What other forums or websites do you love?

There are still some really great websites out there. What are ones you have on your daily or weekly rotation that don't start with an 'F', a 'T', or an 'I'?

About a year ago, I found a very large Xenforo community (they used to be a vBulletin board too and watching them move to this software inspired me to do that same on BGO). They're a golfing forum and the site is The Hacker's Paradise . Given the enormous popularity of golf, they run a huge and very successful site, but it retains that community feel that we've also always striven for. I just love the site and I'm there nearly as often as I am on this site.

I have others I visit and love and visit regularly (some forums, some just websites I find interesting), but I'll hold them in reserve for the moment.

Where do your internet travels take you on a consistent basis - and what is it about those little corners of the webosphere that you love?

I study the marketing on real estate listing sites. Yeah, I know it's not fancy, but I am always trying to see what the competitors are doing. Plus, I get a good pulse on the market.

As for social types of media, like you mentioned, it's not easy going into another site trying to develop new relationships. I have even tried 12 steps fellowships online and tend not to stick around. Other than the F, and T...this is pretty much it, not real interested in much else when it comes to the interwebz.

I'm trying to learn to sit down and read a book. I haven't really done so since I graduated college almost 11 years ago.

Not sure what you are after here Boone. Is it establishing relationships or is it finding authoritative information?

Establishing relationships is a social phenomenon that extends way past the mechanism.

I imagine your starting point is that some of these sites are intended to be communtiies/oases for like-minded individuals to congregate and take a respite (or refuge) from all the struggles going on elsewhere - a noble proposition. Alas, society is what it is these days. It is exceedingly difficult to fence off reality and human nature.

I like traveling the backwaters of hacker sites. Like most others, I imagine, for politics I visit echo chambers.

What I believe is missing: over the last many years I decided I couldn't trust social media. I further decided that I needed to establish relationships with people in my life or on social media who have direct experience in the agencies, events, areas of interest for me. The thought being that this will lead me a tad closer to ground truth as well as avoid much of the filtering that goes on in social media (see Twitter). This has led down some very interesting paths for me - very often leading to a changed outlook. For example, I came across a former gang banger through serendipity when I needed some help with a personal matter. We got to talking politics. While we disagreed on many things, feedback from his personal experiences changed my thought process, wideded the aperture as it were, on what is really going on at the deckplate level. We started to converge on consensus for many issues in terms of root causes.

Great subject btw!!!

I'm just curious what other websites people have a passion for and what drives their love for it... wasn't much deeper than that. I think the nature of the web phenomenon is really driven by two things - the craving for diversion and the easy access to specific information that otherwise would be difficult to attain.

I wasn't intending it to be a discussion on web forums in particular. It probably sounded like that's what I was interested in because I started the thread with some editorializing about the death of internet forums. I'm going to edit that so the conversation is broader.