I am always impressed by the quality and depth of the commentary on HN. After having read the articles posted, I gain a lot of value by having my perspective challenged many times over in the comments.<p>As HN is focused on tech only, do you guys know of similar communities (quality of commentary/discussion) around the web that focuses on other niches?
If you're of a rationalist / philosophical bent you might like <a href="http://lesswrong.com" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com</a><p>"Less Wrong is a community blog
devoted to refining the art of
human rationality."
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned /. yet.<p><a href="http://slashdot.org" rel="nofollow">http://slashdot.org</a><p>Chips&Dips, er Slashdot, was the original high-quality tech forum on the internet. In recent years it has gone to trash, but it is still the model community-driven tech news forum and occasionally has very good commentary.
These Hacker News clones seem like good candidates for decent communities:<p><a href="http://www.datatau.com/news" rel="nofollow">http://www.datatau.com/news</a><p><a href="https://www.designernews.co/" rel="nofollow">https://www.designernews.co/</a>
For beer: <a href="https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/" rel="nofollow">https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/</a><p>That links to the forums where you see some good discussion. Also the reviews of beer on the site are quite extensive.
<a href="https://feedit.agfunder.com/" rel="nofollow">https://feedit.agfunder.com/</a> for agriculture and food related technology and investment.
Full disclosure: this is a project I'm working on, and comment functionality is coming.<p>Nonforum.com is for sustainable / resilient agriculture+composting+earthships, alternative lifestyles, personal experiences, and forward-minded things that would otherwise not really have a home on the 'net.<p>There's a small write-up of things we are trying to foster at
<a href="https://nonforum.com/about.html" rel="nofollow">https://nonforum.com/about.html</a>
(or just click on the (non) logo card on the front page)<p>Still pretty nascent, and I haven't submitted a show HN yet because there's no commenting functionality up yet. On the bright side, nonforum functions as a nice link-sharing platform, and votes and submissions show up in real-time (no page refresh required).<p>Currently in semi-open beta (one needs an account to submit new links/write-ups and to vote on things), you can request an invite code by providing your e-mail, or, at the moment just asking me to send you one.<p><a href="https://nonforum.com/" rel="nofollow">https://nonforum.com/</a>
Indie Hackers (<a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/</a>) in my opinion is an up and coming badass community.<p>Not much content on there, but the content thats there is nothing I have seen anywhere else
One I frequent is <a href="https://hashnode.com" rel="nofollow">https://hashnode.com</a><p>It's still not very big but seems to be growing. And it's completely bereft of political talk, which I find refreshing.
There's <a href="https://lobste.rs/" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs/</a> it's invite-only to comment, but not hard to get.
I've had a very conflicted experience with SomethingAwful in the past. Parts of it feel like a quality and tight community, others are just endless shitposts. They might have severely dipped in activity as well over the past few years.
I've built several fb groups I built from the ground up, but cap membership at 200 members.<p>Still want to build out cronofy.com integration to help members connect/meetup in person.
This site isn't only focused on tech, there's also a lot of tech entrepreneurship - particularly the VC-funded Bay Area variety, and also a bit of gossip about that community.<p>For tech, <a href="https://lobste.rs" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs</a> is decent. There's more interest in papers and proofs-of-concept than here. (Give a link to your profile on Twitter/GitHub/here in #lobsters on Freenode and someone will give an invite pretty quickly.)<p>For bootstrapped entrepreneurship, <a href="https://barnacl.es" rel="nofollow">https://barnacl.es</a> (my site) is small but welcoming and growing. (No invite needed.)