Giant Bomb is the only gaming forum I frequent a lot, and kinda like it there. Or, well, there are scores of terrible people there, but also quite a few nice and knowledgeable persons too.

As for worst forum, it's not gaming related, and since it's local and in my native language it's not that relevant to international audiences - there is a forum focused on freedom of speech stuff that used to be pretty good, or rather, OK. Or at least open to all views, but in the past maybe 5 or so years it's been totally overrun by neo-nazi conspiracy nuts. Personally, I don't think people like them should be censored, but they've totally taken over the forum, driving away every dissenting voice which makes it a really sad place to visit these days.

I read the GOG forum (and post on it obviously) almost daily. I enjoy the community generally and don't have specific problems with anyone. And the things I do see that annoy me are really quite infrequent, so I'm happy here.

I read different gaming forums (usually the official, or "most official" in the case of an older game like Arcanum [Terra Arcanum] or Fallout [No Mutants Allowed]) depending on what I am playing at the moment. So when I was playing Mass Effect 3 I was reading a lot of the Bioware Social forum or whatever it is called.

The community there is sort of split in my mind. I hardly ever post there, and the majority of threads that are at all controversial become flame wars super quickly, but I don't mind a lot of the people individually. And I like that there are Bioware devs who post there.

On the subject of devs posting on forums I liked that about the Total War series' forums as well, though I haven't been on those in ages (since the early fall probably when I got Shogun 2).

I also read (but don't post) on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun; and the Ctrl+Alt+Del fora (look at me being all pretentious using the correct plural of forum, haha). The communities there are ok in my mind, but since I don't post I don't really see them all that much.

edit: On the subject of this, I feel like the Terra Arcanum forum is really like this. I blame it entirely on being around for so long that people on have known each other for years, but that makes being new on the forum incredibly difficult. And while I don't read the sections that aren't about Arcanum often the most helpful people, or most knowledgeable (for example, Drog, who created the UAP, probably the most important Arcanum mod ever) are absolute dicks. I don't get that feeling all that much here, or maybe I just miss the threads/people that are like that here.

Anyone in particular in mind?... (Besides certain obvious and known cases.)

The GOG forum is the only forum I'm frequenting lately, not because it's good or "classy" though (many threads, for example, seem to be basically RPG Codex threads with less swearing). It's just that most other sites are worse for various reasons. Hell, I'm blocking half the Internet with my hosts file these days to keep myself from getting pissed off/depressed/butthurt.

Not too many. I used to be a lot more forum active, then I realized how much time I was spending on it. I'd rather spend that time actually playing games and socializing.

Aside from this forum, the only one I really spend any amount of time on is Grogheads. I occasionally peer in to the Boardgamegeek and RPGgeek forums, but usually just use both sites as databases and avoid the generally obnoxious conversations.

gog community is great
also I love giantbomb.com forums
and I have shout out my site grasz24.pl

Flashback? You sometimes find helpful threads from that forum when googling things, but I agree with you in regards to the state of that forum, it is not a pleasant place. I suspect that a lot of the neo-nazis are people who act like that because they think it is "cool" to be edgy on the internet, and not people who genuinely believe that what they say is true.

Well, this forum is the only one that I read and post in.

I also check HLTV.org daily to keep up with CS news, but the forums there are mind-numbingly idiotic. No, they really are. Used to post there quite a lot due to my love for CS, but eventually it kicked in that I'd have more interesting conversations with my wall.

Used to post quite a lot on a fairly infamous Fallout fansite, which is now a troll and NSFW site. Awesome community but lost interest - I cannot really keep up to date with more than one forum at a time.

I read a lot at Civfanatics for learning purposes (self-certified Civ III junkie), but I hardly ever post. There are great things about the forum, but the members who do those great things (give advice, etc) are also very inflexible, unreasonable, and childishly rude about other things.

edit: oh and as far as battle.net forums go, avoid the us. ones like the plague and stick to the eu. ones. Honestly, it also has it's share of retards, but there are also plenty of very helpful people out there and you can really learn a lot from simply reading.
An added bonus is that you can read an extract from the first post when you hover your mouse over the thread title. Useless threads eliminated from your life with 99% efficiency.

Yeah, though I think that was true a few years ago, there seems to be a real prevalence for extremely crazy conspiracy theories all over the forums now. Lots of people seemingly in the same mindset as the Malmö serial killer and Oslo/Utøya mass murderer, all fueling each others theories in a massive echo chamber. But yes, if you google on specific topics you can still find the occasional bastion of sanity.

1. Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures Forum (also feat. Dungeon Craft) - small community, but nicest bunch I've ever met online.

2. GOG, naturally - significantly larger and therefor a little less family, but still something like kinship, despite occasional discord.

3. Neverwinter Nights Community - can be a bit rougher at times, because there are a few vocal oddballs and trolls, but all in all very friendly and helpul, too. Especially the custom content creators are very sympathethic and social.

Curiously, the average age in all three communities is comparatively high (30-35+?). But that's probably just one factor that plays into it. I bet there are just as many choleric old racists on the net as there are sensible young men, women and even children. ;)

Not familiar with any bad communities, as I just stay away from them.

never used the forums but the escapist is hit or miss, but so far leaning on the hit side

Well, what I consider best:
- Abandonia
- SPCNET.tv

What I consider bad or even worst are probably too many to mention :-)

I visit GOG a ton. It is my favorite forum. It took me a while to post, but it was cool even reading the specific forums for BG and stuff like that. The stickies have some great patches for games etc. As I've branched out into the General Forums things have been great too.

The GOG fora used to be a lot better when we were still in Beta, but the forum is still pretty good I just wish that they'd be more active in moderation. We don't need an individual thread for every new kickstarter. We don't need to have a new thread every time somebody wants to beg for a thread.

But for the most part the community is pretty good by gaming standards.

I have to disagree with you on that one, I think the forums actually run surprisingly well without a ton(/really any) moderation. I like that it is almost a tiny experiment with an anarchist social model, and that it works so well (especially because the internet allows people to have almost zero real repercussions for their words and behavior).

Also I don't mind new threads about different kickstarter projects - that way I can know if I want to be reading a particular thread or not, and it means that one big thread doesn't get all messy and confusing. But I like more organized "stacks", so I think that makes sense I wouldn't want a big thread with everything about kickstarters in it.

I totally agree with this. Maybe it is because people have been doing this sort of thing for the whole time the forums have been in existence. haha But I think it is the nature of the beast that is GOG.

No, I agree online bullying is a real thing and a bad thing. A lack of moderation isn't a good thing per se. But I think that the model of GOG, where if people are being dumb or jerks, or (anything else, I haven't seen any racist, sexist, etc etc comments here), that other forums members will shut them down and such.
The problem with bullying is that the people being bullied don't have people around them (for whatever reason) helping them out by standing up for them (which can take the form of moderation deleting comments, or banning someone, I agree).

On the other issue: I did not know that people had been jailed for racist comments on twitter. But what I meant was that generally, especially on random message boards and not something that people like the police know about and can monitor (e.g. twitter or facebook) people can say things that are super mean, sexist, racist, classist, etc a lot more easily than in person (because there is no personal and immediate reaction).