maybe it could help people out who are in similar situations. But I am not sure if it’s worth the hassle… I mean if there isn’t many forums around for it that it can mean people are not really looking for it. But you could always try it…
I would start by assessing the already existing venues, and if there are enough disaffected people there who feel marginalized, then yes, it may be worth starting your own. It’s such a narrow demographic that I wonder how many quality users you’d get.
I’ve had two of my own forums in my life. I registered both domains, and used phpBB as the forum software. Free and easy to use. Don’t host with GoDaddy. They have cute commercials, but every first-person account I’ve had of them has been negative. Check out the wikiHow I linked above. I can also try to answer questions you may have if you decide to take the plunge.
My friend had to do that as well. A forum we were in suddenly decided to shut itself down and the admins gave us a short notice.
So we had no choice but to make ourselves a new forum.
Discourse seems to have a good platform, but according to my friend I’ve heard you have to pay for it to operate. We can even do a fundraiser for you should you choose to go on that route.
I’ll ask my friends on that forum if they have any advice on creating a forum like the one I am in.
Another option would be hosting a discord server. This option seems good since making a discord account and hosting a discord server is completely free.
There are plenty of reputable sites that give you free domain hosting for a year, and then charge you a nominal fee after that, once per year (think around $5-10). As I said phpBB is free, and there are others. SZAdmin, for reasons known only to him, pays a hefty sum to use this Discourse forum software, which I think is clunky. It’s weird to scroll and scroll. phpBB lets you make subforums (think of this site, but a subforum for news, one for medication, one for school/work, etc), which has always seemed more logical to me. phpBB is also very robust and lets you toggle so many different settings that you can spend days playing with it, getting it to what you want.
Feel free to PM me. It’s open day or night, 24/7, to meet all of your inquiring needs.