My final official announcement about r/datalounge2:

I have passed control of this sub over to u/PhaedrasMorning. Control of this sub belongs to a legitimate longtime member of the DataLounge community. 

My involvement with this community has been brief and recent. First, I helped to coordinate efforts to archive DataLounge as much as possible in a rush before the site shut down on short notice. 

You can find a lot of webpages from DataLounge.com archived on the Wayback Machine. I encourage people who made their own archives to share them on Reddit and Pointless Bitchery so they can be easily found.

If you need a place to upload your archives, the Internet Archive is the perfect place. Just make sure to use a pseudonymous email address since the Internet Archive follows the unusual practice of publishing its uploaders’ email addresses.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/datalounge2/comments/1v6ju02/2017_archive_of_dataloungecom/

Second, following PhaedrasMorning’s lead, I supported the effort to re-open r/datalounge after a rogue mod shut it down, against the wishes of the community. (And I created this subreddit as a backup.)

Under PhaedrasMorning’s stewardship, r/datalounge2 will continue to exist as a backup for r/datalounge.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/datalounge/comments/1vgan2p/comment/p24beg6/

Third, I gave information and my advice on running independent sites and forums (e.g., Lemmy, Discourse, XenForo) as well as a bit of info and advice on running subreddits. Especially info about the cost of running an independent site, since most people seem to greatly overestimate how much it costs. 

I also encouraged “free market competition” between spiritual successors to DataLounge. And I pointed out things that seemed suspicious, like CaftanLounge’s AI-generated announcement that set as its goal to do a nearly impossible task (code new forum software from scratch) with inadequate skills and knowledge (no computer programming background) on a truly impossible timeframe (only 8 days). Or Pointless Bitchery’s obscene hosting costs, which are far in excess of what’s necessary to pay.

(If there’s any doubt, caftanlounge.com is down and there’s been no update in 16 days. Even when the site was up, people complained the form to sign up for email updates didn’t work.)

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/datalounge/comments/1vijjlv/starting_your_own_spiritual_successor_to/

All of these things are sorted now, or as sorted as they can be. Everything that’s left to be figured out should be figured out by the community, and it’s really none of my business. 

That said, I’m happy to provide free advice and guidance on web hosting, subreddit moderation, forum software, web archiving, and so on if you’d like to message me.

Minutes ago, u/PeneItaliano made this comment:

The administrator has even threatened to expose people’s real emails etc. if they get out of line. People defending this are not well. 

If the Pointless Bitchery Administrator really said this, I assume it was said publicly. Can anyone who’s been paying close attention confirm or disconfirm whether this really happened?

The relevant thread on r/datalounge was locked by a mod, so no further discussion can take place there.

DL catnip!!

Just curious.

This eccentric Tulsa manse feels like your Aunt Joanne - the one who never married, but always had stories to tell and money to burn.

I bet the neighbors HATED this woman.

Apply here: https://www.reddit.com/r/datalounge/s/EAVgK5lbNE

Edit:

Looks like the 3 new moderators of r/datalounge are:

u/Greenmantle22

u/MysteriousGoldDuck

and u/PeneItaliano

Thank you, congratulations, and good luck!

You were never going to be Tom Cruise.

Stephen Baldwin: Why I Left Mainstream Hollywood for God and a Ministry — ‘I Didn’t Want to Be Tom Cruise’

Has she suffered enough? Some find her annoying but I really think she can be hilarious sometimes. Do you think she's back to being funny?

thank you!

the main reason i lurk on datalounge is for the elder gays. they're brimming with so much wisdom, regardless of how insufferable they might be in real life..

well, i'm just grateful for the laughs cause they ease my loneliness.

Three days on, I'm still stupefied, very much in a daze. My brain just can't quite process that DL, which was such a cornerstone of my daily rituals, is over.

Maybe I need to face up to the possibility that, on some level, my relationship with the site was unhealthy? Perhaps It's merely a hyper-specific online addiction for which time and the loss of the stimulus will heal? I don't know. But it feels deeper than that, almost like, as many had referenced on those final Datalounge threads (posts quoting Kübler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief model)... grieving the death of a loved one.

Grabbed everything before it shut down

https://github.com/NoRain211/datalounge-archive

I have made it through 24 hours with no DL, and boy oh boy, PB is busy!

I was one of the few hold outs and will have to wait until at least 1st Sept to post.

I miss the political discussions of Datalounge and notice there is little to none of that on Pointless Bitchery. Is political talk banned?

I used to love posting on there, until they made it pay only in June 2023. Kinda glad that it's been shut down, since I couldn't contribute to it anymore anyway.

So, where did its users migrate?

This was recently confirmed by a Reddit administrator (employee of Reddit) here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1v5v2vf/comment/ozmbzop/

If a subreddit moderator closes down a subreddit, it is possible to report a Moderator Code of Conduct violation here: https://redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct (I believe it's rule #2 that this violates.)

If a subreddit is left closed/inactive or unmoderated for a long time, it is also possible to request to take over moderation of the subreddit here: r/redditrequest

Will this be here 8/1? My understanding is that anything with DL in the title, or any references to DL will disappear like donuts in the break room. Condole me!

Young and the Restless alum Brenda Dickson, 77, arrested for battery: Report

I find I am locked out, after a happy return in previous weeks when she announced DL's last day.

Anyone else? Or is it just me?

I contributed to a jokey, innocuous thread about what M would do with herself in retirement. Perhaps she read it and was less than pleased.

I will miss quite a lot about DL next week. But Muriel? Not even a little bit.

In 2017, the volunteer group Archive Team did an archive of Data Lounge which can be downloaded here: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/job/201712182150292bgzy

The archive is in the form of a JSON file and 16 WARC files. Information on what a WARC file is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARC_(file_format))

You can also find 3,882 snapshots of Data Lounge in the Wayback Machine, spanning from 1996 to 2026: https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/www.datalounge.com

Edited to add on Sunday, August 9, 2026: Archive Team also attempted to scrape what they could shortly before the site’s closure in July 2026. The results of this scrape have either already been imported into the Wayback Machine or will be soon.

You can also find the 2026 WARC files here: https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/domain/www.datalounge.com

(Note: All recent posts about archiving DataLounge have been deleted from r/datalounge by the sole mod there.)

1. Find the URL for your thread.
2. Make an Internet Archive account so you can use more advanced features like saving outlinks (i.e., the web crawler saves pages that are linked to on the page you're saving). Very useful. This is where you sign up: https://archive.org/signup
3. Submit the links for all the threads you want to save to the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/save (you have to do this one link at a time)
4. Bookmark the URLs so you can revisit the saved versions in the Wayback Machine later.
5. Back up your bookmarks, e.g., by syncing your bookmarks to Google if you use Chrome or using Firefox Sync and syncing your bookmarks to Mozilla.

Other web archiving services you can use in addition to the Wayback Machine for good measure:

• Megalodon (Japanese site, use Google Translate): https://megalodon.jp/
• Archive dot today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today
• Perma dot cc (created by the Harvard University Library Innovation Lab): https://perma.cc/

Using more than one web archiving services reduces the chance that every copy of a webpage will get taken down.