# Disappearing poll from the pre-Discourse era **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [March 20, 2021, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301 "2021-03-20T15:00:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2021, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/1 "2021-03-20T15:00:51Z")
> [@Poll: For what crime(s) would you turn in a loved one?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-for-what-crime-s-would-you-turn-in-a-loved-one/610510): > > The Unabomber was finally caught when David Kaczynski became convinced that his own brother was the long-sought anonymous killer, and provided crucial information to the FBI. If a loved one of yours kept committing crimes and just wouldn’t stop, despite your most earnest attempts to persuade him or her, for what offense(s) would you finally go to the cops? Explain your answers as you see fit. If your answers would be different depending upon the circumstances or definition of any of the cri… The poll in this thread has disappeared, or at least I can’t figure out how to reveal it. If the former, can it be recovered and put back in place there? ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2021, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/2 "2021-03-21T00:09:30Z")
Did _any_ polls come across? I’m not sure that was part of the migration. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2021, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/3 "2021-03-21T01:15:03Z")
Don’t know. Perhaps they could be restored by request, if not all at once? ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2021, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/4 "2021-03-21T23:26:51Z")
Can we wayback machine the old post, and provide a screenshot? Let me try. Ah wait I need the OLD vBulletin style url for that topic, which I don’t know how to get. If you have the old vBulletin style URL (maybe in a bookmark?), it’s in the wayback machine most likely. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/5 "2021-03-22T18:29:07Z")
I don’t, sorry. I only have the link posted in the OP. Can’t find it via Google, either. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/6 "2021-03-22T20:09:45Z")
We’re working on this, at the very least we should be able to find some of the old URLs. We should have a strategy for future migrations re: polls, anyhow. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/7 "2021-03-22T20:31:12Z")
Thank you - hope so! ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/8 "2021-03-22T21:29:18Z")
OK! so here’s the old URL format: `https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=` The best we can do at the moment is to **generate a list of all topics with the word “Poll” in the topic title**. That doesn’t necessarily mean there was a poll in the topic though. Here’s one that _seems_ to have been a vBulletin poll: topic id `442232`? [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=442232](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=442232) … which redirects to … [https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-for-gay-dopers-how-comfortable-accepting-is-your-family/424659](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-for-gay-dopers-how-comfortable-accepting-is-your-family/424659) Looking at that URL [in the wayback machine](https://web.archive.org/)… [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/WvOnCQy.png "imgur.com") ](https://imgur.com/WvOnCQy) Yay, there is one 2018 crawl! Woohoo! This is why I (and you, if you can afford it) should have a [monthly donation](https://archive.org/donate/) set up to the Internet Archive. 🙌 But unfortunately I don’t see a poll anywhere in that archived page? 😢 [https://web.archive.org/web/20180717041524/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=442232](https://web.archive.org/web/20180717041524/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=442232) If others would like to assist, [**here’s a Google Sheet**](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YH3abEidbCi1od7MNXT-hR4kPkug2lds7RC2RTPR8iY/edit?usp=sharing) with a list of all Straight Dope vBulletin thread ids that **have the word “Poll” in the title**. I ordered them by id so you can get a rough idea of time by the id; earlier topics have smaller id numbers. edit: we’re revising the sheet to better match just the word “poll”, so it’ll be less than ~3,500. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/9 "2021-03-23T01:39:09Z")
OK! The final count of vBulletin threads with the word “poll” in the topic is 2,100. Here’s [a link to the Google sheet again](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YH3abEidbCi1od7MNXT-hR4kPkug2lds7RC2RTPR8iY/edit?usp=sharing) just in case. I’ve picked 5 spreadsheet rows at random using a random number generator, from 1 - 2100: `1106, 1805, 1356, 563, 1854` which are following topic ids `454486, 717435, 538087, 263682, 740498` - `454486` [isn’t a poll topic](https://web.archive.org/web/20180713085357/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=454486) unfortunately - `717435` [I HAVE A POLL!](https://web.archive.org/web/20180710155731/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=717435) - `538087` [ANOTHER POLL!](https://web.archive.org/web/20180711073752/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=538087) - `263682` [no visible poll](https://web.archive.org/web/20180717152616/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=263682) - `740498` [yay a POLL!](https://web.archive.org/web/20180728123611/https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=740498) So GOOD NEWS! 🙌 This does appear to work, if the poll is actually a poll and was created in whatever way was … er… normal for vBulletin? So @Elendil_s_Heir if you can identify the topic id, we can probably extract the poll from the wayback machine! ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/10 "2021-03-23T14:39:23Z")
Thank you, **codinghorror**! Are any of the key words in the OP useful, such as Unabomber, Kaczynski, crucial or committing? ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disappearing-poll-from-the-pre-discourse-era/938301/11 "2021-03-23T21:12:30Z")
Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to run any more queries; the easiest thing to do is suss it out by date… look up topic IDs until you find other polls near that date, and try the nearby IDs. It should definitely be in the list **because it contains the word Poll in the title**.