5 ms·

Ask HN: Hobbies/Activities with robust online communities but no Reddit presence

12 points by newman8r 7y ago

There are certain activities and hobbies that have relatively large online communities, but are nearly nonexistent on reddit. I've recently found a good example. One of my hobbies is surfski, and the surfski subreddit had less than 10 posts ever. On the other hand, the surfski.info forum has a ton of posts weekly spanning more than a decade. I think it's an interesting phenomenon - and I'm curious to see other examples - because these communities are worth looking at for many reasons.

dondawest 7y ago
Another example is graffiti, there are sites like 12ozProphet (forums) and even Flickr and Instagram (pictures and commentary) with years of posts and huge communities, yet almost zero graffiti artists use reddit.
- newman8r 7y ago
  That's a fascinating forum, I'm probably going to spend a few hours browsing it. I hope this kind of stuff is being properly archived by archive.org or similar entity.
- companyhen 7y ago
  http://reddit.com/r/bombing http://reddit.com/r/bombing is the reddit graffiti community in case you weren't aware
  - dondawest 7y ago
    Reddit has zero presence or significance in the IRL graffiti community in case you weren’t aware
newman8r 7y ago
Another one I thought of is demoscene - seems relatively inactive on reddit
CM30 7y ago
In an almost 'ironic' example, community management doesn't have much of a Reddit presence. The forum administration side is still mostly present on sites like The Admin Zone instead of social media platforms, and the general community management side is more represented by blogs and sites like Feverbee. ROM hacking is another good example here. Sites and forums about it are doing pretty well (like ROM Hacking.net and SMW Central), but there aren't any active subreddits for it at all. In fact, it seems like the younger generation involved in this hobby skipped Reddit outright, since many of them seem to have migrated to Discord instead. Fan games in general are arguably the same way too. They've got some pretty active independent forums and Discord servers, but no real Reddit presence so to speak of. Finally, quite a few media franchises are represented outside of Reddit too. For instance, while it's not as active as it once was, the Wario Forums site in my profile seems to be significantly more active than the Wario subreddit is, with various Discord servers being more signficant competition as a result. So yeah, hope that helps.
- newman8r 7y ago
  Yeah those are good examples. I didn't even realize that discord was so big for the younger generation. Your Wario forum looks cool - definitely the most hilarious character from the franchise.
macando 7y ago
Skiing. I used to visit EpicSki until... "it was bought by Vail and shutdown after they realized they weren’t in the business of forums." Reddit is not a suitable replacement. Its ephemeral nature makes it a not very good medium to build certain communities around.
- newman8r 7y ago
  That's a sad story - just did a quick search and it sounds like it hit a lot of people hard. Years of trip logs and photo albums gone, on very short notice.
Shatnerz 7y ago
Unicycling. There is still a pretty active community forum at http://www.unicyclist.com http://www.unicyclist.com with some scattered FB and discord groups. There is a subreddit but it gets barely any activity. Interesting side note: TinyURL was created by Gilby to shorten URLs on a unicycling newsgroup, which eventually became the forum.
- newman8r 7y ago
  Interesting community. Those mountain unicycles with the fat tires look like they'd be a ton of fun for camping trips - wasn't even aware that was a thing.

12 points by newman8r 7y ago

dondawest 7y ago

Another example is graffiti, there are sites like 12ozProphet (forums) and even Flickr and Instagram (pictures and commentary) with years of posts and huge communities, yet almost zero graffiti artists use reddit.

newman8r 7y ago
That's a fascinating forum, I'm probably going to spend a few hours browsing it. I hope this kind of stuff is being properly archived by archive.org or similar entity.
companyhen 7y ago
http://reddit.com/r/bombing http://reddit.com/r/bombing is the reddit graffiti community in case you weren't aware
- dondawest 7y ago
  Reddit has zero presence or significance in the IRL graffiti community in case you weren’t aware

newman8r 7y ago

Another one I thought of is demoscene - seems relatively inactive on reddit

CM30 7y ago

In an almost 'ironic' example, community management doesn't have much of a Reddit presence. The forum administration side is still mostly present on sites like The Admin Zone instead of social media platforms, and the general community management side is more represented by blogs and sites like Feverbee. ROM hacking is another good example here. Sites and forums about it are doing pretty well (like ROM Hacking.net and SMW Central), but there aren't any active subreddits for it at all. In fact, it seems like the younger generation involved in this hobby skipped Reddit outright, since many of them seem to have migrated to Discord instead. Fan games in general are arguably the same way too. They've got some pretty active independent forums and Discord servers, but no real Reddit presence so to speak of. Finally, quite a few media franchises are represented outside of Reddit too. For instance, while it's not as active as it once was, the Wario Forums site in my profile seems to be significantly more active than the Wario subreddit is, with various Discord servers being more signficant competition as a result. So yeah, hope that helps.

newman8r 7y ago
Yeah those are good examples. I didn't even realize that discord was so big for the younger generation. Your Wario forum looks cool - definitely the most hilarious character from the franchise.

macando 7y ago

Skiing. I used to visit EpicSki until... "it was bought by Vail and shutdown after they realized they weren’t in the business of forums." Reddit is not a suitable replacement. Its ephemeral nature makes it a not very good medium to build certain communities around.

newman8r 7y ago
That's a sad story - just did a quick search and it sounds like it hit a lot of people hard. Years of trip logs and photo albums gone, on very short notice.

Shatnerz 7y ago

Unicycling. There is still a pretty active community forum at http://www.unicyclist.com http://www.unicyclist.com with some scattered FB and discord groups. There is a subreddit but it gets barely any activity. Interesting side note: TinyURL was created by Gilby to shorten URLs on a unicycling newsgroup, which eventually became the forum.

newman8r 7y ago
Interesting community. Those mountain unicycles with the fat tires look like they'd be a ton of fun for camping trips - wasn't even aware that was a thing.