By the Numbers: July 21, 2008

The majority of Giant Bomb first went live on July 21, 2008. That's 508 reviews, almost 300 podcasts, nearly 200,000 forum topics, 6000+ videos, 4 E3's, 7 PAX's, 3 (official) Endurance Runs, and 2 Big Live Live Shows in the span of just four years. So, thanks in part to a suggestion from @Mento , I thought it might be cool to look at some of the site's stats from those early days. Can you remember that far back? It was a bit chaotic. I wasn't a moderator at the time, but I've heard the horror stories.

Some of the statistics that you may have seen in the June Data Dump aren't on here. It appears that some of those stats don't go that far back. But, let's take a look at some of the numbers.

July 21, 2008

The amount of activity on the site on the first day is barely believable. Take a look at some of these crazy numbers.

• Blogs - 1600
• Forum Topics - 1594
• Forum Replies - 26,602
• User Reviews - 1307
• New Wiki Pages - 2911
• Wiki Submissions - 11,591

Blogs

Naturally, it seems most users wanted to test out all the new stuff when the site first launched. That means 1600 blogs were created on the very first day. After a few days, it evened out to about 250 per day.

Forums

The first image here shows the number of comments in different areas of the site. The second image shows that there were an astounding 26,000+ replies to forum topics on the first day. To put that in perspective, we're averaging about 2200 per day this month. The third image shows the users with the most comments in July 2008, which was the first full week+ the site was up. The fourth image shows which forums had the most created topics on the first day. Yep, that's the Hamburger forum at #4. The fifth image shows that a whopping 1600 topics were created on the first day before it evened out to around 500 the rest of the first month. The last image tells us what the top 10 most active topics were on the first day. Looks like some standard introductory topics there. How old are you? Where did you hear about GB? Are hamburgers sandwiches?

Gallery

Reviews

So fifty people signed up for Giant Bomb and immediately wrote a review for Metal Gear Solid 4. That seems kinda crazy to me, but what's really insane is the second picture shows that over 1250 total reviews were written that day. The "None" in the first image must be a game page that at some point got deleted. I don't know for sure though.

Gallery

Wiki

The first image here shows a daily record of the types of new pages that were added to the site in July 2008. The second image totals up each category within that same time period, which was basically the first week of the site. Yep, that's over 7,000 characters added to the site in just a week. That's just a little less than one third of the total characters on the site four years later. Wiki editors are kinda crazy.

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Okay, what we've got here in the first image is a look at the total number of wiki submissions per day and whether or not they were accepted. Looks like about 20% of the submissions on day one were rejected by moderators. 2500 rejects in one day. Damn, that's a lot. Right now the average number of rejections in a day is in single digits. The second image shows the submissions broken into what type they were, while the third is the same data, just with character and game data removed so you can see some of the less popular data.

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The first image here is the most active wiki pages based on edits made in the first week of the site being up. I have no earthly idea what that first one is/was. If I had to guess, it was probably some rampant plagiarism that got a page deleted. Since the bar graphs are distorted because of that, I'll let you know that Halo 3 had 634 edits followed by Mass Effect with 584. The rest were pretty close with MGS4 wrapping up the Top 10 with 524.

The second image shows the top 10 wiki editors based on number of edits (not points). It doesn't appear that I can pull points data from that far back. I'm not sure why.

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Who were the top wiki moderators in the olden days? These are the duders who did the brunt of the work laying the foundation of what you see on the wiki today. The first image shows the top wiki mods for all of 2008, while the second image shows the top wiki mods for July 2008. It looks like @TheBeast was truly a beast during the first week of the site's existence. That's 16,824 moderations by just him in the first week of the site. To put that in perspective, @ZombiePie was the top wiki moderator in June 2012 with about 1200 moderations.

It's worth noting that @NuclearWinter is the only remaining member of the mod team from these top 10 charts.

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See ya in a couple weeks for the July 2012 data dump!

