Where else do you like to hang out? What are your favorite subreddits, discord servers, discourse boards, etc.? I’m looking to branch out.
Apple communities preferred, obviously, because I am posting here, but any topical community will do.
None, except this one. I will periodically (approximately two or three times a month) check my LinkedIn page, but other than that, this is the only online community I frequent with regularity.
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Except for this one, mine are pretty tool-specific, so they won’t help unless you use one of the tools. For example, the other forum I visit as much as this one is the forum for Channels DVR (a network TV DVR, which, over the last year has turned into very fun, full-blown hobby). I also visit the DEVONthink forums. Beyond that, I frequent some skiing groups on Facebook, which is pretty much all I use Facebook for these days.
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This is it for me. I was a self taught I.T. manager for many years and still haven’t kicked the habit of keeping up with technology. So I still read research articles and watch keynotes, training videos, etc.
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Mostly just here. I do drop in on Facebook primarily to follow family members (my aunt just had her 100th birthday!) but also a Scrivener group. LinkedIn to see what former coworkers and students are doing. I also keep my bio fresh there because I know people look me up. I used to be active on MacRumors. Occasionally on Quora (only to answer technical questions).
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Find the communities that fit with your existing interests. I actually continue to hang out here because it’s populated with great people with a wealth of knowledge, and I often get to contribute. Sometimes even usefully. But… I haven’t listened to more than a few MPUs in the last 5 years or more.
Other communities are based around other podcasts, or around my hobbies. Each one has made itself known to me in some way or other.
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At the moment I have a browser window with 20+ Discourse forums open, which of course includes this one. Some are recreational, some are professional (with most of those “support” sites for software I use). Several other windows have forums open too; again the same mix of recreational/professional. One or two others are for party political purposes. And there are the usual Farcebook, Instagram, Pinterest, X/Twitter, etc. Altogether too many to list. Oh and how did I forget the dozens of mailing lists filling up my inbox.
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Apart from this forum, my other guilty pleasure is /r/cosmology where I feel like I can find the missing link between pop-sci and academic research on the topic.
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Interesting thread!
Here, the Obsidian forum and Discord server, and Hacker News (insofar as it is a community) are the constants. I get notifications for the DEVONthink forum and a few others… everything else is transient.
I’ve been trying specific subreddits lately, leading to some observations: the pace is so fast on large subreddits that it doesn’t feel like a community at all, while small subreddits feel like I’m on performance trying to get “in” with a clique. The sweet spot of (community cadence) x (my personal time and attention) is a very small target, it seems.
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Over time, I’ve realized Discord servers are not for me. Over the years, I’ve been members of the Relay FM, MacStories, Digital Foundry, and Into the Aether Discords. MacStories was probably the best community out of all of those, but of course it comes with a monthly or annual cost in the form of MacStories+ which is why I left. Federico and John have built a great community of app nerds and Shortcut builders there.
I keep tabs on the r/DataEngineering and r/DataScience subreddits and am an occasional poster. For those communities, I almost would prefer something along the lines of r/ExperiencedDevs but focused on data. Many of the posts are from people wanting to break into the field which often drowns out more interesting posts.
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I will never understand Discord or why it is popular. Seems to be an impossible way to find useful information to me. And I have no interest in chatting. I think I need a Discord for dummies guide.
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I am also not a fan of Discord’s lock-in where they own all the information you post there (for free) and don’t make it publicly available afterwards. I prefer open forums like this one that can be easily indexed and searched by the broader web. Using Discord is very anti-open Internet IMO.
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No need to make this only your opinion:
Headline and byline:
Discord CEO Jason Citron makes the case for a smaller, more private internet
For teens and gamers, Discord has become their entire online social lives. Co-founder Jason Citron thinks the internet is headed more in that direction.
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I’m over on Mastodon, using the very nice Ivory client from Tapbots. Following at least one member from this forum over there.
Left behind the alternatives offered by Elon and Zuck a long time back now… Don’t even get me started on LinkedIn 
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That depends . Some people might be paying for it: Billions of public Discord messages may be sold through a scraping service | Ars Technica
I’ve made a few useful connections on LinkedIn, but I grow weary of what I’ll call “quote snippet tripe.” However, I have managed to minimize the solicitations I receive by posting this directly on my profile, where LinkedIn kept prompting me for my “preferred” pronoun:
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I checked out of Facebook and Twitter years ago. I no longer have a linked in account either. I use the DEVONthink 3 and Keyboard Maestro forums a lot. Sometimes the Bookends one. Otherwise I use Science Based Medicine and Steven Novella’s Neurologica blog, which I have some professional over lap with. Not much really. I am always pleased to give a head’s up for the Science Based Medicine. I am not sure even where they are on the interwebs as such. I have lost track of the structures in fact and owners.
I hang out here (mostly reading these days), and spend a lot of time on the Fractal Audio forums (guitarists with similar gear interests to mine). I used to hang out a lot on blu-ray.com, but not so much in the past few years.
My issue is that most forums I’m in inevitably cost me money as I keep reading great solutions to problems I didn’t know I had. So it’s a dangerous game.
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- Mastodon (using Ivory)
- Xojo (a programming language) forum
- Keyboard Maestro forum