What is meta? ×

While trying to find the first alive question on SO, I discovered something strange.


will redirect to


Why is this?

share|improve this question
btw, this seems to be the first SO question: stackoverflow.com/questions/4 –  Earlz May 11 '10 at 22:40
The first question is only visible if you have 10k. @ear –  Gnome May 11 '10 at 23:03
@The Cat: That makes me wonder if SO got off to a roaring start by closing its very first question as 'not a real question.' –  Jon Seigel May 11 '10 at 23:10
@The Cat. How about a screenshot for us that are under 10k? :) –  Earlz May 11 '10 at 23:41
Found it: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3991/… –  Jon Seigel May 12 '10 at 0:04

1 Answer 1

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Questions and answers are both stored in the same database table. See here.

ID #20 is the ID of an answer, which is inside a question with ID #8.

The database design goes against the RESTful URL design of /questions/x (since not all posts are questions), so if x is an answer, the devs decided to redirect there instead of bombing it with a 404. You'll notice that when you edit a post, the url is /posts/x/edit regardless of whether it's a question or answer.

share|improve this answer
You can see this clearly through the URLs alone with /posts/ID/revisions. –  Gnome May 11 '10 at 23:06

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .