I have no idea if this is necessary or even useful, but here's a small glossary of Datalounge terms:
Asbestos Eyeballs: A setting in what Datalounge calls "The Flames & Freaks Slider." Access it in the top black bar toward the right under "Settings." On the slider, "Delicate Flower" will hide replies and threads which have just a few FFs, while "Asbestos Eyeballs" will not hide many (or any) replies no matter how many FFs they have received.
Authenticated: This is outdated but it's still used on Datalounge, albeit incorrectly. In the past, paid members were authenticated members, having had to provide an email address to become authenticated. They were allowed to use a redname to sign their posts, if they wanted. Non-paid members didn't have to log in with an email (they used a contribution code, a system which was phased out several years ago) and were not authenticated. These days, everyone has to have an email login and has to have a redname of some sort, even if they don't use it. Those who post with a redname are not authenticated anymore, though some older users still refer to them as such.
Culture Wars: Wikipedia is the most useful page on this, for good or ill.
EST: Elaborate Scenario Troll. A complicated term with a long and quite depressing history. The term was coined some time around 2005 for a single troll who, as the Wikipedia entry for DL once said, "deployed florid, overwrought prose to describe painstakingly elaborate situations requiring DataLoungers' consult" which were "widely believed...to be fictional." Soon after, any post describing an event that almost certainly didn't happen was called an "EST." At the time, this phenomenon of writing long, fake, detailed stories for attention was relatively uncommon, but these days the internet is awash with it. Note that in 2009, Datalounge was flooded with posts from a particularly irritating poster known as "Noodles" and his self-appointed nemesis, "Anti-Noodles," whose alleged attempt to "take down" Noodles just ended up making the situation worse. Compounding the problem was that right-wing and far-right political ESTs were being posted, too, beginning during the 2008 presidential campaign and becoming a torrent of troll posts by 2009, just as Noodles was getting out of hand. A Datalounge moderator, for reasons which were never explained, decided that the solution to the problems was to ban anyone accusing a poster of being "Noodles" or of being an "EST." The moderator, who clearly had not been paying attention, seemed to think that both Noodles and the political EST posters were victims. Thus, for a while, you could not type the initialism "EST" without getting permanently banned. People would work around this by posting something such as, "What an Exceptionally Sordid Tale this is." The Noodles situation resolved, assumedly thanks to some bans, and the EST ban did not last long, but some people to this day will still use a phrase like "Extremely Sordid Tale," as basically a 15-year-old callback.
FAQ: The Datalounge Frequently Asked Questions page. Click on the bolded topics to expand them.
FF: Flames & Freaks. The orange button at the bottom of a post/reply which is intended to act as a way to report the worst trolls. You only get 3 uses of FF per rolling 24 hours, before it's taken away for 24 hours as a "cooling down" period.
Forum Sliding: Also called "forum shifting" on DL for some reason. It's when a troll posts a bunch of essentially harmless threads but then keeps track of them, so that way, at a later date, they can call up these old harmless threads in an effort to "slide down" a thread they do not like and essentially hide it. For example, someone who doesn't want DL to discuss Trump's latest arraignment may suddenly bump a bunch of threads about Neil Patrick Harris, that are all dated from 2015, causing the Trump thread to fall down on the thread list and disappear. That's "forum sliding." Read more here.
Ignore: The ability to ignore an account or thread. The orange button at the bottom of a post/reply with a little "no" slash through the image of a person. Ignoring threads generally does not work at this time. You can ignore up to 255 accounts/people before your list maxes out. You can access your list of Ignored people and threads at the top of the screen by clicking "Ignore."
Karma: The reputation you get on DL as a poster. It's explained more in the FAQ.
Muriel: The pet name for whoever is moderating at the time. Taken from the movie Muriel's Wedding.
OP: What we call the Original Poster or the top post. Same as on other forums.
Paywall (also called Murieled): When a thread is locked down on DL so that only paying users can post. Threads can be paywalled even if the site itself is not on Primetime.
Primetime (sometimes Prime Time): When Datalounge is locked down so that only paid members can post. Datalounge called their pay-only mode "Primetime" several years ago, but these days, per the FAQ, they just call it "read only" mode "during times of high traffic." It appears they also turn on Primetime manually if they see a lot of trolls or FFs, and also during holidays, probably to help keep manual moderation to a minimum.
Profile: Officially, no one has a profile on Datalounge, but you can click on a redname and see a limited list of the posts someone has started while using their redname, along with their WW votes and a few other bits of information.
R-numbers (also R-replies, R#, and others): Replies on threads are unofficially referred to as R-numbers. You will see them in threads as [R5] or [R200] and such. To use an R-number, just type the R followed immediately (no space) with the number of the reply you want to reference. Want to reference reply #33? Type R33 and the system will automatically put the brackets around them, make them bold, and create a pop-up that will show that R33 reply if you hover over or tap it.
Redname: The user name you chose when you first logged in. If you use it on a post, it shows up in the By: line in red. You can click on this red name and see a limited profile of the posts started by this user.
Redtag: Unrelated to rednames. When someone gets permanently banned, everything that they have ever posted will be grayed out and a red tag at the bottom added, that looks like this: [ troll 6000 ] If you see a post that isn't offensive but is grayed out and has a redtag, that's because something else they posted got them banned.
Sockpuppets (or sock puppets): Multiple accounts run by a single person. These are generally used to brigade a thread or to give out multiple FFs, because of the current FF limit.
Troll: Datalounge has basically two definitions of "troll." One is the usual definition: someone who is posting inflammatory content just to cause trouble. However, especially in the early days of the forum, a "troll" was someone who was obsessed with a specific topic. Someone who posted frequently about Daphne Zuniga would be called The Daphne Zuniga Troll, for example, even if they weren't ever obnoxious about it. This was unique to Datalounge, as far as I know.
WW: Wit & Wisdom. The light blue button at the bottom of a post/reply which basically acts as an upvote. You have an unlimited number of these per day.
