The Growth of the Doom Wiki

[Xymph]

From its infancy in 2005, the community wiki has grown steadily over the past 17 years, and really matured in recent years. So how does the growth curve look?

 

Since the wiki is backed up to gamers.org which is backed up to my own server, I set up a daily import of the database dump and built a page with charts to illustrate this in terms of articles, files, and edits. This is what the article charts show today:

 

 

 

To see all interactive charts, updated daily, visit The Growth of the Doom Wiki.

 

[Also, eat that, commercial non-community wiki. ;-) ]

Edited January 2, 2022 by Xymph

[Matthias]

Thanks for maintain the wiki.

I was actually thinking about quiting the Doom mapping, but when I found my wiki page where you listed all my work, somehow it motived me to keep going.

(And also the Ultimate Doom Builder, as now it's much easier to make a map).

Edited December 29, 2021 by LiquidDoom

[Xymph]

Because XymphBot contributes such large numbers since 2016-10, I added a second monthly bar chart for the three categories which excludes that account. This makes it easier to view human editor activity throughout the years. Also, there just happens to be an Easter egg in that files chart. ;-)

 

Also, a new section charts user accounts on the wiki, again with the growing total and the number of accounts opened per month.

 

Somewhat surprisingly, or perhaps not, is that the wiki's launch month is when new articles and edits by human editors, and new user accounts, reached their all-time highs.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Xymph

[Xymph]

I've added a new feature, an interactive chart to show (approximate) activity by individual users from month to month: https://doomwiki.xymph.nl/#activity
 

These are not exact numbers because the edit count is a user profile value that is updated for various user actions, and it can be the same or deviate (up or down) from the revision counts that are drawn in the chart. But the chart gives a nice indication of when which users were more or less busy contributing to the one true wiki.

 

After you select a user, using the cursor up/down keys easily flips through the user list.

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, Xymph said:

I've added a new feature, an interactive chart to show (approximate) activity by individual users from month to month: https://doomwiki.xymph.nl/#activity
 

These are not exact numbers because the edit count is a user profile value that is updated for various user actions, and it can be the same or deviate (up or down) from the revision counts that are drawn in the chart. But the chart gives a nice indication of when which users were more or less busy contributing to the one true wiki.

 

After you select a user, using the cursor up/down keys easily flips through the user list.

Placed at number 15. Which is fine considering how short my activity is compared to some of the higher ups on the list.

 

Nice cheeky dig to that other wiki, by the way ;)

[Daytime Waitress]

Thanks for maintaining the wiki, Xymph.

 

And a big thank you to all the contributors, too.

 

It's pretty rad to see it all set out like this, but I gotta ask - what's with the spike at the start of 2017?

 

On 12/30/2021 at 3:15 AM, Xymph said:

commercial non-community wiki

 

It somehow looks even stupider when you actually type it out. I despise that all-consuming shitpile.

[Shepardus]

3 hours ago, Daytime Waitress said:

It's pretty rad to see it all set out like this, but I gotta ask - what's with the spike at the start of 2017?

"An above-average surge in covering WADs/maps by Xymph(Bot)" according to the timeline at the bottom of the page.

[Xymph]

Happy New Year! A full year down the road, how did the Doom Wiki do? Well, brace yourself, as growth has been tremendous:

 

Articles expanded from 14,788 at the end of 2021 to 19,142 last night, i.e. by 4,354 new articles.

Files uploaded grew by 7,061, from 23,889 (Dec 2021) til 30,950 (Dec 2022).

These, along with many, many contributions and edits by at least five dozen (ir)regularly active users, add up to an explosive 79,130 edits!

 

Almost needless to say but I'll state it anyway: the one true wiki is in its best shape yet, and will undoubtedly become an even more valuable community resource over the coming year.

 

To see all interactive charts, updated daily, visit The Growth of the Doom Wiki.

[Endless]

An absolute pleasure to see the wiki grow both in quantity and quality. I think it is safe to say that it is one of the most well-developed, documented and useful game wikis out there IMO, I rank it alongside the UESP in terms of passionate editors and contributions.

[Redneckerz]

2 hours ago, Endless said:

I think it is safe to say that it is one of the most well-developed, documented and useful game wikis out there IMO, I rank it alongside the UESP in terms of passionate editors and contributions.

The bolded is one of the nicest compliments anyone could give regarding a wiki considering the UESP is a work of art.

[Gez]

I have to give a shoutout to the work of @Quasar who, in addition to regular Wiki administrator and maintainer stuff, has written a lot of interesting and well-researched articles about Doom's history, such as Judgment Day or Doom movie early production history just to give a couple examples. This is the kind of content that elevates the Doom Wiki above and beyond the average wikifarm stuff that most games are saddled with.

[Xymph]

While compiling the 2022 summary a few posts up, I realized that determining the numbers from the monthly charts was a bit cumbersome, and annual patterns in the data aren't all that obvious and visible.

Also, while I am no fan of viewing complex charts and websites on a tiny screen myself, mobile browsing is undeniably a common thing nowadays. But on the portrait tablet or smart phone, the monthly charts become very cramped after 18 years and counting, even though the site works fine through responsive design.

 

So today I expanded the site with annual charts, which is now the default and also provides faster initial charts loading. Via the radio buttons on the right in the masthead, you can switch all charts to monthly and back to yearly. But you and me, desktop persons that we are :) , can also bookmark https://doomwiki.xymph.nl/?bymonth and still launch directly into monthly mode.

 

Hope all that adds to the site's usefulness.

[MemeMind]

On 1/1/2023 at 8:44 AM, Endless said:

An absolute pleasure to see the wiki grow both in quantity and quality. I think it is safe to say that it is one of the most well-developed, documented and useful game wikis out there IMO, I rank it alongside the UESP in terms of passionate editors and contributions.

The UESP is one of my favorite wikis to click random page on. I am addicted to TES and so having a wiki with the same amount of addiction is awesome.