HN-like forum for literature and cinema?

It feels like a lifetime ago, but one of my first online projects included discussion boards for literature and movies. You can still browse them:

Literature: https://www.gnooks.com/discussion/

Movies: https://www.gnovies.com/discussion/

There must be around 100k forums in there. It was a pretty crowded place back then with a lot of cool people. Moderation was a full time job though. And very stressful.

As ads became less and less of a way to make an income online, at some point it was just too much work to justify continuing it. So I closed them.

I still fantasize about reopening them one day. Maybe with paid memberships. That would allow to keep the work under control (because fewer people sign up) and to pay someone to do the moderation.

PS: Man, I haven't looked at the discussion boards for years. Now that I do, I notice how archaic it is to not have suggestions in the search bar. You have to type the exact author name to get to the right board. One moment, let me implement typeaheads ... I'll be right back ... done!

With the same quality of discussion and excellent moderation? I'm sorry to say that one does not exist for those topics. YMMV, but both /lit/ and Goodreads still have some great discussion amongst all the deep-fried drivel.

Most 2000s-era communities have been swallowed by the reddit leviathan and are now made up of similarly low-quality, validation seeking type of discourse.

Hey, we'd welcome discussion on those topics over on Sqwok.

https://sqwok.im/p/ReSGugPjqF4lhw - "Any recent interesting books, you've been reading?"

https://sqwok.im

Finding new forums and communities like this is one of the reasons I built CrowdView: https://crew-rho.vercel.app/

It's a search engine specifically for forums and discussion content (think message boards, Discords, Twitter, and ofc Reddit). If you try some literature/cinema queries, I think you'll end up with something interesting.

I tried "favorite books all time" and found a few literature forums: booktalk.org, forums.onlinebookclub.org, bookcrossing.com/forum, kboards.com, worldliteratureforum.com, proz.com/forum/literature_poetry-22.html, forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/43-literature-and-rhetoric-and-composition/

/tv/ + /lit/ nothing comes close, the insane stuff posted there actually works to keep the space relatively clean from redditors

For cinema, the PassThePopcorn torrent tracker has a really nice community with forums and lots of user-driven content (reviews, collections, etc.). I used to browse it to discover new films. Unfortunately, it's really difficult to get an invite and my account got disabled due to inactivity.

If you're willing to pay, Interintellect might be it.

https://interintellect.com/

The forum section of “elite” private trackers.

The Something Awful forums have subforums for those topics.

Cafe Society on The Straight Dope Message Board is good.

https://boards.straightdope.com/c/cafe-society/15

Don't know if it's still alive, but these used to be filled with really high quality convos:

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/

Unfortunately, your best option is most likely the ridiculously, laughably, absurdly over-moderated reddit. I wish you the best trudging into the hellhole that place has become.

Once upon a time MetaFilter used to be a place to have interesting discussions, but I haven't been there for a decade or so it feels like and can't vouch for the current state.

https://www.metafilter.com

“Arts and letter daily” posts this content. Not a forum though. I don’t know how content is selected, but it’s good. I check it every day.

r/TrueFilm has slightly better discussions than the other movie-related subs. Realistically, the common place nowadays is likely letterboxd (and similar sites) in the form of leaving reviews and comments on them.

/tv/ and their "Absolute Kinos" lol!

used to be https://htmlgiant.com/

4chan has a literature board

or quality TV (esp. non-American TV)?

reddit.

reddit?