# What's up with the threads titled "?/a\>"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [November 23, 2001, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891 "2001-11-23T14:03:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891/1 "2001-11-23T14:03:12Z")

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There are currently 2 threads with the title “?/a\>” here in ATMB started by two different people ( **Disciple of Alf** and **jbrosche** ), both of which are closed… when I click on either of them to see what’s up, all I get is a blank screen…

What’s up with that? Can anyone else see what these threads say? Is it just my computer that cannot read these threads? Am I just being really paranoid? What are you looking at? Why me??😉

[sup]Mommy…[/sup]

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**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891/2 "2001-11-23T14:42:37Z")

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Ah. Here with IE 5.5 those thread titles show up as a single underscore, viz, “\_”.

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**Author:** ![Gartog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/22d042/32.png) [@Gartog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gartog)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891/3 "2001-11-23T14:43:00Z")

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My WAG would be that they tried to make part of the thread title in in to link (the \<a\> tag is the HTML equivalent of our {URL} Tag)

I can’t see any threads with this in the title though, there is one thread by **jbrosche** titled -

but this has been locked.

I wonder if the threads you are referring to have been deleted, as I imaging trying to include links in the thread title would be frowned upon.

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**Author:** ![Gartog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/22d042/32.png) [@Gartog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gartog)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891/4 "2001-11-23T14:45:32Z")

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Ok in the time it took me to spell check my post **DDG** has replied, if the posts are indeed the ones titled - then I would suggest it’s either a problem with your browser, or something funny with the generated HTML which IE5.5 doesn’t mind (IE5.5 being generally quite forgiving)

What Browser are you using?

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**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2001, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-the-threads-titled-a/94891/5 "2001-11-23T14:48:48Z")

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FWIW, they’re both still there.

[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=100517](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=100517)

[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=99793](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=99793)

It’s the CIA, Astroboy–they’re tinkering with your computer (and your _head_) again…