Those first day surges are interesting. Did it come from ardent GerstFanns showing solidarity by creating a lot of content for Jeff's fledgling site or was it some sort of problematic multi-day pile-up of data that eventually all got processed within a 24 hour period? I know there weren't quests yet, so it wasn't the usual newbie indulgence to chase the achievement dragon that inspired these early adopters. I wasn't there, to my chagrin, so this is all a curiosity to me.

Fun history lesson, thanks Marino.

Great read as always. You've taken over PsEG's position as Master of Stats.

I like how none of the top posters from before are posting here today, and how I, the current top poster, didn't really start coming here until April of the following year.

The first of October, 2001. The last moments of my life. Ten years since the exposure of the first Giant Bomb. A lot of things have changed since then.

Wait, nevermind.

thanks for this. that reminds me that i should rock my original avatar tomorrow too, which was Ned Flanders for some reason.

@AjayRaz said:

thanks for this. that reminds me that i should rock my original avatar tomorrow too, which was Ned Flanders for some reason.

Mine was a shitty Mario one that had my username on the picture itself.

@JJOR64 said:

@AjayRaz said:

thanks for this. that reminds me that i should rock my original avatar tomorrow too, which was Ned Flanders for some reason.

Mine was a shitty Mario one that had my username on the picture itself.

i wouldn't expect anything less from the dude who made Mario vs Mario (which is still one of the best videos ever between my friend and i)

@AjayRaz said:

thanks for this. that reminds me that i should rock my original avatar tomorrow too, which was Ned Flanders for some reason.

I find that oddly amusing for some reason.

I created my profile on the second day of GB's conception, though I just left it there to linger for a long while. I didn't start posting regularly until almost around an entire year later during the summer of 2009. I seem to recall my first avatar was the U.B.C.S. logo... but that then was quickly overtaken by Dylan Moran <3 So, yeah, there's the lauded origin story of the user formally known as Abyssfull...

Man, 4 years ago. It seems like just yesterday. The site was barely usable for a good chunk of that day too because it was running so slowly due to the insane amounts of traffic it was getting. I think I recall the staff talking about some weird Russian load balancing software they ended up running to get the site running half decently.

As for the avatar discussion, I'm still rocking the avatar I was using day 1, so no need to change back here.

@Video_Game_King said:

I like how none of the top posters from before are posting here today, and how I, the current top poster, didn't really start coming here until April of the following year.

Posting...posting never changes.

@Marino said:

@Video_Game_King said:

I like how none of the top posters from before are posting here today, and how I, the current top poster, didn't really start coming here until April of the following year.

Posting...posting never changes.

Why do users insist on posting things that will inevitably be deleted? Why do users cling to their accounts, knowing that they must someday be banned? ...Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they are?

Ah the old days. We should go back to the blog only days where CK posted first on everything.

Reading the First Image over and over has made me extremely curious what the first image uploaded by a user to the site was, or to the site in general? If that data is accessible at all.

@Xeiphyer: Probably a sexy lady Jlrm01 added.

@Xeiphyer said:

Reading the First Image over and over has made me extremely curious what the first image uploaded by a user to the site was, or to the site in general? If that data is accessible at all.

Can't say for sure, but it was probably something Coonce was doing. This one is from June 8, 2008.

http://www.giantbomb.com/sword/93-1/all-images/52-306623/sword/51-10365/

DAY.

ONE.

@Xeiphyer: Actually, here's an older one. May 21, 2008.

http://www.giantbomb.com/double-jump/92-1/all-images/52-304834/scout/51-9740/

@Yummylee said:

@AjayRaz said:

thanks for this. that reminds me that i should rock my original avatar tomorrow too, which was Ned Flanders for some reason.

I find that oddly amusing for some reason.

I created my profile on the second day of GB's conception, though I just left it there to linger for a long while. I didn't start posting regularly until almost around an entire year later during the summer of 2009. I seem to recall my first avatar was the U.B.C.S. logo... but that then was quickly overtaken by Dylan Moran <3 So, yeah, there's the lauded origin story of the user formally known as Abyssfull...

why did you change your username?

also, I loved your dylan moran avatar....

