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Using the data dump, I've put together some tag trend graphs that show the rate of tagged questions over time. Below are some samples, there are many more on the linked page. I can update the page with requests for specific tag groups if you're interested.

Update: There's a new interactive tag trend graph page where you can select any set of tags to compare. Also, the graphs are improved and have a labeled X axis.

Popular Languages (c#, java, php, javascript, c++, python)

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Distributed Source Control (git, mercurial, bazaar)

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Javascript Libraries (jquery, prototype, mootools)

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Meta (subjective, not-programming-related, polls, belongs-on-serverfault, stackoverflow)

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  • 2
    Id love to see these for Superuser
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 7:40
  • 3
    With a Superuser data dump, it would be possible. :)
    – Greg Hewgill
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 8:49
  • Guess Jeff should get to work then ^^
    – Ivo Flipse
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 9:30
  • nice, you could add maven-2 to "Build Systems"
    – Rich Seller
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 12:23
  • @Rich Seller: good addition, thanks.
    – Greg Hewgill
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 12:38
  • oh no, thank you, really like the graphs
    – Rich Seller
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 12:57
  • I don't see autotools under the Build Systems. Or does no one ask questions about autotools on StackOverflow?
    – Super Long Names are Hilarious
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 21:41
  • @Chris, not a huge amount. 44 total, 3 last 30 days, 1 last 7 days: stackoverflow.com/questions/…
    – Rich Seller
    Commented Sep 27, 2009 at 11:51
  • Awesome work! How often do you update them? Is it possible to add actual week to them?
    – Pablo Santa Cruz
    Commented Oct 24, 2009 at 12:49
  • It would be nice to have the x-axis labeled.
    – nobody
    Commented Mar 6, 2010 at 0:52
  • 1
    @Pablo and @Andrew: The latest revision at hewgill.com/~greg/stackoverflow/tags labels the x-axis.
    – Greg Hewgill
    Commented Mar 7, 2010 at 9:10
  • @Greg Hewgill: Great graph! Maybe you could make it RESTful, by adding the tags on the graph in the querystring, so you can send the diagram with a link. Could be useful.
    – Jonas
    Commented Apr 28, 2010 at 23:19
  • 2
    @Jonas: I fixed the links. Also, now you can query the tag stats for any SE site.
    – Greg Hewgill
    Commented Nov 29, 2010 at 1:57
  • 1
    @GregHewgill Any ideas to make it with newer data or (even better!) live?
    – Piotr Migdal
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 17:57
  • 2
    @PiotrMigdal I built something similar with live data here sotagtrends.com
    – rob
    Commented Dec 4, 2015 at 21:17

6 Answers 6

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While % is useful, I'd personally be more interested in the growth of individual tags. Perhaps normalising the current counts (i.e. so they all end at 1 or 100 or something), so we can see which tags are linear / sub-linear / super-linear / stagnant / etc.

My point is: a sudden spike (in either direction) by itself doesn't mean much - it could just be that there was a rush on people learning "ook". The overall trend of the % is interesting, though. Thanks for the data.

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  • +1 It's very difficult to visually integrate.
    – Leopd
    Commented Sep 9, 2011 at 18:31
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For anyone who might be interested I put together an interactive tag comparison. You can put in up to 4 tags and compare them over a date range and granularity. Check it out here.

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  • 1
    Great idea, but it seems that the page doesn't work anymore. I'm getting an endless "Running query" and no charts.
    – Łukasz Wiktor
    Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 8:22
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This tool gives you actual values, individual percentage growth, 6 month history, and live queries so the data is always up to date:

https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/90306

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1

I would love to see the graphs show cumulative number of posts, rather than activity. Activity is valuable, but it's hard to visually integrate to see how big the total bodies of information are. This kind of comparison can give very valuable clues about the health of the community around a project you'r considering using. I don't care how much better you think mootools is than jquery -- look at that graph above and the sensible choice is obvious.

Also, I made this a feature request here: Graph trends for activity within tags

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  • There could be a lot of reasons why a particular tag has less volume than another. I can think of at least two, the documentation for the project is better than average, the people who use that particular technology do not know about or share questions and answers via the SO platform. It is difficult to know how many folks don't use the site!
    – Norman H
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 14:02
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I like these. Here are some more ideas if you've got time:

  • iphone/blackberry/android/palm
  • windows/unix/linux/mac
  • ie/firefox/chrome/safari/opera

Edit oops, my eyes jumped over the text to the pretty graphs. Looks like you've got all three of these (or something close) on the linked page.

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  • I added 'unix', as well as 'blackberry' and 'palm-os'. Everything is dwarfed by 'iphone' in the mobile space.
    – Greg Hewgill
    Commented Sep 26, 2009 at 8:47
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OK. I LOVE these graphs.

I'd like to see graphs of activity for....

  • r <-- especially this, with the "flash-r-mob" thing that happened a few months back
  • f#

Also I'd like to see a plot of homework, I'm wondering if that spikes around Sept 1 and Jan 15. :-)

edit: i r dumb. i need to look at linx.

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