Other forums similar to this one

I was wondering, does anyone know of any sites with forums similar to this one (i.e. reasonably civil, fairly intelligent, pretty informal, maybe with a creative aspect to them)? I'm not looking to quit this site, I'm just curious about what other forums are our closest cousins, as it were.

I do not really go there anymore — you can only procrastinate so much in a day — but the OOTS forums were a little like that when I frequented them.

However, the moderation is a quite stricter than here — in particular, they have a wholesale "no political or religious discussions and nothing NSFW, not even if you warn before" rule.

On one hand, this takes away a good number of interesting topics of discussion; but on the other, if I remember correctly they have a pretty fun art-y (and roleplaying, of course) community, and drama is completely unknown there.

I still prefer it here, though

edited 5th May '11 12:51:00 AM by Carciofus

Since you have an avatar of Terezi, Bobby, I know you will be interested: the MSPA forums are quite similar to ours. They tend to go on wild derails like we do, and in fact have a special section dedicated to staying on-topic, like we do. And of course, being a forum about a series of webcomics, they have quite a lot of art going on.

The Irregular Webcomic! forums are really friendly, intelligent, and fun.

If you're interested in talking about TV shows (and topics related to TV), Television Without Pity's forums are (or were) quite good. The moderation is quitestrict, so the drama level is low. Topic segregation is also pretty tight — if you want to talk about Character A in show B there's a thread for it, but if you want to talk about shipping Character A with Character C, there's a different thread for that.

I used to hang out on the Giant In The Playground forums. Those were pretty good.

The Spiderweb Software forums were a bit like Yack Fest, back when I hung out on them.

Should I mention the Other IJBM?

I like IJBM, actually. It's kind of shit, but everyone there knows it's shit so it's not up itself like some forums. And I have learned some stuff from there. If you count ye olde IJBM Mk. 2 and the original IJBM board on this site as well, I've learned rather a lot from it, in fact.

I'm also curious about forums resembling specific boards here. Are there any forums similar to OTC? What about Writer's Block?

The Spoony Experiment forums were/are kind of like this site, I enjoyed it at first but the lack of interesting topics and stupider members joining the site kind of ruined it for me.

Elfwood has some forums similar to Writer's Block, but much less active.

If you can find a way in, the DUCC forums are pretty similar to ours.

Although with the critical difference that DUCC has a raiding culture, trolling each other simply doesn't happen there.

What's DUCC?

Anyone have other good forums to recommend for news, current affairs, and philosophy? Or any other forums like OTC, really.

Less Wrong's good for philosophy, but not for news, politics and current affairs.