sex-nn.ru (Sex-NN) was a Nizhny Novgorod website about sex that operated in the first half of the 2000s. The nn.ru directory listed it under the heading "Projects: Entertainment and Leisure: Sex, Erotica, Leisure" and described it as follows: "A guide to the various aspects of sexual life in Nizhny Novgorod"[4]. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated April 25, 2002[1], the latest — April 4, 2005[3]. The site's author is unknown: the signature at the bottom of the page gave only the designer's initials and a Nizhny Novgorod email address — "Design by RK" and rk@mail.nnov.ru[3].

Entry page

In every surviving snapshot, the home page of sex-nn.ru is not the site's content but a short warning splash screen offering a choice of "enter or leave." In the 2002 version, as the home page stated, visitors were greeted with the words: "Welcome to SEX-NN! This site does NOT CONTAIN pornographic material, but it naturally does concern attitudes toward sex. If this topic is unacceptable to you for any reason (religious, ethical, etc.), click 'Exit'; everyone else has plenty of interesting things ahead"[1].

By 2003 the text had been slightly rewritten — "This site does not contain pornography, but it naturally does concern attitudes toward sex" — and two links appeared below it: "EXIT" and "ENTER"[2]. In the 2005 snapshot the same splash screen was kept unchanged, with only the designer's signature added[3]. The site's inner pages did not make it into the web archive, so Sex-NN's content can be judged only from the directory description: a guide to the "various aspects" of the city's "sexual life"[4]. The splash screen contained no address, phone number, or organization name — the Nizhny Novgorod connection is expressed in the site's own name, its directory listing, and the designer's mailbox in the mail.nnov.ru domain.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In 2002 the "Sex, Erotica, Leisure" category of the nn.ru directory listed fourteen sites, and Sex-NN stood first in the list[4]. Next to its name, the Counter.nn.ru counter showed a "Rating: 921" tag — an order of magnitude higher than its neighbors in the category: "Babtsedavka" stood at 97, the "Abstinence" page and the "Leisure and Entertainment in Nizhny Novgorod" site at 94 and 84, and most of the others in the single digits[4]. The site was assigned number 3129 in the counter system[4]. By this measure Sex-NN was more prominent than all of its neighbors in the category — the dating sites love.r52.ru, the "Nizhny Novgorod Gay Site" gay-nn.ru, and others[4]. At the same time, it does not appear in the surviving samples of the counter's summary tables, and it is absent from the results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[5]. For more on the rating sample, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

Sex-NN is a case typical of the early Nizhny Novgorod Internet — a site of which only a door remains: the web archive index lists 22 records for the home page, and the same splash screen appears in the three parsed snapshots from 2002, 2003, and 2005. The last snapshot is dated April 4, 2005[3]; our sample contains no later traces of the site operating. As of the compilation of this record, the sex-nn.ru domain is inactive and no site is hosted there.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Sex, Erotica, Leisure" category, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)