GirlChat

Board Header

Annabelleigh.net referred to as "Girl Chat" or "GC" (founded 6 May 2000), is the longest running known Girllove board. It's basic functionality (traditional, threaded chat structure) is analagous to BoyChat. The technology behind the forum is relatively simple and has its advantages (primarily security-related), and disadvantages (lack of clear organization).

Compared to other Girl Love boards, Girl Chat is more focused on intellectual debates - but all sorts of discussions are common. Annabelleigh.net also provides a chatroom for established members to talk in.

Annabelleigh.net survives on donations from the members, used to pay for an expensive system of proxies.

Etymology

The URL is based on Annabel Leigh, who was the deceased love of Humbert Humbert in the novel Lolita. The name is based on chats/conversations on the topic of girls, which in common usage can refer to a female of any age though many users seem to focus on the older use indicating young maidens and so forth. Some imply that it only infers to prepubescent ones, sometimes using the world 'child' knowing it is analogous with minor to promote confusion.

History

In February 2000 Open Hands was created by a team of BLs and non-pedophiles for the purposes of providing information to family and friends of childlovers and teen lovers. Right from the beginning, the site's admins were surprised at the number of GLs who were visiting the forum. Their overwhelming presence at times made the mission of OH difficult to maintain, and by April the OH webmaster was looking for ways to divert the deluge. GLs were invited to start their own website, and in May 2000, GirlChat was born with the first webhosting on the Free Spirits web server.

GC was hosted with Free Spirits until it went offline in the Spring of 2001. Given the instability of Free Spirits hosting solutions that Spring, and the fact that some on the Committee felt that they should have more control and autonomy, there was a drive to purchase a unique server solution for GC. This vision included YANI, Common Ground, Jardin d'Alice, and GL Garden in addition to the GirlChat forum.

Moderation

A team of moderators watch the board closely, and any posts that fall outside the rules are edited or deleted for the security of its members and to keep the board usable. The rules on GirlChat are particularly strict, with exchange of personal details including emails, video links and links to any images that may be interpreted as sexual all being frowned upon. In some cases the site administrators have been criticised for their hyper-vigilant approach towards potential breaches of security, and general incitation of drama.

Original moderators included Brother Chubba, Humanist, 28, and Harbor Boy, who had briefly participated at OH. RT was the first Webmaster, Mesmerised the 2nd Webmaster, followed by Puzzled and NFiH. These familiar faces have seen differing fortunes since first appearing on the scene. Whilst some have lowered their profile, been outed or disappeared altogether, others remain highly active to this day.

Redesign

AP has been credited with the partial redesign of the site, although he strongly denounced the incomplete implementation of his design in an open letter, stating that the committee's partial implementation actually made the design situation worse.

External link

• GC forum
• ASGL - A newsgroup and mailing list predecessor to GC.