# Research:Daily pages created

Daily pages created
Specification
${\displaystyle {\text{daily pages created}}(D)}$ is a count of the number of page creations across all namespaces on date ${\displaystyle D}$.
WMF Standard
no parameters
Measures
Contribution
Status
completed
SQL
SET @date = "20140101";

SELECT
COUNT(*) AS page_creations
FROM (
SELECT
rev_user,
rev_user_text
FROM
revision
WHERE
rev_timestamp BETWEEN @date AND
DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(@date, INTERVAL 1 DAY), "%Y%m%d%H%i%S") AND
rev_parent_id = 0
UNION ALL
SELECT
ar_user as rev_user,
ar_user_text AS rev_user_text
FROM
archive
WHERE
ar_timestamp BETWEEN @date AND
DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(@date, INTERVAL 1 DAY), "%Y%m%d%H%i%S") AND
ar_parent_id = 0
) page_creations;

Daily pages created is a standardized metric used to measure the number of pages that are created in a given day. It's used as a proxy for overall Contribution.

## Discussion

### Identifying page creations

Regretfully, MediaWiki does not track a history of page creation events. However, by using the rev_parent_id field, this metric makes a close approximation. rev_parent_id usually points to the previous revision. For the first revision of a page, rev_parent_id = 0. This metric approximates page creations by looking for these parentless revisions.

### Time lag

As this is a daily metric, a full 24 hours must elapse after the beginning of the date (UTC) in order to calculate an uncensored value.