Now, maybe I'm alone in this, but I've always found it fascinating to note which weapons and armor and such are the most (and least) popular in a given game, so I was wondering if someone might come up with a resource to automatically tally that sort of thing into some accurate, statistical, sort-able results (perhaps to be given a special page on the wiki)

There would be, of course, various sorting options and categories. One might let you see what percentage of the player-base CURRENTLY has any given piece of equipment equipped to a slot (not including costume pieces), and another for armor that ONLY counts the visible armor and helm pieces (both armor in costume slots and actual equipped armor with no costume over it) while another option would list how much of the player-base merely OWNS a piece of equipment (counting both actively equipped AND in inventory). There could be an option for showing how many people know each recipe. A list showing ratio of players that have weapon slot and trinket slot upgrades activated could be another neat possibility..

Naturally, every one of these individual lists would have options to sort out players who have not been active for a certain amount of time. So, you COULD look at the total player-base unfiltered, including people who just made accounts, played for a day, and then gave up... or you could sort it down to only people who have played sometime in the past month, the past week, whichever.

It may be decided that players who do NOT have "allow full inspect" checked will automatically not be counted in certain lists, or alternatively maybe there would be a separate thing in the options for players to indicate if they don't want to be counted..

Of course, many of you are probably about to ask if there'd be any PRACTICAL purpose for such an automated resource, right? Well, the way I see it is that apart from the sheer logistics/trivia value (which probably isn't worth that much to the average player) I can imagine that plenty of people would consult the list when they want to find "the best weapon" that everyone is using. I mean, personally I think it's silly for people to worry about that sort of thing (gotta use what feels right to you!) but I know there are a lot of people who are like that. Alternatively, people like ME would consult the opposite end of the spectrum on that list, and seek out the equipment that is severely unappreciated, either to test for themselves if its really that bad (and quite possibly find some data that was undocumented in the wiki) or just for the satisfaction of standing out from the crowd (avengers and antiguas are soooooo mainstream ;) )

If there isn't enough of an interest in such an automated resource, I guess the next best thing would be for me to appeal to my fellow wiki contributors to see if we can get some kind of voluntary poll-based system added via some sort of scripting... but the information such a thing would provide probably wouldn't be too accurate, since I imagine only a small percentage of the player-base would be willing to go check off what they are using... or keep it updated when they change their load-out. :(