What other forums do you participate in?

[Pax]

I love TE but it's a pretty sparsely used forum these days, I have others I visit but as they are largely male dominated they're a bit much at times.

So... any other good forums out there?

[PamNY]

Are you asking about cycling forums specifically? I glance at Bike Forum (rarely) but that's it.

I wonder if Facebook has lessened participation in topic-specific forums. I used to participate in several bulldog forums (still moderate one of them). Several are now completely defunct, and the others have slowed to a crawl.

[rebeccaC]

what other ones do you visit??

When I was getting into long distance riding in college I looked around and found that Bike Forums had some good info. Over the last 6 years or so I’ve occasionally read and posted to the training/nutrition and endurance forums. I still post photography to a forum there but don’t interact that much anymore. I have a number of the males on my ignore list and that can make reading threads there easier. There’s a private woman’s forum there but I’ve never bothered to seek it out.

I occasionally ride with a couple of women I met through Road Bike Review and have met a older guy that I admire a lot. I still occasionally post photos of my ride routes in the touring/ride report forum there. I’ve gotten some good ride routes from that forum too. I also have fewer males on my ignore list there.

There is also a small Southern California forum site put up by a woman friend from RBR that I look at for get together/ride info.

Non bicycling sites are just a couple of photography sites and some biotech ones.

[Pax]

Pam - nope, not cycling specific, just forums you enjoy. And I think you're right... Facebook has made a huge dent in forum usage. Makes me sad since I think forum formatting with long ongoing conversations is far more interesting than the short back-forth-done format on FB.

Rebecca - I am a regular on some motorcycling forums and I read often on one Buddhist forum (Dhamma Wheel). The motorcycling sites are so awash in misogyny it's hard to find any of the good stuff; so I rarely post anymore.

[Eden]

I'm active on a Fuji-X camera photo forum. I don't do Facebook -I simply cannot deal with the minutia of other people's lives… (I've never been much good at small talk either), but I do have an account on Flickr, which has a bit of a forum-y component and on JungleDragon, a nature photography web site, which has it's own forum. Gender rarely comes into play on those sites and I've been using somewhat androgynous screen names so many times no one knows if I'm a man or a woman.

A little plug for JungleDragon - it's a really cool web site run by a single person because he wants to do it. It's a nature photography sharing web site with an emphasis on not only collecting photographs, but data as well, so geo-tagging (which he makes easy) and identifying species on the photographs is a big goal too. He runs it as a non-profit. There are no ads, no fees for a "better" account. http://www.jungledragon.com

[roo4]

www.runango.com

Supposed to be a running forum, but topics vary.

[ny biker]

When I first got my car (7 years ago) I actively followed the Priuschat forum, but now I only use that to research car-related issues, like buying new tires or diagnosing a possible dying battery.

There's a local cycling forum for DC and Arlington which I tried out for a few weeks, but I found it to have a strong smug-bike-commuter tone, with people making fun of recreational cyclists and assuming that everyone who drives a car instead of cycling for transportation must be lazy and fat because there is no other possible reason why a person would not ride a bike to work. So I told them what I thought of them and left.

I've done research on some tech-specific forums, to diagnose problems with my smartphone and Kindle. But I've never followed anything like that regularly.

That's pretty much it for me.

I do think about some of the people who used to post here pretty regularly but haven't been around lately, especially those who have talked about problems they've had. I hope they're doing okay and just too busy or focused on other things to check in here anymore.

[thekarens]

I'm on a couple bird forums. Road bike review was a bit much for me.

[OakLeaf]

The motorcycling sites are so awash in misogyny it's hard to find any of the good stuff; so I rarely post anymore.

That's unfortunate. I've been away from ST.N for a few years now, but it was always welcoming to me, if overwhelmingly male.

I won't say there was never anything I had to choose whether to confront or ignore, but it was mostly just a few guys, easy enough to ignore, and the kind of people a LOT of others ignored for a variety of reasons.

[shootingstar]

On a local cycling forum /blog which tends to be locally based on infrastructure matters, ride experiences, events, some meet-ups.

Also some people blog and part of being a regular blogger is having informal short dialogue/comments on other bloggers' blogs. I actually find Facebook not sufficient for discussion at length on a topic.
I enjoy cycling and hanging out with cyclists but also like to expand my understanding in other long-time personal passions outside of cycling, which is why I'm less here in TE.

I just had a blog post about what it's like sharing a life with a partner who also cycles and is a long time cycling advocate, yet I've hesitated to post the link....thinking that maybe it just bores people here because you already live a cycling-oriented life like me ( or not?). There's photos, etc.

I dunno.

[Crankin]

None. I already spend too much time on TE and Facebook. I'm frustrated that no one seems to be posting.

[rocknrollgirl]

I used to do three. TE, a mountain biking site for our state and trifuel. Trifuel was rendered silent by FB. The mt bike site is up and running full throttle.

I think TE has quieted down a lot the past two years, my guess is FB and twitter. My husband and I do not do any other social media. We both teach high school and are am SO turned off by it. I am sure it is great for some folks, but I see nothing but problems from the students and LOTS of the adults. We keep in touch with our friends and loved ones the old fashioned way....email and the phone. And I am no good at small talk either!

[Pax]

I truly can't understand why so many forums are going silent, they are a far better way to communicate conversationally than things like FB. Maybe people prefer tiny snippets of info over conversation?

[OakLeaf]

Well, it's pretty obvious I like the forum format, but I also FB quite a bit, and I think FB is really what you make of it. Maybe ongoing conversations aren't as frequent as they are in a format like this one, and they definitely take more effort to maintain, but they do happen among my FB friends.

I think the appeal of FB is that it offers so many different things. For me, it's my main news feed; an opportunity to keep up and sometimes even interact with musicians and writers I enjoy; notifications of local events; a critical link to my own past by putting me back in touch with college and high school friends with whom I was never close enough to keep more than a superficial relationship; a setting in which I've turned acquaintances into friends, and friends of friends into people I like and would really like to meet f2f someday.


... It's Twitter I really don't get. Well, I do get it, but I don't have any interest in putting in the effort. DH is really into it. It's like a city vs country thing, almost. Stay off Twitter for four hours and you're so behind you'll never catch up again. FB can be done more casually.

[Helene2013]

I'm here and the other 2 are a dog (and other pets are discussed) board and a french (Quebec) cycling one. But this one here is the one I prefer. I don't see any bashing and too-much-testosterone reactions here to try to impress others. And not even PMS crisis I can see. hihi If I have a question, I come here for it. I won't be judged or passed for a less then nothing because of a fear, etc... I mostly use the French bike one for info needed specifically for my area (paths, stores, etc.)

I'm not into FB and the likes. No interest. I did create a "fake" FB for contests, etc but not really using it. I have a very very basic LinkedIn created because sometimes at work I have to "search" for a retiree or someone who moved and did not forward a new address.