Forum URL numbers

So, hovering my cursor over the various forums in the main SDMB page gives me the following:

About this Message Board is #2
Comments… is #1
General Questions is #3
Great Debates is #7
Elections is #34 (!)
Cafe Society is #13
The Game Room is #17
Thread Games is #40
IMHO is #12
MPSIMS is #4
Marketplace is #35
BBQ Pit is #5

So what is #6? What are #s 8 through 11? 14-16? 18-34, and 36-39?

What great discussions are we missing out on?

This question comes up from time to time - there are previous threads in ATMB that cover the history of the forum IDs.

Forum #6, a tribute forum dedicated to Britney Spears, did not garner as much interest as initially anticipated.

6 used to be staff reports. That has been folded into 1 so 6 no longer exists.

I believe at least some of the forums in the 8 to 11 range were used for archiving purposes on an older version of software and disappeared completely when the software was upgraded.

There are quite a few forums in the high 20s and throughout the 30s that are used for testing purposes or are moderator-only forums. I won’t give out specifics other than that.

Some of the missing ones were temporary forums, like Boo! that existed for Halloween, or forums like the Barn House that no longer exist.

The forum numbers indicate their order of creation, for those that might be wondering where the numbers came from. So Comments was created first, ATMB second, etc.

Forum #27 was the Honest Politicians Forum. He finally found someone willing to bribe him and requested it be sent to the Cornfield.

We also had stuff like “Straight Dope Chicago” which was phased out. That probably accounts for the missing fora, as that encompassed several different topic areas. There just wasn’t enough interest in something on the local scene – really, that’s what the Chicago Reader and its blogs does much better. An experiment. It didn’t work out.

I demand specifics. Don’t make us get out the pitchforks.

That was The Riot Forum — #22 if memory serves me right. This was from one of their early threads.