Millionth post not far away?

I just posted something to another thread… I noticed that the querystring of the URL has an ID for my post. The URL in question was :

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=989879

This infers that postid 1,000,000 is only 11,121 posts away!

Since we know from comics and television that supermarkets used to give huge cash prizes to unsuspecting millionth customers (but not as far as I know in real life) will the SDMB do anything similar for the millionth post?

Yes this is a serious question!

The millionth poster will be given the opportunity to sign up for the Straight Dope Mailing List, sending her/him Cecil’s weekly column by email, and other exciting Straight Dope News.

I only reads “48389 threads in total | 913222 posts in total” in the main menu page.

The number of posts and the PostID number don’t match. There have been deleted post and whole threads deleted, besides post numbers that were used during the conversion to this software.

In database systems, ID numbers aren’t normally reused since it would require changes to every reference to those numbers. Links refer to threads and posts by ID number, resequencing the numbers would be a monumental task.

So, there is two chances to achieve fame here. Having the PostID number of 1,000,000 and also, by being the 1,000,000th post based on the main page’s post count.

Jim

Dagnabitskunkandrabbit!

I thought I would raise this to speculate about thread #1-1/2 million. But after reading the details, I realize that particular thread has already passed us by!

My last post was # 1,582,083 at the same time the clock on the menu page read “1482199 posts in total”.

That means that over 100,000 posts have been deleted so far!
The mind boggles! Water! Someone bring me water! (With a little bourbon, while your’re up.)

That twice the number of posts on the smallest three forums combined. Or 8% of the total. No wonder people are seeing their counts shrink.