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We are attempting to solve for the issues of things getting old and being deleted/archived.
The site runs on no database, a strategy I am hoping to be able to continue to employ. All images are uploaded to Imgur, which is public, into an album created by our Imgur account. All of the data for each tag is contained in the Imgur image, including the credit for the person who tagged it as well as the hints/found locations. (we are also looking to add GPS coordinates in the near future, for doing auto verification of new mystery tags as well as providing an interactive MAP). Basically, you don't need BikeTag.Org to see all of the data that you see ON BikeTag.Org.
Because we don't run a database, all of the data is out there. The website code, similarly, is open sourced and the content is public there. When we create Reddit posts (for threaded discussions, much like this forum), those posts are public.
We certainly expect that these larger platforms will be around a while. Using Imgur and Reddit and NOT Facebook is our way of trying to make the game as readily available for as long as possible.
We also have a lot of features currently in the works to automate and add more fanciness. We have a leaderboard (@ /leaderboard for a given geo for you sleuths out there) that is currently in development and a user profile page where users can see their own individual tags. These features are all being driven by a BikeTag API that I am developing to make the data, and how we compile it, available for anyone to mash and mold and do with however they please. Chicago's game has a cool new dashboard at https://sarahlikesbikes.com/chibike/ which is built using Tableau. I don't have those Tableau skills but I am doing what I can to enable others who do have such skills to be able to create whatever.
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BikeTagOrg
@Velocio
I couldn't find tag threads on old boards I used to run like Chicago Fixed Gear (chifg)... but yet there was one.
The problem with old forums... they crashed, got deleted, migrated and broken, and general data loss.
Would be nice to find the earliest cycling instance of the game... it's probably in https://groups.google.com/g/rec.bicycles.misc or https://groups.google.com/g/rec.bicycles from the 1980s for an online version - but Google have made it really hard to search old old stuff.
I bet my fathers anecdotal "we did this riddles on a motorbike" basically came from cyclists before... but we'd be jumping back so far that there's unlikely to be written history of it.