What are some of your favorite communities that feature topics like literature, science, ecology, aerospace, technology, politics, history, arts, culture, theory, and debate?

Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?

(Not just limited to academic/intellectual topics, could be anything from hobbies to defense contracts to careers to skills. Just looking for respectful, reasonably intelligent, informed, relatively engaged communities.)

Also, are forum aggregators like Lemmy and Reddit even the best places to find such communities outside of listservers, universities, and academic conferences?

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    88·
    8 months ago

    Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?

    I don’t think you will find this Utopia online

    • andrew@lemmy.stuart.funEnglish
      281·
      8 months ago

      That’s been my experience for 95% of Lemmy communities right now, though. I don’t know if it will last but for now, it seems pretty high quality.

        • Shyfer@ttrpg.network
          71·
          8 months ago

          It was. But there were interesting effects from Reddit getting huge, like more niche subreddits and random encounters, like someone posting a proposal pictures and the targets of it being able to find it online. That probably wouldn’t happen on Lemmy.

          Probably a worthy trade for better discussion and less bots, though.

    • Jordan117@lemmy.worldEnglish
      151·
      8 months ago

      I thoroughly enjoy MetaFilter (one of the last surviving community blogs from the 90s) and Tildes (a more recent attempt at capturing the same feel). Text-heavy discourse, minimalist design, human-scale moderation, and moderately gatekept (MeFi has a $5 fee, Tildes is invite-only). PM me if you’re interested.

    • dan@upvote.au
      111·
      8 months ago

      This is what small forums with good moderators used to be, back in “the old days”. Modern forums (and Lemmy) just don’t have quite the same feel any more.

    • bedwyr@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      8 months ago

      There used to be a website called WiserEarth (and then later Wiser.org). This was an internet utopia for intellectual, empathetic discussion about sociopolitical, environmental, ecological, and economic discussion. Really miss that community. But yeah, few. And far between.

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
    411·
    8 months ago

    So, check out communities on mander.xyz for science topics and slrpnk.net for ecology.

    I don’t know yet of any good munis on lemmy for theology, philosophy, or wild theorycrafting, but I’m interested if anyone has recommendations.

  • SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    26·
    8 months ago

    Shameless plug:

    Try scrolling through local on a few instances or look at top subscribed communities and you’ll find descent stuff.

    I don’t wanna make a list of a 100. Some of these you’ll like, some you won’t, find what suits you.

    Instances:

  • livus@kbin.social
    19·
    8 months ago

    You should probably get off .world and go make an account over at mander.xyz. That way your home instance will be full of the kind of communities you seek and you can just supplement it with others.

    Also, we’re still building this thing. Feel free to come browse c/13thFloor@kbin.social, the very inactive but super cool arts community started by @Arotrios and currently being looked after by me until he gets back. Proper link in my bio.

      • Shyfer@ttrpg.network
        1·
        8 months ago

        Only for Lemmy. I think Kbin accounts access magazines a different way, but not sure. Sometimes I hear an @ sign works, sometimes I hear it doesn’t, so I’ll throw it in anyway:

        @13thfloor@kbin.social (for people on Kbin)

      • livus@kbin.social
        1·
        8 months ago

        Thanks. It doesn’t work for me to type that with the way kbin formats (we use two lots of @ so what you typed is just plain text to me) so I have to do it with urls and was being lazy.

        I have both lemmy and kbin formats for everything in my bio but I’m not sure if Lemmings can read my bio.

    • bedwyr@mander.xyz
      1·
      8 months ago

      Yep, just did, because I happen to agree with this being a good idea 👍

      That’s a very cool art community btw. Eclectic, museworthy tastes without excessive pretense.

      • livus@kbin.social
        1·
        8 months ago

        @bedwyr hey, cool!

        The coolness was all Arotrios and his crew, who are awol. I’m not really able to do it justice but it has potential and I try to keep it vaguely running. Please feel free to post there.

  • Turd Ferg@sh.itjust.works
    10·
    8 months ago

    In my own experience I found that .world communities are usually the ones to stay away from. Most of the comments devolve into petty bickering and go off topic quickly. It was a great improvement when I made a new sub list of topics from other instances. They arent as active, but the quality of discussions is higher and respectful.

  • stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub
    112·
    8 months ago

    The paradox introduced by threads like these is that they flood the communities with shit.

    It’s like when you build a really good road or freeway. Everyone starts using it and now it’s not good anymore.

    To me, real excellence is self evident and doesn’t need to be recommended outright

    • bedwyr@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      8 months ago

      I take this point to heart. I have no problem with respectful individuals trying to better themselves through enrichment, and hope that the diversity of Lemmy communities translates to bastions of high quality standards not possible on centralized platforms like Reddit. Like anything innovative and somewhat disruptive, Lemmy is another social experiment. Personally I’m optimistic that moderators of many communities will maintain high QC and exclusivity.

      • stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub
        4·
        8 months ago

        The thing is everyone has a limit with what they can deal with, are shaped by repeated interactions, etc etc.

        We need solid systems in place that work and secure integrity of operation inherently - with or without “good” moderators or admins or owners etc

        • bedwyr@lemmy.worldOP
          6·
          8 months ago

          I don’t disagree. I believe that systems not relying on trust, if cleverly designed, can be simultaneously robust, selective, and autonomously correcting. That being said, the forum format itself, while having inherent drawbacks, is my preferred version of the modern commons for different reasons. It’s not the Platonic ideal of the digital commons, nor, hopefully its last iteration, but I’m hoping Lemmy produces superior communities to Reddit, for instance, simply due to their diversity and decentralized governance.

          • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
            3·
            8 months ago

            I applaud your optimism. And you’re right. The design of the fediverse encourages these properties. But there are also other dynamics at play.

            I wouldn’t describe Lemmy as an intellectual place. It’s more a cross-sectional take on society. It’s a diverse place of common folks, a few nerds, people posting the news, sharing memes or asking questions…

            It depends a bit on the specific community. Some have nice people and active conversation, some don’t. Especially niche topics are a mixed bag. We’re just 50.000 active users so that means for some smaller hobbies you can’t really get a conversation going. But you included some broad topics. I’m sure some of them work well here.

            !technology@beehaw.org regularly has good posts. Debate and politics work very well all across the platform… I’m not really an expert on the communities here, I hope other people can give good recommendations. Art, literature and ecology also have healthy communities. Sometimes entire instaces dedicated to it.

            I think if you’re willing to share this place with a diverse group of people, you can get happy here.

  • oxjox@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    8 months ago

    Where do responsible, respectful adults go for discussions and for substantive, high quality posts and comments by decent human beings?

    In my experience, these are specific communities / websites with their own forums.

  • g0d0fm15ch13f@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    8 months ago

    plugging !cfb@fanaticus.social. I know that college football probably isn’t the most popular activity for those of us in the fedi, but honestly we’ve got a decent community going, even if a little small.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
    5·
    8 months ago

    Phew… good question. It very much depends on your perspective I guess.

    As an IT person I like it science, jokes and news but I also enjoy other things, not necessarily „professional“ but definitely not shitposting. If thats what you‘re after, you might want to look at everything on programming.dev, some stuff on lemmy.ml, a little bit on world and so on.

    If you need even more formal I think you‘re out of luck atm since we‘re only at the discussion phase about a federated xing/linkedin. That would probably be more business oriented and rather formal/respectful.

    Besides that, we are in a somewhat good situation atm - although my blocklist is now over 100 people so your mileage may vary.

  • nfsu2@feddit.cl
    3·
    8 months ago

    Whatever is related to science, technology and art. Usually those communities have respectful people and genuinely want to share knowledge and engage in debate.