A completely unimportant question.

I was just curious about the forum ID numbers.

About This Message Board: 2
Comments on Cecil’s Columns: 1
Comments on Staff Reports: 6
General Questions: 3
Great Debates: 7
Cafe Society: 13
In My Humble Opinion: 12
MPSIMS: 4
The BBQ Pit: 5

Is there any logic to the numbering scheme? I realize that new fora were added over time, but I assume (perhaps wrongly) that they could have been re-numbered when the switch to vB was made. Why the jump from 7 to 12? I’ve seen references to a Moderator’s forum, which could account for onw of the “skipped” IDs, but what about the other three?

Why yes, I am quite bored today. Why do you ask?

1-6 were the original forums here (Staff Reports used to be called “Cecil’s Mailbag,” and the forum was named as such).

After six, I can only assume are the hidden forums, accessible to staff only.

After some time, They added IMHO for stuff that maybe were deeper than MPSIMS, but not quite cut out for GD/GQ, and for surveys and opinion threads. Then came CS, to unclog MPSIMS a bit and giving entertainment and art a forum unto itself.

So the invisible forums were already established and numbered, so IMHO and CS get tacked onto those.

Okay.

There are four invisible fora? Why di they need so many?

One is for the money.
Two is for the show.
Three is because a list of two is silly.
Four is for.

There don’t have to be four invisible forums. If you add a forum, then delete it, then the forum number of a new forum created afterwards is still incremented by one. This happened on my Board where, as a joke, I created a “Teletubbies Fanfic” forum, and made UncleBeer the Moderator of it. When I deleted the forum, the next one I created after it was incremented by one, so there is a gap.

I can see an argument for reordering the forum IDs, but the strong counter-argument is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” - are you sure there’s nothing going to be broken by changing the number?

Heck, I’m not advocationg anything. I was just mildly curious. And bored.

Like I said, it’s really an unimportant question.

I did learn something useful, though. I’m unable to type properly on Saturdays.

Or Mondays, either.

I believe one of the “invisible” forums was intended to be a read-only “archives” forum that was part of a plan pertaining to old threads, a plan that never got implemented. You used to be able to get to it by manually editing the URL (changing the forumid digit). That doesn’t seem to be the case any more (that you can still view it, I mean), so they probably finally deleted it. It only had a couple of ancient threads in it anyhow, most of them board FAQs and that kind of thing.

Why would that be a joke?

Well, I’ll be damned.

::cue sound effect of more ignorance being stamped out::

Actually, all of them are, or more properly, were archive forums. A plan was implemented to move worthwhile threads from active forums to archive forums in the old UBB system. This was actually done for several forums. Then, when we converted the database from UBB to vB, the archive forums disappeared in the process - those data (along with forums 8 thru 11) are just gone. The conversion process actually created the forum and converted the information, but then discarded it - hence the non-consecutive forum numbering that you now see. The original Phaedrus evolution thread that ran for well over one thousand posts, “So I read in the newspaper . . .” and another great GD thread, “Why pray?” are two examples of such missing content.

Hey, thanks Uncle Beer.

Now, please feel free to fill us in on the Teletubbies thing.

As long as it wasn’t Teletubbies Slashfic, I’m not too scared.

Never.

Coward.

The dreams are simply too frightening for words. They’d send Dean Koontz screaming into the night.

So porcupine’s guess was correct, then? I am now officially terrified…

Dean Koontz? A stale french fry would scare him. He ain’t fit to lick Stephen King’s boots.

Besides, it is that damn baby in the sun that send me running. That kid is just CREEPY.

As the baby-faced sun slowly set, Tinky Winky took Po’s hand and led him deeper and deeper into the underground world..

Po: I’m scared…

Tinky Winky: Don’t be scared…I’m right here.

Tinky Winky grabbed Po hard, and stared into his eyes. Their breathing got heavy, and Tinky’s hand slowly fell from Po’s shoulder to…

AAAAAUUUUUGHHHHHHH!!! I even freaked myself out!!! Must kill brain…