I used to do this when the site was a baby. So, here's another post regarding the status of our community where numbers are concerned.

We've hit a significant milestone over the past month.

Guess how many words of fanfiction we now host?

100,182,448!!!!

A-Single-Spark built up a library of 59,148,574 words during the 6.5 years it was open.
Dokuga is at 41,038,874 words and counting at just short of 2.25 years! That puts us over the 100 million mark! And! Creepy that both numbers end in 74!

Since we have access to data going way back to the beginning of this community under 'Spark, I thought I'd look up some data and share the different ways things have changed for us.

• The average novel is 80-125K words. If we lumped all those words together, we'd have enough fanfiction for a 801-1,252 complete novels.


• We host 7,909 stories total.


• 3,142 are a part of the native Dokuga fanfiction archive.


• 4,767 were adopted from A-Single-Spark.


• Dokuga hosts 121,492 reader reviews, 50,551 from the organic Dokuga fanfiction area and 70,941 from the 'Spark archive.


• 16,048,128 reads have been registered in the archives for stories in the Dokuga fanfiction section since we moved to the new system in October 2008.


• That means that there's a read for every 2.56 words submitted and a review for every 811.83 words.


• The A-Single-Spark review/words average was one review for every 833.77 words, so Dokugians review with about 3% more frequency.


• The total number of words in reviews submitted to this community is 4,940,385, or enough for 35-61 complete books of nothing but reader feedback.


• Average number of words per review? 39.14 for the 'Spark archives, and 42.18 on the Dokuga's native archive.


• That means over the past few years, Dokuga readers are reviewing 3% more often and when they do, submitting reviews that are 9% longer than the prior average. We're improving!


• What else is changing? The average number of words per chapter and story! Under 'Spark, the average number of words per chapter was 2,348. On Dokuga, that number is 2,505.88, or in other words, chapters on Dokuga are almost 7% longer.


• This rule also applies to stories. The 'Spark average of words per story is 12,407.92 words. On Dokuga, this figure is 13,019.95 words. That means entire stories on Dokuga are around 5% longer.


• Not everything follows this trend. Under 'Spark, the average number of chapters per story was 5.28. On Dokuga, that number has fallen around 1.5% to 5.2 average chapters per story.

What does it all mean, Basil?
MissK is obsessed with numbers.

The longer chapters and stories actually don't mean much. On Dokuga, we have a rule that author's notes can't be posted as chapters and within the Chapter Stories category of fanfiction, chapters have to have a minimum of 700 words. Consequently, we have fewer chapters per story and longer chapters and stories. Without these rules, the numbers would probably be spot on in comparison to 'Sparks, if not going in reverse, since drabbles and oneshots have enjoyed so much popularity over the past couple of years. On 'Spark, word count averages were bombed by Author's Notes as chapters. So just tweaking that one tiny rule improved the overall density of the Dokuga fanfiction experience.

Also!

It is worth nothing that banning the practice of 'Review Demands' does NOT result in fewer reviews.

In fact, we have reviews submitted with greater frequency and those reviews are longer and of higher quality. This reaffirms our belief that the practice of 'Review Demands' is not only not beneficial, but probably ultimately detrimental to earning feedback.

I'm so happy that our community has been so successful. Around this time two years ago, we didn't have many members, things didn't work so well, and we had no idea Dokuga would be this successful.

2.5 years ago, the standards for this community were:
3,500 visitors daily and 18,000 page views each day. We now average about three times the visitors and 5-7 times the page views. We've been averaging over 100K pageviews each day over over a year now. It's crazy.

So anyway, thank you everyone for coming to the site and contributing to its growth. Those of you who were here in the beginning know we had a lot of growing pains, but we're a very successful site.

And super, super special thanks to the admins who actually do the work -- WiccanMethuselah, Priestess Skye, and LadyBattousai! Rikayu helps with fanart as well and we have quite a few chat mods who keep that business peaceful.

yay!

Awesome! Thanks to all the admins and everyone for contributing and making Dokuga an amazing site.

Our dear Miss K has a nasty tendency to downplay the amount of time, money, sweat and tears she's put into this site. I am just glad that it's here - that it has been even more wildly successful than we had hoped when she launched it is the icing on the cake for me!!!

No other site exists that so completely satisfies my need for Sess/Kag fixes. I don't have to search for the Sess/Kag stories.. that's all we have. I don't have to scour the 'net for fan art, we host a ton right here. We have an INCREDIBLE group of talented authors, artists, and overall GOOD PEOPLE that have built Dokuga into the community it has become, but I will never forget that it was Miss K's foresight and drive that made it all happen.

THANKS MISS KAGURA... YOU ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~me~~

Don't thread-jack me, Woman!

Wiccan would have you believe that I slave over the site and spend countless amounts of my time on it. I do not. In fact, now that the script is stable and the major bugs have all been worked out, I do very, very little. In terms of the technical side of things, the site pretty much runs itself.

