Ask Lemmy

I still frequent XDA Forums for all of my custom ROM needs.

I can't say I "frequent" it, but if you ever have ANY troublesome A/V-related question/difficulty, there are absolute wizards of the exact sort you're imagining lurking over in AVS Forum.

I still find some good answers for questions on my car in some good old, car forums specific to whatever make you may have.

The Fantasy Grounds forum is for a virtual tabletop for TTRPGs that's pretty active, and it's been going through a lot of good UI updates lately since the guy from DnD Beyond joined.

GamingOnLinux forums

SquidBoards (Splatoon)

Flashback.org

The biggest Swedish forum on the internet, nutorious for having a very uncensored community (they are hosted in the US as Swedish law isn't as permissive in terms of free speech, not by much, but enough to make it worth it), so you'll have to ignore a shitload of racism, sexism, homophobia and more crap to read it.

The reason I read it is that they love discussing current events, if you notice something on the news, a shooting or other gang war stuff you will find a thread about it with the location of the incident, information about who lives there if it is a house or apartment building, this information includes names of possible people involved, their vehicles and countless racist/sexist/homophobic/classist/other remarks, I mainly just want the location so I know what area to avoid.

They also have the greatest Swedish forum thread in the history of the internet:

"Dumma saker ni gjort" - "Stupid things you have done".

This is a thread that runs 131 pages, of glorious posts of Swedish teenagers in the early 2000s talking about stupid things that they have done. As a Swedish millenial who grew up in and around those years, everything is so amazingly familiar to me, making the thread increadibly funny.

I am not sure how well Google translate will work on the thread, becaue there is a LOT of sloppy spelling, which adds to the charm of the posts, but here is the link:

https://www.flashback.org/t97921

Therpf.com forums if you are serious about making costumes and replica props.

Tomshardware forums are still pretty decent for tech help.

LS1tech.com if you are working on an LS engine. Everything you could possibly want to know.

There’s actually quite a few Internet forums out there that cater to crowds that may be a little averse to technology and adopting things like discord or using Reddit. Car repair, Automotive, DIY construction and home repair, surprisingly quite a few tech forums like XDA developers or Tom’s, machinists, prop-making, Making in general…. Sometimes they’re not very active unfortunately, but they do have a searchable wealth of knowledge.

Something Awful

BoardGameGeek.com

https://xdaforums.com/

Doomworld for new maps and mapsets for Doom 2 and Heretic.

I do like Whirlpool, an Australian forum primarily centred on technology. It's still active despite the general decline of forums, has a lot of useful info to turn up in searches, and I appreciate how it has remained clean and fast without the visual clutter and wasted data of modern web design.

Planted Tank is great for planted aquariums, and Fish Lore has an active general fishkeeping forum.

Vortex is a Volkswagen forum but has tons of conversation around other brands, too.

The official LOTRO forums are the only official game forums I've found that aren't super toxic. Great community.

Really, I think old-school forums are best for specific niche interests.

I enjoy http://tildes.net/ Old style, but with a modern design. You’ll see what I mean.

If you have a Gemini browser such as Lagrange, then gemini://bbs.geminispace.org is one of the better forums there.

https://www.plctalk.net

The stack overflow of PLC programming.

RageZone, I still love to talk about private servers. Every now and then I play a private server myself!

Thegalaxylounge.org

FuckCombustion: a forum about cannabis vaporization.

Whirpool but it's Australian focused

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

MusicBanter

https://www.musicbanter.com/

https://www.musicbanter.com/members/dmbfff-161879.html

https://www.thelincolnforum.net/

It’s for maintaining and restoring classic Lincoln continentals. Lots of knowledge both in the content and in the members. You don’t find much outside of the forum.

What was that app or site that brought a bunch of forums built on the same framework together?

Knockout

http://www.pbnation.com -- They have shit still up on that forum from 30 years ago. It's wild.

rpg.net is pretty good, but I don't post there anymore. I may have eaten a large ban in a stupid argument about accessibility. I still don't think being able to unilaterally change the rules of the game in your favor in a multiplayer game falls under accessibility, but apparently some people do!

KVR Audio

I don't often browse there directly but I do end up there a lot.

The Cartographer's Guild. Although I have never actually posted there. I just stop by when I'm trying to draw a better map for my D&D games

Board Game Geek is cool, and Metal Archives is useful when I want to check that an interesting black metal band is not, in fact, a pack of nazis

Used to visit skyscrapercity.com

miata.net!

Knockout.chat, the old facepunch forums reborn.

Pinside pinball forums

Specialty interests. There's one for solar power, one for your specific brand of car, one for NAS devices, one for security cameras.

Only one I frequent is a NSFW forum. Not sure if I should name it