Douban Groups

Douban Groups are thousands of small interest communities covering everything from housing and workplace complaints to narrow hobbies.

Their value for research is candour: discussion happens between people with no commercial interest, which makes it a better source for understanding how people actually talk about a product or problem than any review platform.

Groups are self-moderated and vary enormously in quality and activity, and much of the most useful material sits in older threads rather than current posts.