The real work is the administrative side, keeping the peace, awards, enforcing rules, etc., That's where 95%+ of the work is now and I do exactly 0% of it. I'm actually horrible at the whole 'people' side of things and have a well-established track of failure where that is concerned.

I'll stick to my numbers and PHP and 5% of the work, while the other admins do everything else.

Skye and Wiccan are becoming big database geeks anyway. They can dig though and find and delete and do whatever. It's awesome. I'm not going to lie though. When they were learning, I backed it up like five times a day. It was scary. I was sure that one of them would do something like empty a table or delete the whole database. There have been zero mishaps though.

Miss K lies again.

the only reason we are able to do what we do is because of her and her techy skills. My awards wouldn't be as smooth if it weren't for her, nor will the upcoming changes.

Most importantly, her presence at dokuga keeps me sane.

Now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go delete a database

Miss Kagura wrote:
I'm not going to lie though. When they were learning, I backed it up like five times a day. It was scary. I was sure that one of them would do something like empty a table or delete the whole database. There have been zero mishaps though.



Did I forget to mention that our esteemed and beloved Miss K is also a brat?? "Delete the whole database," my foot!! Skye and I were MOST careful to follow all our fearless leader's instructions. The result? It works, things get done neatly and efficiently, and all is good!!

*grumbles* Brat.

But you know we LUV you!

~~me~~

You three can bicker back and forth all you want on who does the most work. But thanks to Miss K's generosity we have lovely site and Wiccan and Skye keep us in check. So with out the three of you we would probably have lost every thing when sparks closed down. So from the bottom of my heart thank you to all three of you. All of you do such amazing work and are very diligent about what you do it makes coming here seem more like a family rather then a bunch of strangers. So in what my famous twin (Tang) Play nice or else!!!

Thanks to all the admins for their hard work. Dokuga is definitely one of mah fa~vorite sites, is amazing and fun-tabulous all at the same time! One of these days I will actually post something instead of drooling over everyone else's art and written work.
You guys are awesome. ^_^

elisa128 wrote:
You three can bicker back and forth all you want on who does the most work. But thanks to Miss K's generosity we have lovely site and Wiccan and Skye keep us in check. So with out the three of you we would probably have lost every thing when sparks closed down. So from the bottom of my heart thank you to all three of you. All of you do such amazing work and are very diligent about what you do it makes coming here seem more like a family rather then a bunch of strangers. So in what my famous twin (Tang) Play nice or else!!!

DON'T FORGET THE LADY B W/TEH SPARKLY BATON!!! Or she could smite you!

LOL!

Srsly, all this "bickering" is all in good fun. We all get along beautifully and work together seamlessly, *I* think. I have a great respect and affection for all my fellow admins and mods, as well for all our talented contributors, without whom we would have nothing to read, view and discuss on our pretty, spiffy site! Yes, that applies to those who come to just read and view... and stay to discuss and share with us.

We ALL make Dokuga the community it has become, so we ALL deserve kudos!

~~Wiccan~~

Thanks to Miss K this site is a smooth running operation most of the time. Her generosity, awesomesauce crazy mad skills and her wonderous sense of humor and her anal retentive insistence on perfection are just some of the reasons for that. She is an excellent teacher too, proof of that is how well Wiccan and Skye take care of the site.

All of our mods work hard on the site. And they are all wonderful people. Their time and knowledge are part of what makes this site the quiet little corner of safety and growth it is. Dokuga is a place where authors can learn their craft, knowing that they will be protected as much as possible from the evil of the internet and the mean people who insist on crawling out from under their rocks.

Dokuga is a warm, safe place watched over by hardworking, caring, involved wonderful people who have only our best interests at heart. No wonder it keeps growing.

WiccanMethuselah wrote:

Srsly, all this "bickering" is all in good fun. We all get along beautifully and work together seamlessly, *I* think.

Lol...of course we get along beautifully. I even send Wiccan recipes from time to time. Both Miss K and I like to share with her outside of dokuga, like Creme Brule.

We do work seamlessly too..while having fun doing so

Lol...I swear the only thing more entertaining than you three is r0o when she's one a boredom-spawned rampage! Can we just say that all three of you rock our socks and mittens in equal measures? Skye gets the left sock, Lady B gets the right sock, Miss K gets the left mitten and the right is reserved for all the other mods and of course, essential typing skills that we need to punch this in.

Miss Kagura wrote:
Don't thread-jack me, Woman!



Wow, lol, all I wanted to do was- like everyone else- thank the admins for doing such wonderful jobs with the site & the community (I had my first experience just the other night of having to unleash Wiccan and her baton of mod-righteousness upon someone and she totally rocked, but anyway) and I had to stop like 1/4 of the way through scrolling 'cause this early in the morning Ms. K's line made me laugh so hard that I almost cried.