IFDB, the Interactive Fiction Database, is a web service which collects information about published IF. IFDB was created by Mike Roberts; he continues to maintain it for the benefit of the IF community. All information stored on IFDB is contributed and edited by IF community members.

Since its launch in 2007, IFDB has become an indispensible resource for the community.

Last year, we took a look at IFDB and asked ourselves, “How is this going?” The answer, of course, is that we shouldn’t be asking ourselves — we should be asking the community, the people who use IFDB. So we set up a survey and passed it around.

To be clear: we did this as friends of IFDB. Mike Roberts did not commission this survey, and he has not committed to any particular work based on the results. When the results were in, we collated them and sent a copy off to Mike. And then… we kind of let the whole project slide. Oops. (It’s been a busy year.)

We didn’t intend to keep the results secret; we just forgot to post them anywhere. That oversight is now fixed. So here you go: the results of the 2017 IFDB survey.

So now what?

As the page says, IFDB is not an IFTF service. We can’t hack the server and make changes. However, we can act as community organizers, and think about ways that the IFDB user community could better serve themselves.

Interested in contributing time to IFDB editing or documentation? Drop us a line.