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The Official Internet Forums List (Beta)

Drathnoxis

Devotee
Messages
231
So you've finally found Sanctuary's niche. As a directory to point to better, more active forums.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,320
Forum is incredibly basic bitch. Damn, it doesn't need to be fancy but at LEAST add a site logo. Also, have zero idea what that forum is about.

https://autotrend.activeboard.com/ - auto trends??? and UFOs??? I guess UFOs are a vehicle...
Only discusses some auto brands. Would be very nice to have ALL of them.

Wondering if I should add hacking forums or if they're too niche. I dunno. It's right on the border. Also, there's a... Security concern with the community. lol And the veterans are not the ones to watch out for, ironically enough. Don't underestimate what a fucking horde of script kiddies can do.

Totseans spotted.

Real iffy on whether I wanna add them though. For one, there's absolutely no damn rules that I can see. Second, the Night Ops excursions sub-forum is not available to guests. Wow. What the fuck is that for? To keep things "secure"? To drive people away from signing up in annoyance? Mission accomplished.

As far as night ops is concerned, they might just be the only game in town. Nevertheless, even if the site were perfect, I'm afraid I can't add them. They're just too niche to qualify for a category. MAYBE Round Trip? Even then that's really stretching it.

See above on hacking forums.

Ehhhh... I might disqualify pure BBSes as there's a bit of a barrier to entry there and I just don't see what they offer over even basic internet forum software. We're jumping through all of these hoops to accomplish... What?

Too niche.

https://bbs.boingboing.net/ - some sort of BBS forum, seems pretty active
Looks more like a general forum. Pretty basic bitch one though. Rules are kinda lame. I dunno, just doesn't offer anything over the already listed SG forums.

No listed rules. Incredibly basic. Not sure what the overall goal is besides retro stuff.

Too niche.

https://bbs.market/ - some weird hybrid crypto/bbs , somewhat active
Booted due to lame-ass upvote/downvote system.

https://8bitboyz.com - retro gaming, C64 era BBS site, amazing listing of every active BBS
Site's pretty slow. Forum's just too inactive.

Too niche. Also...

Basic Rules:

Treat people the way you expect to be treated.
LOL That's life advice, not a rules list.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/ - based bay12 community indie games real old skool gamers here
Maybe too niche. There's a lot of general gaming discussion though in fairness. One problem also is that the forum is corporate-run. Not necessarily a dealbreaker, but it's worrying for several reasons.

https://forum.bodybuilding.com - classic forums, no idea what it's like but its been around forever
This one almost made it right into Reinvent Yourself, but the rules list is bordering on incredibly annoying.

https://mercdonalds.proboards.com/board/1/general-discussion - cool hidden underground game forum I think it's still active
They access-denied my VPN so I access-denied their site from this list.

https://www.vg-resource.com/ - video game sprite resources, active forum
Awwwww... This almost qualified. Very cozy and nicely made little gaming forum. Sadly just a little too inactive though in the Gaming sub-forum, and if it's not that active there, then I have to look at the entire board, and the entire board has just too niche of a focus.

I also really wanted to add it because of this:

https://www.vg-resource.com/thread-34909.html said:
Just a quick heads-up so nobody is confused when they go looking for a button they can't find - as of about 20 minutes ago, I disabled the reputation system due to an ever-increasing number of issues caused by its misuse. It's been a headache for a long time now but especially recently, there's been a ton of people causing trouble with it and I just don't feel it's worth keeping the system live any longer.
:risitas:

https://magistream.com/index.php - im not even sure what this is but it seems active and maybe skitzo?
"401 AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED"
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,320
Proboard forums block vpn by default
Probably. It's still pathetic behavior though.

With that said, I get that sometimes, you'll need to ban a specific VPN address or two, but too often, sites are just doing entire blanket bans on VPNs which I think is unacceptable.
 

Gauche

Arch Disciple
Messages
674
Proboard forums block vpn by default
TMYK

Nice avatar
I play through the gba Medabots game every now and then, Metabee version specifically
Part destruction combat is rare to come by and that game did it well

The RPG adventure one has such slow combat I could never bring myself to finish it
Did hack in all the parts and messed around, that was fun
 

Cyberfriend

Adherent
Messages
50
Specialization
Games People Play
Probably. It's still pathetic behavior though.

With that said, I get that sometimes, you'll need to ban a specific VPN address or two, but too often, sites are just doing entire blanket bans on VPNs which I think is unacceptable.
I know that they ban tor, dont know about others vpns
 

Cyberfriend

Adherent
Messages
50
Specialization
Games People Play
TMYK

Nice avatar
I play through the gba Medabots game every now and then, Metabee version specifically
Part destruction combat is rare to come by and that game did it well

The RPG adventure one has such slow combat I could never bring myself to finish it
Did hack in all the parts and messed around, that was fun
Thanks, I never played any metabots game, I only watched the anime
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,320
Two new potentials now.

Hive Workshop - https://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/

and

Psych Forums - https://www.psychforums.com/forum.html

Hive is an XF forum that's pretty active and mostly has a reasonable rules list. Once again, we run into some nonsense with "Keeping a reasonable tone". Once again, if we applied full Sanctuary standards to any of these sites, 95% of them would just fail outright simply because of this. But unless you wanna just post only on Sanctuary for the rest of your life (I mean... Please do. <3) you kinda have to accept some compromise here.

