Ask HN: What intelligent forums exist outside of HN?

lemmy dot world is similar to the other big forum you mentioned.

I've tried many but most don't have enough interesting traffic to keep you coming back.

bsky dot app is taking up more of my time, one of my tech interests, kicad, posts there a lot.

Mastodon works for me, but you do have to work to build your network.

Discoverability is a problem, but you follow people on your home server, follow the people they boost, see who they follow and follow them ...

Then cull ruthlessly.

Repeat a few times and quite quickly you find your personal feed full of things from interesting people.

If you don't have "algorithms" to suggest things to you, you need to do the work for yourself. Thing is, it takes some effort.

That's another thing. Most of the people active on Mastodon have done, or are doing, that work, which is a positive filter.

Seconded!

I forgot to mention that ... thanks. The ability to follow hashtags is excellent.

https://bogleheads.org/index.php has given me a good amount of joy as well as https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/

"All the things personal finance" basically

I know you're probably looking for English language websites, but if you just want the satisfaction of knowing that forums are still "a thing":

This is a Dutch forum for Dairy Farmers. It's at the root of a lot of innovations: https://www.prikkebord.nl

This is a Dutch forum for tractor enthusiasts. The people there are very helpful and you can basically restore a tractor as a newbie with their help: https://www.tractorfan.nl

Even though these seem like very specific niches, both websites have tens of thousands of daily visitors.