Always enjoy checking these out. Appreciate the work dude. I wasn't aware of those crazy first day numbers. Interesting.

Really interesting stats - I remember those late nights with the submission queue fondly!

EVERYONE PARTY!!!!! Happy 4th Birthday GB, my present to you is to watch the P4 ER, so far it is fantastic

hb, gb

Awesome work.

Hard to believe it has been four years since Giant Bombs inception.

Man, they made any old kids moderators back in those days.

>_>

That's a lot of user reviews. I actually have no idea what the number of user reviews are on the site today.

Super interesting numbers

Long live giant bomb

This is some awesome data. I remember the chaos of that first day fondly as everyone went absolutely berserk on the wiki.

Ya stat porn. Happy birthday Giant bomb.

Added a screenshot of the oldest picture I could find of the original layout. If anyone has one from the first day, let me know.

@Marino: I was so sure I had a screenshot of day 1 Giant Bomb saved somewhere, but I can't find it anywhere. Damn.

EDIT: I do have an image of the of the very first bombcast page design though, if anyone's interested:

Man where do you find all these stats? o.O

Either way a great write up. I wasn't around at the beginning but it's been such a long and crazy ride. Emphasis on crazy.

@MattyFTM: Ohhh shit! You, sir, just transported me in space and time! I mean it, I just remembered what I was doing 4 years ago while listening to a Bombcast. And to think my brain thought that memory was lost... Pshaw! Thanks.

I know when it's GB's birthday cause it's on the same day as my sister, I remember sending an email to Ryan to save my username a few days before.

edit: oh I remember, are hamburgers sandwiches? and that age of booty "thing"

Well, Happy Birthday GB! Here's to four more years, and then four more after that, then four more after that, then four more... well, you get the picture.

4 years already? I feel old. I too have been around since the start and remember those first few days being CRAZY.

I remember those early days when I was so giddy to get a submission approved. Having been over that point barrier for years, I forget about what it was like. It felt young and fresh, and exciting. Didn't hurt at I was still in high school.

Happy birthday GB!!!

Thanks for the memories of the statistical variety! As you can imagine by my username I created my account as soon as I possibly could :P

That picture of the old layout makes my heart ache! Happy Birthday GiantBomb!!!!

Happy Birthday, GB! Here's to four more years! :)

@MattyFTM: I remember the rainbow theme. Those were good times...

It really doesn't seem like four years. On the day Giant Bomb launched, the moderation tools were non-existant and we couldn't even ban porn spammers. Those were exciting times. (because of stuff going on with the site, not the porn.)

@FinalDasa said:

Man where do you find all these stats? o.O

Either way a great write up. I wasn't around at the beginning but it's been such a long and crazy ride. Emphasis on crazy.

The "blue bar" graphs are readily available on the back end of the site. I don't really have to do any work to compile those stats other than plugging in a date range and taking a screen cap. For the achievements and reviews data I've done though, I had to do all of that manually by going to each game's page and collecting the data.

I think the very first frontpage for the site proper had Vinny's review of Burst Limit as the header image. Maybe.

And of those four years I have been doing the Spotlight for 3 years, and 3 months ago.

@MattyFTM said:

@Marino: I was so sure I had a screenshot of day 1 Giant Bomb saved somewhere, but I can't find it anywhere. Damn.

Not Day 1, but very close.

@CitizenKane said:

@MattyFTM said:

@Marino: I was so sure I had a screenshot of day 1 Giant Bomb saved somewhere, but I can't find it anywhere. Damn.

Not Day 1, but very close.

Am I doing it right?

I just realized something...who owns the rights to Boompa? That was created before Whiskey Media. To @snide I go!

@ZombiePie: I miss Political Base so badly. It needs to make a comeback. I'm looking at you, @snide !