It's a decent ready-to-go forum. I only used it for the clojure groups, but then the clj community discovered slack. All that useful topically categorized awesomeness now must be mined from worthless slack logs.
Usenet still exists independent of Google Groups. Google provides an interface for users to post on Usenet groups, at least until they decide to stop supporting it, but you don't need Google at all to get on Usenet: http://www.eternal-september.org/
It's a decent ready-to-go forum. I only used it for the clojure groups, but then the clj community discovered slack. All that useful topically categorized awesomeness now must be mined from worthless slack logs.