A Brief History Of EmptyClosets
By Paul_UK

Many of you already know that Empty Closets is run by a company that runs an adult gay forum. However, you may be wondering why such a site would also run Empty Closets (EC), and how it all came about?

Long before the owners purchased the adult forum, they ran a coming out support forum here at EC. However, with all his time spent working on his adult forum, the old EC was largely ignored and certainly by early 2004 it was inactive. Looking at web.archive.org it was never very active.

As the adult forum does not allow people under 18 to be members, they feel they have a responsibility to detect and ban underage members. In 2004, this activity was increased due to new legislation affecting the adult online industry, which resulted in a large increase in the number of young people being banned from the forum.

At that time, Paul_UK was an ordinary member of the forum. He and a few other regulars became concerned that some of the people who had been receiving help and support were suddenly being banned. They were being denied the support they needed. There were a few members in particular that members were concerned about.

After being informed they were being referred to more suitable sites, the list of sites were shown to members. However when the list was checked the sites were far from suitable. At best, people’s serious concerns were being laughed at and not taken seriously. At worst, the operators seemed to be preying on younger members, asking them to post nude photos etc. These were definitely not suitable sites to refer the underage banned members to.

Because the forum is ran so well we asked the question: “Surely we can do something better?” The owners said they already had EC, which was currently unused, and promised to revive it. Some of the members involved in the discussion were asked to help moderate it, including TriBi who was already a moderator on the adult forum. On 17th November 2004, the new EC launched.

Over time, some of the original moderators have left and several new moderators have been added. One of these is Micah, who TriBi had previously banned from the adult site when he was 16! Paul_UK was also promoted to administrator and given access to the server itself, which has allowed him to do much more with the site.

In the early days, there were problems attracting and keeping members. Because the site was fairly inactive, new members tended to lose interest and move on quite quickly. Gradually though the membership grew, mostly from people banned from the adult site as they were now being referred just to EC.

In early 2007, there was a big boost when the owners agreed to pay for ongoing Google advertising for EC. This is the “Sponsored Links” you see on Google searches and on other sites owned by Google. Within the first month, the number of new members joining tripled. Many more new members posted messages and the site became much more active. We got another boost later in 2007 when the adult forum was updated and a link to EC was included on their age warning page.

EC has also grown and offers more to members. Initially, it was a forum only but in 2007 a homepage system (providing blogs and galleries) was added, along with the chat room, and a new front page with resources links etc.

The site has also seen the introduction of Experts, who specialise in medical advice and can be found offering input to discussions in the Support forums. Alongside those are Advisors, who offer advice on a more informal level and act as a friend rather than a professional. Advisors are ordinary people and hold no specialist qualifications, but they have been selected by both the staff, other advisors and the experts.

One question remains though – why does an adult site provide for EC? The adult forum is a commercial operation, yet EC does not bring in any money and actually costs them money. So why do they do it?

The main reason, and certainly the original reason, is that it is something the owners have always wanted to do and feel there is a real need for. The fact that he started the original EC before he even created the adult forum confirms that. Whatever the reason, we are certainly delighted that they are doing so.