Forums and the expertise capture and knowledge exchange

I discovered recently the value of another type of knowledge share and communication form on the internet. It is the forums where group of people who share the same specific interest and would like to exchange the thoughts, knowledge and ideas about it.
I was transferred recently from Indonesia to Kuwait and this will require a new effort in the settlement like housing, schooling, geographical locations, etc..
I found out that there are couple of forums websites where people who are sharing the same interest could exchange the knowledge and the best practices about it.
For instance, the best schools and the first hand experience about the neighborhoods.
You can simply post the question as a new discussion and whoever knows any relevant answer may share it.
This form of networking the common interest persons is very effective and applicable on each single subject in the world.
The value of the published knowledge content in this forums can be increased further by the effective search tools and the categorization to capture the shared knowledge and the expertise.