum I was "aware" of was Neopets, but I don't remember ever posting in them, I think I just read things to learn more about the site. This would have been back in like 2005 or 2006?

The first real forum I actually joined and participated in was Marriland Forums, a Pokemon forum (the forum is gone now, but the site exists still). I joined in late 2007. I was on there for years, through site migrations, server changes, and domain name swaps, up until they decided to close the doors a couple years ago.

After that I made my own forum as I was inspired by Marriland and other Pokemon sites I saw at the time, in 2009.

I joined MacRumors forums in 2010, and still post there all the time actually. I primarily hang out in the retro Apple sections of the site, talking about PowerPC Macs or early Intels.

From there I was joining every forum I could find basically, primarily for advertising my own site, haha, but it was cool seeing little pockets of people chatting about different things - Pokemon, 3DS games, forum promotion forums... A few that come to mind: Virtuadopt, GTS+ (alongside the Pokemon site GPX+), Serebii, Forum Promotion. Occasionally I'll pop in and check those out to see what's up, but not as often as I did in the 2010-2013 years.

It was probably around 2014 that forums seemed to start dying off - social media was getting more prevalent and things like Discord started to take over around 2018 and onwards. This was all also made worse by website making services becoming more costly and harder to find good ones, as well as Google searching progressively getting worse. I think there has to be tons of smaller forums still out there, with a handful of active users, but we just can't find them as easily anymore. Luckily there seems to be a small uprising of this type of website once again! The children yearn for the smaller communities. :P

[eezstreet]

One of the ones that I remember being part of back in the day was FileFront Gaming Forums. Which I think got bought out by ZenDavis Media later on, turned into GameFront, and then unceremoniously killed off. There were also many smaller mini-file hosting sites for each game, which had portals. I can’t remember the term that they used to describe them. In fact I think I remember other gaming sites that operated in a similar way. Like GameSpy. I remember that the Phrozen Keep was hosted this way.

Good times.

Coming back to a forum and actually engaging with the content on it has reminded me about how much effort it is to actually engage with people. Usually I just lurk these days, probably due to how much content there is being blasted at us from all sides on conventional social media platforms. And of course if you do, you get replies from bad faith actors and people with certain agendas. It’s really refreshing to just write what you feel.

[candycanearter07]

The children yearn for the smaller communities. :P

Or I'm just a complete nerd with too much freetime.
This is the first forum I've been active on, so it's definitely a nice intro to the whole thing! I probably would've joined a forum earlier, but I had no idea they were still active.

[Oceansandy02]

I frequent the TV Tropes forum, especially the Forum Games section. It has gotten pretty addictive, I will admit. I also feel like the TV Tropes forum is the most popular one, though I do recognize the regulars on the forum.

[ayn_sweeet]

Are you still a part of any message boards or forums?

If I'm being honest, I have a chronic addiction to discord and reddit- but I still love forums and message boards all the same.

I'd have to say the number 1 forum/message board I frequent is spacehey (aka myspace.)

But if you're looking for any other forum boards, whether that be with particular topics or just a smaller community in general, check out Wikipedia's list of internet forums.

Most of these are still active as non-relevant forum boards are most likely deleted by moderators- and the list goes on and on in alphabetical order. I found a lot of the forum boards that I frequent on today from that list!