Editor’s Pick
SEPTEMBER 14, 2008 1:23AM

Open Salon's mystery tag game

Rate: 16 Flag

Fooling around on this site, I clicked on "Topics" at the top of the page and then on several random tags -- religion, sex, mccain, and so on. I noticed  each tag has its own URL, so that if you click on a Topic, say "sex," you'll go to a page headed "posts tagged 'sex'" with a URL:

 Then, instead of clicking on a different Topic, I just changed the number at the end of the URL, since each tag has its own tag_id. Tag ID number 1, for some reason, is "Coolio." There are no posts tagged "Coolio," so if you want a page all to yourself, go for it. 

This is a great way to discover some of the really fucked up tags some people have used. For example, tag ID 3967 is "Limbo Dancer Standards." There is one post tagged "Limbo Dancer Standards;" it doesn't seem like there are likely to be very many.

Try it yourself! Make up a number, put it at the end of that URL.  You'll wind up reading stuff you never would have encountered before.

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Great! More ways to feed my addiction to OS!
Interesting. 420 is posts tagged "Colorado," which isn't as spot on as if it had been, say, posts tagged "marijuana," but it's odd to me there have been no posts tagged Colorado, esp given some of the very prolific and interesting bloggers I know of here who are from Colorado and have written about Colorado.

I'll need to investigate further, but an interesting find. I think we need to get Caruso Wegie on the case.
Sometimes the tags are the best part of a post.

(rated)
I am definitely going to try that. It will make a fun game. Sadly, that's all the tags are good for. It seemed like a hopeful way of finding the good posts that get buried too deep, but in reality? Not so much.

Really excellent detective work!
You are a clever man, Mark Pritchard. Thanks for the hint; I wouldn't have found Dan-onymous without it.
666 is "primaries". How very droll...
Don't worry, Susan, the tags will be more useful when we complete our navigation update. Though I'm sure there will still be other problems you'll be able to blog about : )
Hee - Clever! Funny!
I also found this fascinating and wanted to add one more thing. If you go to the "Most Recent" menu and open the latest story that has been posted and add one or more digits to the "cid=" number you may see a post that has been saved in draft form, but not published. In fact, if the post creation activity level is high you may find another post each time you go up another digit. If you go up too many digits the page shows an error.
I've just squeezed in one more obsession to my heavy OS roster because of this clever information.
Wow, I need some sleep before I venture down the rabbit hole!

Very irresistable, tho!

Nice undercover work.
I tagged something "free pussy" just so I could have a page to myself.