I enjoy the way forums work and how they’re laid out. I also love how useful they are, especially when so many companies are replacing their entire communities with a Discord channel, which is less than ideal. I only use a few forums, but I’d like to find some more to browse through, it doesn’t matter the topic!
My wee list:
- TIGSource Forums - Video game developers big and small post here, there’s even a section for showcasing work-in-progress projects which is really cool.
- The Metal Archives Forums - The main site is pretty much the gold standard for metal music cataloguing. The forums are obviously about the metal genre, too.
- Cook’d and Bomb’d - This is a comedy aficionado forum. It’s about all comedy, but it originally focused on the work of Chris Morris (Brass Eye, The Day Today).
EDIT: “Meal” to “metal” 🤦
The discourse on Tildes is nothing like Reddit thanks to the web design and moderation choices made there. Interactions there are blissfully mature and intentional compared to what goes on over on Reddit. Also, take a look at Tildes and count how many thumbnails you see. It’s just not interesting to anyone with a short attention span who wants to plaster memes around the place.
I get what you’re saying about some UI similarities, but people don’t visit sites to click on user interface components. They’re there for an experience and for that reason Tildes is not like Reddit at all.