Psych Forums has an incredibly strict rules list. And they're using the more inferior phpBB software. Still though, I would much rather it be phpBB than some Reddit knockoff, that's for sure. And this may be one of the VERY few cases here where really strict rules may actually be warranted. Keep in mind the focus for this site. This is a site for people who have numerous mental issues, and some people have also experienced some really nasty abuse. If they're really gonna open up, then it makes sense to try to keep the forums as utterly pristine as possible to make people as comfortable and as professional as possible, much like how a therapist's office is very comfortably neutral. The Sanctuary forums, by contrast, are designed and geared towards practicality, extremely open discussion, and raw humanity. It's a straightforward, sometimes vicious search for truth. camaraderie, and new experiences.
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,320
More potentials, this time exclusively for Appealing Design. Expect a lot more posts in this thread now actually since I suddenly have a lot more time to focus on it after dumping Reddit in the trash where it belongs.



We have the DeviantArt forums here, very surprisingly... You would have expected it to be an overly moderated turbo-leftist hellhole, but nope. Looks to be kind of a free-for-all. Not anything on the level of /b/ of course, but still. One of the few problems I can find is that it seems to be a bit of a basic forum, but that doesn't bother me too much. One of the big things to watch out though with this forum is, since it's owned by a large company, it could be shut down at any time. Megacorps these days are now getting into the fashionable trend of shutting down their site forums and trying to offload their community needs to Twitter and Discord, so just be aware of that. I can quite easily see the DA staff looking at the forums like it's financial dead weight.

Next up is WetCanvas. DeviantArt was really kind of a general free-for-all in both a great and perhaps a bit of a bad way, but this forum is much more professionally inclined it looks like. It's slower than DeviantArt but they're probably focusing on the quality of the posts themselves rather than sheer quantitiy. The site does have a few layout issues though, ironically. The biggest one is probably the blindingly white theme with, it seems, no way to change it. The other issue is how the threads and sub-forums are displayed. There are no timestamps when viewing a list of threads in a forum, and sometimes, a sub-forum will just simply state that there are no threads within it when there definitely very much is.
 

Gauche

Arch Disciple
Messages
674
The site does have a few layout issues though, ironically. The biggest one is probably the blindingly white theme with, it seems, no way to change it. The other issue is how the threads and sub-forums are displayed. There are no timestamps when viewing a list of threads in a forum, and sometimes, a sub-forum will just simply state that there are no threads within it when there definitely very much is.
Their CSS fails to load in
Opened it in Chrome and the site be black
 

Cyberfriend

Adherent
Messages
50
Specialization
Games People Play
Two new potentials now.

Hive Workshop - https://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/

and

Psych Forums - https://www.psychforums.com/forum.html

Hive is an XF forum that's pretty active and mostly has a reasonable rules list. Once again, we run into some nonsense with "Keeping a reasonable tone". Once again, if we applied full Sanctuary standards to any of these sites, 95% of them would just fail outright simply because of this. But unless you wanna just post only on Sanctuary for the rest of your life (I mean... Please do. <3) you kinda have to accept some compromise here.

Psych Forums has an incredibly strict rules list. And they're using the more inferior phpBB software. Still though, I would much rather it be phpBB than some Reddit knockoff, that's for sure. And this may be one of the VERY few cases here where really strict rules may actually be warranted. Keep in mind the focus for this site. This is a site for people who have numerous mental issues, and some people have also experienced some really nasty abuse. If they're really gonna open up, then it makes sense to try to keep the forums as utterly pristine as possible to make people as comfortable and as professional as possible, much like how a therapist's office is very comfortably neutral. The Sanctuary forums, by contrast, are designed and geared towards practicality, extremely open discussion, and raw humanity. It's a straightforward, sometimes vicious search for truth. camaraderie, and new experiences.
Speaking on the psychforum, there is sone splinter site called schizoids

 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,320
How you learn of a forum can be so bizarre
Tell me about it. I just randomly found another surprisingly good mainstream porn forum. lol


Keep in mind, at the top of the first four categories, those are not sub-forums, those are ads. But yeah. A vB 4.x forum with surprisingly light rules. Maybe too light for a porn forum? I don't know. I'll let people be the judge. If someone finds something nasty and the site team isn't doing their due diligence of getting such removed from the forum though, please let me know right away and I will delist it.

>cock hero
If you're not a cock hero, what are you even doing with your life?
 

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,320
New list of potential candidates for inclusion to the list.

Reinvent Yourself:

Deific Discussions:

Fringe Division:
https://forum.becomealivinggod.com/ (Maybe just a tad too niche.)
https://wizardforums.com/ (Like BALG but seems to be better quality. It's sadly smaller in size though.)

https://rpghq.org/forums/index.php was actually added to the list a while ago but I forgot to bump this thread for that. I apologize.

Oh, I also decided to not include https://vipergirls.to/ in the end as they seem to be solely a video and photo dump site instead of an actual discussion forum.
 
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