One of the major oversights of the worldbuilding process is that worldbuilders tunneled their focus on the story at hand, which usually means making things up as they go.
I can't afford that. How can I build a world without ACTUALLY building the world? In reality, the world comes before the story. It's that simple.
That said, finding online forums on the biggest pictures of worldbuilding--geography, geology, astronomy, climatology, meteorology, biology, ecology, glaciology, paleoclimatology, atmospheric chemistry, geodesy, paleogeography, biogeography, oceanography--has proven to be very tedious with very few rewards. It is crucial for me that before I make any embellishments set in my fictional world, I need to create a believable alternate Earth FIRST. (Magic, fantasy and mythology count as embellishments.)
Do you know any discussion forums online that allow hard-science on speculative scenarios regarding any of the science disciplines listed above?