There are forums and chat boards all over the internet for welders. None of them come close to the size of r/Welding on Reddit. Reddit is known as "the front page of the internet" so it comes as no surprise that welding has found a home there.
Reddit is made up of forums that are created by people and if it is a popular subject or has a lot of posts it will turn into a community. There are hundreds of thousands of communities, many with millions of people in them. The forum r/Welding on Reddit has 315,000 users and counting. There are other welding communities on Reddit like r/Weldingporn or r/WeldingMemes but by far r/Welding is the most popular and helpful.
How can this forum help?
Not every member that is part of the r/Welding community is a welder but it is safe to say most probably are. They have used this forum to ask and solve each-others questions for years. If you use the search bar within r/Welding you will most likely find the answer you are searching for. If you don't find what you were looking for you can create a post and ask a question unique to your situation/setup. It is (almost) guaranteed you will get at least one answer from someone and most likely you'll get answers from multiple people. This can be especially useful on weekends or after business hours when you cannot ask others for help.
Something that is also very impressive within this forum is the wealth of information the community has curated and posted for reference. To start, the "Quick Links" drop-down at the top of the page is where you can find the most common solutions to questions. There are links and guides to respirators, tools of the trade, dive welding, and resource users. The last one "resource users" is a list of users that are specialized in topics like alloys, electrodes, and inspections. The users listed would be a great place to start if you were looking for a solution to a specific question.
Another helpful thing that this subreddit offers is a "Welding Wikia" or a wikipedia equivalent for welding. If you click the link you will be met by a list of just about everything welding. From there you can click on whatever topic interests you and do a deep dive on individual topics.
Finally, the last bit of help this forum has to offer is with career guidance. The career threads are a great place to look for insight into a welding career or a specific part of the welding industry. The moderators have created the career threads by compiling questions and answers the community has given. These questions can range from "Should I become a welder?" to "What is welding abroad like?" Be sure to give this page a look if you are curious about welding or a different sector of welding.
The cool stuff (and show offs)
The community is not only useful but can also be very entertaining. Many people post questions looking for help but there are also a lot of posts showing awesome videos or interesting projects.
Like this video below showing someone welding on what I believe to be an oil rig, just above the surface of the crashing waves.
Or as mentioned before, the forum has also become a place to show off welds. As you can see below.
The last post I'll link in this blog post is a very interesting historical post (below). To view a larger version of the pictures double click each one.
Overall, r/Welding is a great community for any welder to join. There are endless amounts of information that can be found as well as some great posts (like the ones above) that have all been posted by users. Of course, if you ever need help with anything welding you can also reach out to the Baker's support team and you'll get an answer.
