Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Archive 9

Userbox
I seem to recall seeing a userbox on someone's userpage that identified their number on the list. Of course I can't remember where I saw it and can't find it in any of the userbox galleries. Does anyone have a template for one? I understand that one would have to manually type in one's number. Thanks J04n(talk page) 17:48, 8 June 2009 (UTC)  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:51, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Here's one I designed last year:  

&mdash; TAnthonyTalk 14:42, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Or this one..... :) Garion96 (talk) 15:00, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, how about:  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  16:00, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Even better! :) Garion96 (talk) 06:09, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * OK a slightly modified version of that now set up at (where N = number of edits, and Date = date of relevant version of wp:EDITS, and Wikiyear = year of wikipedia)

''

Ϣere Spiel  Chequers '' 15:25, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

total numbrers
I was curious to know what is the total number of edits which made by the top 4000 users (and how mant percent of total edits in wikipedia). result is: 88,587,743 (1 July 2009). I calucated it by using bash commands, and google of course. Here is the script, if somebody intrested: wget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits/latest cat latest | grep " " | cut -d ">" -f2 | cut -d "<" -f1 | awk '{if (++count%3==0) print $0;}' > edits awk '{total+=$0}END{print total}' edits Netanel h (talk) 21:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Placeholder
User:placeholder appers twice and only has 3 edits, see Special:Contributions/Placeholder. Bugboy52.4 (talk) 02:47, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, because it's a placeholder. --Closedmouth (talk) 08:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It should be User:Place holder. Rich Farmbrough, 19:02, 14 July 2009 (UTC).

Code updates (July 2009)
Hey all. A few notes about the version of this report that updates at User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3.
 * 1) I've changed "Place holder" to "[Placeholder]." Hopefully that will make it clearer that these entries are placeholders.
 * 2) The report now limits to the first 4,000 entries rather than an arbitrary number that's close to 5,000.
 * 3) I've added commas to the edit count column for easier readability.

Now, the important part. It turns out the edit counts are all wrong. The bug is 19311. There's an explanation in the bug report about the issue; I doubt it will be fixed anytime soon.

I tried to have this report do a SELECT COUNT(*) to get an accurate count for each user. Unfortunately, the revision and archive tables for the English Wikipedia's database are simply too large. So, as before, take all edit counts with a large dosage of salt. Additionally, the code has been updated here.

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:56, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've updated the list of caveats. Given how fundamentally this affects the list of editors, I made it the first caveat.  Perhaps it should be the zeroeth.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  14:06, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we should just mark this as historical or something and maybe delete it as long as the bug stays unfixed. Its accuracy is basically its only reason for existing. Currently, it's just plain not a list of Wikipedians by number of edits, it's a list of Wikipedians sorted by some random fucking number :-/ --Closedmouth (talk) 14:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If it's not fixed in 6 months then we should consider that option. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  05:48, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Admittedly, I would be amused by a List of Wikipedians sorted by some random fucking number. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 06:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * How big is the discrepancy from this bug? Is it really making as much difference as the occasional inclusion of an unflagged bot? If its really a list of Wikipedians by edits (plus or minus a small number) then thats not truly a random list, and looking at the consistency of the highest numbers I really don't think its so random that an unknown newbie can suddenly appear in the top ten. Most of the 22nd July list were out by one or more because it included three unflagged bots, is the bug really as significant as that?  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  08:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * See my response below to davidwr. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I checked with the last update on User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3 and found that it was more or less what is shown in "My Preferences". To the maximum +/- 10 edits... Is that really worth the tension ? --  Tinu  Cherian  - 10:17, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The count available from Special:Preferences and the API (e.g., here) is the (inaccurate) user.user_editcount field. If you looked at the number via the API or in your user preferences right after User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3 updated, you'd see the same number. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * We need to get some handle on how big the discrepancy is. If 10% of users who appear on the list are out of place by more than a couple of positions, that's not so good.  If it's 1% that's probably okay.  If it's 30% that's pretty bad.  Likewise, if more than a handful of users is out of place by more than a dozen or so positions, that's pretty bad.  The question is, how can we test for such a thing, given that the same bug affects the very things we would normally compare against?  This is a classic case of "we know something is wrong, we don't know how bad it is, and we don't even know if we have a way to find out how bad it is."  It could be nearly trivial, it could be major. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Good question. We need to have a discussion about the nature of edit counters. First, it's important to understand how there's a discrepancy. When anyone makes an edit, it goes into the revision table. If the edit is deleted, it gets moved to the archive table. As far as I'm aware, only Toolserver users have access to the archive table (it isn't available from the API really or through database dumps). Because of this, most edit counters base their results on the information currently available in the revision table when the data was requested. So, if you have 10 edits and you check your edit count, it will say you have 10 edits. If two edits get deleted and you check your edit count again, it will likely say that you now have 8 edits. This is problematic if you check regularly and try to, for example, graph the changes. Now, there are a few important notes about edit counts in general. First, sometimes edits are oversighted; true oversighting (oversighting done with the oversight extension) moves the rows to an inaccessible table, which can minimally and negligibly alter a user's "true" edit count. Second, the archive table did not always exist. At one point, deleting a page meant actually deleting the page. So edit counts for old users will always be inherently wrong. Third, user.user_editcount (the editcount field in the user table that's used by the API and Special:Preferences) is based on a one-time scan of the database that only looked at the revision table. Subsequent edits increment the count in user.user_editcount, though strange things like importing a page from another wiki will not appropriately increment the count. And deleting a page does not decrement the count (at least as far I'm aware, sometimes I make things up).
 * I consider a user's "true" edit count to be the sum of the count of their live edits (in the revision table) and their deleted edits (in the archive table). In order to examine the depth of the discrepancy between SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [table] and user.user_editcount, I have helpfully made a chart below of the top ten users from User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3 (data as of 18:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)).
 * {| class="wikitable sortable"

