Were you ever on a site with a strong community feel

[Liz1tummypain]

Just interested to know what people have to say about this. I was on a questions and answers site, not that I imparted much knowledge, it was mainly the music and chat areas I liked. But there were a lot of friendly regulars who I was friends with over tinternet. Mostly Americans, and I think about them now and then. No particular single other user but I miss the community, the atmosphere, if that's the word. I suppose my kids were no longer needing me and it filled a bit of space in my head, my life. Killed odd bits of time and was nice seeing a side of other users lives.

Plenty to be dealing with now and even if it came back I've moved on from that kind of site, I think.

Can other people relate to this ?

Handbag.com….i still remember some of the user names too! I loved it!

I loved mustardland!

The lush international forum! I’m still friends with some forumites today. Great little community.

Moko was another one, made some lovely friends there too.

Yes. It's a particular interest hobby group (I'm not going to say which site or interest), that has a wonderful community. Nearly all the members have been meeting up in person for the last 12 years for a long weekend to hang out and discuss/show/learn more about the interest/hobby. These people have become close friends in real life. I've never come across anything like it in any other online forums.

I was part of an MSN parenting group, though I think we started off elsewhere for babies due in May 2000 and migrated when ‘our’ board closed.
25 years later we now have a private Facebook group with 35 members, our babies are now adults, some are married and some have kids of their own.

Another was the WB Friends message board which I joined when we first got internet in 1998, members were from all over the world. That closed so we set up our own board which was subsequently closed so again we went to Facebook. Not easy to meet other members but happened to be in LA a few years ago when an Australian poster was there so we met up for dinner.

I’ve kept in touch with several people from band/singer forums. In fact I received a housewarming gift in the mail today from one of them.

The early 00s were all about Gingerbeer for me- a site for London lesbians! I had moved to London very fresh faced and was launched into the best, most drama filled years of my life.

The vast majority of friends in my life are from there. We've all grown now, moved away, married, had babies, died sadly, and all still love each other dearly. The dramatic days are long gone thankfully!

I also had a solid 2 years on BabyandBump when I was pregnant in 2009/2010 which was great and I made lovely online (and some real life) friends as a desperately lonely single mum.

Guardian's The Talk. Closed overnight without warning.

I got shunned from BadMothersClub!

There was a spate of poisonous emails going to users. Then one user supersleuthed and worked out who it was after receiving one of the nasty emails herself. (the poison pen writer was changing her email header do it didn’t look like it came from her, but the Supersleuth knew how to get into the code to read the real sender).

Supersleuth gave Poison Pen a day to confess or she would say who it was. Poison Pen then gave this bullshit apology about how she’d worked out how to change email headers and was writing an example nasty email to Supersleuth to show how it could be done, when she was momentarily distracted by her baby and accidentally hit send without realising.

Everyone was falling all over themselves to forgive Poison Pen and promising they would help find the real PP, but I called bullshit and was then told by all the forgivers that I wasn’t welcome.

Anyway a couple of weeks later it was proven it was PP all along. Ha!

Anyway the drama was delicious! And it was a good forum, really funny!

@RainMap can you give a little bit of a clue about what the interest is please? Is it a physical sport/ outdoorsy group ?.

@JohnnyRememberMe why do you think it was closed, ? Did you feel a bit cheated ? I went into shock when Yahoo answers closed down, although I knew there were some toxic parts to it, I just kept to the more casual spaces.

I liked Ivillage. Fondly remember a Christmas thread on there 😁

No, it's an indoor hobby that lots of people find boring - along the lines of peg looming or quilting. That may be why the community spirit is so strong, finding a group of people all interested in the same thing was wonderful. Whenever I bring up the subject with my family their eyes immediately glaze over, so I mention it as little as possible.

@RainMap ok thanks no worries, nice that you found similar mindes folk. 😊