Data Lounge - History and Site Policies

History and Site Policies

DataLounge was launched by Mediapolis, Inc. in May, 1995. During the site's early years, content included GLBT-oriented news, gossip, links to other sites/services, and editorial content that made it a gay Web portal. Content contributors included New York drag queen Trudy and journalist Chris Barillas. DataLounge affiliated itself via the DataLounge Network with other web sites such as the gay dating site Edwina.com, gay Web guide Homorama, and GLBT health information site Gay Health, offering information and services to GLBTs. A weekly e-mail was also offered to users. The site evolved to have several discussion forums covering topics such as lesbian, religious and sexual issues, and also created a "Flames and Freaks" forum to house threads that site administrators determined to be disruptive to general forum discussion. Forums created for subpopulations such as The Lord of the Rings fans and U.S. daytime drama aficionados were subsequently closed. The most popular forum was the Gossip Forum, which dwarfed all others in both traffic and number of discussion threads created.

A portion of DataLounge and the DataLounge Network's content came as a result of the integration of some of the 1995-97 content of Out.com from Out Magazine, which announced in March 1997 that it was closing its Web site to focus on print content. Out.com users were redirected to DataLounge, and DataLounge administrators adopted Out.com's discussion forums, dating service, and weekly survey.

In 2003, DataLounge instituted a subscription service which blocked all web banner and pop-up advertising for a $12 annual fee (this fee was subsequently raised to $15, then to the present price of $18).

In 2005, DataLounge was given a major redesign. All forum topics were collapsed into one general discussion forum called "The DataLounge Forum," and all news content, most references to the other sites in the DataLounge Network, and other features were discontinued. Editorial commentary discussing events continues to appear on the site. Users were also given the option to control aspects of the site's layout, including filtration of political, gossip, and/or "Flames and Freaks" threads.

With this redesign came a policy change that limited access to the DataLounge Forum during high-traffic "primetime" periods to fee-paying subscribers. This move was met with controversy amongst DataLounge users, as non-subscribers were blocked from the DataLounge Forum during these periods. Though Mediapolis has received complaints about the policy, specifically that "primetime" periods are irregular and can often occur at times when site traffic should be at its slowest (e.g., North American overnight hours), DataLounge administrators assert that the "primetime" is necessary to prevent slowdowns of the other sites which Mediapolis hosts on the same servers, and preserves the existence of the DataLounge forum by generating revenue to cover DataLounge's hosting, bandwidth and maintenance expenses.

In the summer of 2007 DataLounge instituted a policy that only paying members may start new threads, but in May 2009 DataLounge launched another comprehensive redesign of the site, dubbed "V6," one that allows users to embed photos and YouTube videos, as well as mark specific threads to watch. The new site is auto-refreshed in real-time as new posts are written, and nonpaying members were at first permitted to start threads, but that quickly changed. The DataLounge Webmaster explained in introducing the redesigned site that the transition was largely dictated by the effect of tabbed Web browsing, which resulted in users constantly using their browsers' refresh function and overloading the servers, sending the site into constant primetime mode. However, shortly after launching V6, the Webmaster reinstituted primetime, in part due to the quick proliferation of racist troll posts.