Just being curious here.
Admins of Discourse forums, do you use the Lounge category? Do you explain it yourself to your members or just let the default trust level 3 description does its job?
Is it actually used, and for what purpose?
Feel free to share any thoughts about this special category in general or in your own Discourse forum (or other forums you are members of).
We have an “off topic” category which I guess is a bit like a lounge.
It’s only visible to TL1 so is quickly accessible by new members and while there are no trade secrets in there, we don’t want it being indexed by search engines as it would take away from the main content of our site.
The description reads:
It’s a hugely popular category and a place that really allows the community members to get to know each other.
Popular (daily) discussions include reality TV shows, live discussions during live sporting events, recommendations for purchases, discount and coupon codes, other hobbies (eg. Motorcycles, camping, etc), online gaming, volcanoes, and general current affairs.
More obscure topics cover things like vehicle tyres, DIY home repairs, Lego 
My top tip for such a category? Much like the offline world you’ll quickly find that politics, religion and covid always divide. We don’t ban any of these subjects but we do warn people early on if it looks to be going south. A short reminder is sometimes posted to remind people to respect others views and to remain civil.
So, this is kinda a custom Lounge category.
I completely forgot it, but we decided on our own forum that the off-topic category would be available only for TL1 users, exactly like your case (though it’s not very popular in our forum).
My question is specifically about the default Lounge category as it ships with Discourse, but your reply is interesting because after all, the only difference between Lounge and a “custom lounge” is that the Lounge is inherent to Discourse.
I’m TL3 (On the Codecademy forums) so I can only say what’s public about the category and not the private stuff about it.
I get access open-door access to CMs and HQ staff, invitations to events and roundtables, first to know about betas and stuff related to it.
All the stuff I said above is from this topic. And TL3 their is called Super User or SU.
Do you use the Lounge category on your community?
The last post was in October of 2020.