Angle,
While JTAS is an excellent subscription, 2 years for $20 and access to years of archives, the forum there is mostly dead. I'm a subscriber and I check them out roughly every two weeks when a new JTAS issue is published. Messages are rare and threads rarer. It's rather sad because the JTAS used to be quite active and I participated in some of the best on-line Traveller discussions I've ever had there.
SJGames has a Traveller section in their free forums also. That forum can run hot and cold, it's in a lukewarm stage now. Of course, the topics discuss G:Traveller more often than other versions because SJGame's forums are, naturally, house organs and are moderated as such.
The Stellar Reaches fanzine is on a hiatus, perhaps permanently. One reason for this is Mongoose has laid down some fairly stringent requirements for fanzines in their "Fair Use" policy(1). Another reason is that T20 is on life support and that version is the one Stellar Reaches was founded to support.
Another fanzine, Frontier Report, was recently announced here. That fanzine is going to come out biannually and will also completely ignore MgT's rules so as not to run afoul of Mongoose's "Fair Use" policy. I believe the first issue is due out this month, so you'll learn about it at the same time we all do.
The various Traveller Yahoo Groups run the gamut between very sporadic and moribund. ct starhips shows the most activity, but it is can be quiet for weeks. ct striker is another relatively active group, but it's quiet periods last even longer than ct starships.
The Comstar/Avenger forum is spotty also, among other troubles. There are sections of the forum there that haven't seen posts in over 5 months. I also find the attitudes there more clannish and sycophantic. For example, you will see more posts announcing things and fewer posts discussing things. YMMV.
The TML might as well be dead. I subscribe and receive a few posts each day, but I haven't bothered to post to the TML in nearly a year. The TML's format, a subscription e-mail list, is a dinosaur and has been replaced near web-wide by the forum format. You can easily pick and choose which conversation you which to read in a forum set-up, it's much harder to do the same with an e-mail list. It's sad to see the TML die out, it's been around for a long time and I had some excellent times there, but evolution is a fact of life and the TML's way of doing business has been long supplanted.
There are other subscription e-mail lists like TNE's Dark Tower. Most were spun off from the TML after various fueds. FWIU, their traffic is even lower than that on the TML.
Mongoose has active forums discussing their many games and one of those forums discusses MgT or, more accurately, discusses MgT in a manner that Mongoose approves of. The forums there are house organs and, because Mongoose pays the band, Mongoose gets to pick the tunes. Mongoose's moderation also seems more "robust" or "proactive" than that practiced by that other gaming company with house organ forums, SJGames. Forum bans were actually handed out during what was supposedly a playtest for MgT.
COTI, for all its recent ills real or imagined, is currently the most active and wide ranging of Traveller's forums. While originally created to support T20, the Schrodinger's cat-like nature of that rules set means every other version of Traveller is discussed much more often. The same cannot be said for SJGames' and Mongoose's forums, they're supporting active and specific versions of Traveller and their forums reflect that fact.
Hope this helps some.
Regards,
Bill
1 - Before anyone thinks I'm bashing Mongoose for it's business practices, I should point out that Mongoose's stringent "Fair Use" is pretty much the industry norm while FFE's is a definite exception.
