This Australian forum is one of the few big ones with general topics and a nice readable design that hasn't changed in decades. Certain sub forums like news get unlocked once you're proven not a troll.
While a lot of forums still exist, I think the amount of active communities has definitely declined.
I was part of lots of forums in the past and many of them died because people eventually moved to other platforms. The way I see it, what made a forum great was the community, a constant stream of active posts and engagement. To me they were a hangout spot, a venue of entertainment more than anything else. These hangout spots seemed to have shifted to social media platforms for a lot of people.
Another issue seems to have been a decision by Google to devalue forum posts. Those used to be very common search results 5-10 years ago. It's pretty rare these days.
I've always avoided the "post what you had for dinner" content on forums. That casual stuff didn't work well for most forums. It's good that low quality content moved to social media.
> "decision by Google to devalue forum posts"
Google used to have a checkbox to restrict results to forums only. They removed that years ago, which annoyed many. But you can still add "forum results only" to your search, and Google will more or less try to return forum results as first results.
For example search for: bluebox headphone volume - forum results only
Google's first result is a helpful forum post on that subject. There's nothing stopping you asking search engines to give you exactly what you want. Since search engines are now boasting "AI", they will need to listen harder to people's requests.
Yeah I feel like there’s a corollary to Eternal September where while the common areas of the Internet might be flooded with n00bs, the places that are less than user-friendly may remain intact to the curmudgeonly and the niche. Old school forums are alive in general, even if in specifics many communities are slowly dwindling, completely unmonetizeable, or if they’re dwarfed by Twitter, Reddit, YouTube comment sections, etc.
These days they are topic-specific, product specific. Some I've visited recently:
https://fuckcombustion.com/
https://forums.unrealengine.com/
https://forum.1010music.com
Every game on Steam has its own "forum"...
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1167630/discussions/
This Australian forum is one of the few big ones with general topics and a nice readable design that hasn't changed in decades. Certain sub forums like news get unlocked once you're proven not a troll.
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/
https://gearspace.com/board/
Too many to list!
Even Roger Deakins (cinematographer) has his own forum: https://www.rogerdeakins.com/forums/