Easy - definitely Quakenet IRC back in the heyday of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. A feeling of community and comedy that nothing online has come close to for me since.
Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
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Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#12The r/transprogrammers Discord server. It is just an amazing place. It feels small, it doesn't have excessively complicated rules and everyone is very similar to each other and experiences similar struggles.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#13Easy - definitely Quakenet IRC back in the heyday of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. A feeling of community and comedy that nothing online has come close to for me since.
My answer is also the quake community, from the Q1 era, for the same reasons.
Mainly a bunch of really smart, bored, and funny college kids.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#14some hacking and warez communities around ~2005 They were solving an immediate problem (whether that was finding a movie online or a 0-day behind a paywall) so it didn't feel like wasting time and there was a constant flux of people. I think enjoying an online community is based on a lot of personal factors: I just don't make serious friendships anymore at my age, I won't bother with an online community. Do something…
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Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#15GalaxyRaver. It was the goto place to find raves in California in the years before Facebook became the norm, after mailing lists died (~2006 - 2012). It ran on phpBB with custom extensions for calendar and chat (using flash). It was invite only but there were thousands of users. They would pass out flyers at raves, pretty much the whole Bay Area scene was on there at the height of its popularity.
It was a lot of fun to find raves, attend them, then after make connections with other users who you met there. It was so cool because it bridged online and real life. Facebook groups and events just don’t have the same community feel that galaxyraver did.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#16The EEVBlog forums, probably. Some of what goes on there is just amazing. I've posted technical questions about electronics before, and in the span of a few hours had EE experts from around the world chiming in to explain $WHATEVER. I've had people give me (really old) test equipment for the cost of shipping.
I've watched ad-hoc distributed teams of people from all over the world collectively hack / reverse engineer oscilloscopes and similar gear to unlock features that were software locked to much more expensive models. I've seen people post where they hacked up interfaces to older test equipment (that didn't support modern protocols like LXI) using an Arduino or RPi. I've seen people post free hardware plans for GPS Disciplined Oscillators, reflow ovens, and FSM knows what else.
And I've laughed my ever loving arse off at some of the insane silliness is that the Test Equipment Anonymous thread. And, yes, at times I've wanted to throat-punch people for being pedantic twits, or for arguing about insane minutia that nobody else gives a fuck about, and so on. No forum / community is perfect. But the EEVBlog forum has an awful lot to offer for anybody who is into electronics.
Other than that... I guess I'd go with the old Hacker's Haven BBS from back in the day.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#17GalaxyRaver. It was the goto place to find raves in California in the years before Facebook became the norm, after mailing lists died (~2006 - 2012). It ran on phpBB with custom extensions for calendar and chat (using flash). It was invite only but there were thousands of users. They would pass out flyers at raves, pretty much the whole Bay Area scene was on there at the height of its popularity. It was a lot of fun…
Is there a modern equivalent? Love raves
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#18GalaxyRaver. It was the goto place to find raves in California in the years before Facebook became the norm, after mailing lists died (~2006 - 2012). It ran on phpBB with custom extensions for calendar and chat (using flash). It was invite only but there were thousands of users. They would pass out flyers at raves, pretty much the whole Bay Area scene was on there at the height of its popularity. It was a lot of fun…
Is there a modern equivalent? Love raves
I don’t think so. The site died when everyone moved to using Facebook events and groups, which is still where all the parties get posted today.
Events/groups is the only thing keeping me from deleting my Facebook account.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#19Communities related to personal finance & investing that I enjoy reading & contributing to:
1) Bogleheads Forum (Personal Finance & Investing)
2) Rational Reminder Community (Investing)
Re: Ask HN: What is the best online community you've ever joined and why?
#20The Anandtech forums back in the 2000s we're awesome. The off topic forum was my main online hangout.