From: Julia Kasmire <J.Kasmire(a)tudelft.nl>
Could you tell me, or tell me how to find, the following:
the date of the first infobox on wikipedia?
the rate of increase in infoboxes, or at least the number of infoboxes
at several points in time and the date that number was measured?
These are difficult questions.
One answer can be found at
[[Wikipedia:Database reports/Templates with the most transclusions]]. On
April 22, the generic Infobox template [[Template:Infobox]] was
transcluded on 566,270 pages. This counts both direct and indirect
transclusions. Most infoboxes use this template; unfortunately, some of
the most common don't.
The two most common specific infobox templates are [[Template:Infobox
Settlement]] (202k uses) and [[Template:Taxobox]] (155k uses). Neither
of these use [[T:Infobox]], as you can check for yourself by clicking on
"edit"/"view source", and checking the list of transcluded pages at
the
bottom.
The database report on transclusions is kept up to date by a bot twice
per month. You have to check for yourself at which date certain
infoboxes started using [[T:Infobox]].
Older data is difficult to obtain. You may be able to parse database
dumps of the entire wikipedia, to see how many articles contain the
string "{{Infobox" or "{{Taxobox". (I think taxoboxes are the only
common infoboxes that don't have a name starting with "Infobox".)
The oldest infoboxes predate [[T:Infobox]], and even templates
themselves; they will be very hard to count. The earliest infobox I
found was at [[Beryllium]], on 2 Feb 2002. It wasn't called "Infobox"
then, of course, but it certainly was one.
Eugene