! User ! user.user_editcount ! COUNT(*) FROM revision ! COUNT(*) FROM archive ! revision.COUNT(*) + archive.COUNT(*) ! (revision.COUNT(*) + archive.COUNT(*)) - user.user_editcount
 * - style="white-space:nowrap;"
 * Rjwilmsi
 * 331,212
 * 326,285
 * 5,266
 * 331,551
 * 339
 * Rich Farmbrough
 * 300,711
 * 294,009
 * 15,227
 * 309,236
 * 8,525
 * Bearcat
 * 286,977
 * 285,164
 * 10,187
 * 295,351
 * 8,374
 * J.delanoy
 * 277,019
 * 269,618
 * 9,344
 * 278,962
 * 1,943
 * Dr. Blofeld
 * 261,450
 * 261,352
 * 8,812
 * 270,164
 * 8,714
 * Waacstats
 * 225,140
 * 219,785
 * 5,604
 * 225,389
 * 249
 * Alansohn
 * 219,403
 * 217,116
 * 3,029
 * 220,145
 * 742
 * Bhadani
 * 192,129
 * 188,528
 * 4,332
 * 192,860
 * 731
 * Charles Matthews
 * 186,924
 * 187,784
 * 3,655
 * 191,439
 * 4,515
 * Woohookitty
 * 185,793
 * 178,449
 * 12,117
 * 190,566
 * 4,773
 * }
 * And they say I'm unhelpful and abusive.... --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * 4,515
 * Woohookitty
 * 185,793
 * 178,449
 * 12,117
 * 190,566
 * 4,773
 * }
 * And they say I'm unhelpful and abusive.... --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * }
 * And they say I'm unhelpful and abusive.... --MZMcBride (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I see several which are in the 2+% off range. If you are ranked just past 1000 in the table you could be 40 or 50 places off.  Further down the table that could be the difference of 70-80 places. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  18:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

A suggestion for another list
By the very nature of the position, most Wikipedia editors who are admins will have higher edit count than those editors who are not admins. I think that it would be interesting to see a "List of non-admin Wikipedians by number of edits". 66.81.248.251 (talk) 22:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't be so sure about that as edits don't include many admin actions such as blocking and deleting. That isn't really an objection to someone creating wp:List of non-admin Wikipedians by number of edits, or wp:List of admins by number of edits or indeed wp:List of Wikipedians by number of edits & admin actions.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  10:22, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Like this list, the issue is no-longer-flagged accounts. For logged actions, see WP:LOGACTIONS. --MZMcBride (talk) 10:27, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Alt accounts
Many wikipedians have alternate accounts, would it be possible or desirable to persuade BernsteinBot to amalgamate such accounts when running these stats? (Obviously it would need a table of such accounts)  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  10:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Commas
For the edit counts, should we put commas? It helps me figure out numbers and I'm guessing that some other people probably agree.

Marauder09 —Preceding undated comment added 16:26, 27 July 2009 (UTC).
 * Ideally yes commas would be nice. But for some users this list is on the margins of usability because of the filesize, adding a few thousand commas would not help that.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  21:42, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The version of the script now being used to generate User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3 puts commas in the edit count column (see also: ). I offset the additional comma bytes by placing a hard limit of 4,000 on the number of rows. (All of this is documented above.) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Links
Is it possible to put links to the proper userpages? For instance, Rich Farmrough -> Rich Farmrough. Otherwise if I want to have a look at someone's contributions, I must insert the name manually, what isn't very convenient.--//Microcell// 14:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That would effectively triple the page's size, and it's already barely manageable as it is. --Closedmouth (talk) 15:31, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, it's clear. Thus why it wouldn't be worth to put such links for 100 first editors, for instance? I think it won't essentially enhance the page's size. we should know our heroes right to their faces =)--//Microcell// 14:24, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

One bug else
As I see, the user [Placeholder] is mentioned four (!) times in the table. What does it mean and how to avoid such misunderstandings?--//Microcell// 14:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * 'Placeholder' replaces someone who requested that their username not be included in the list. J04n(talk page) 15:03, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually there are 32 placeholders. Darrenhusted (talk) 18:55, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Rich Farmbrough has surpassed Rjwilmsi as the "most-edited English Wikipedian" for the SECOND time!!!
Attempting to confirm both of their statistics by comparing between three top editing kings of Wiki's highest edit counts: Rich Farmbrough's, Aka's edits from the German Wikipedia, and Rjwilmsi's, we already have a new record holder — Sir Richard "Rich" Farmbrough strikes again! Not just in this Wikipedia alone, but amongst 748 Wiki websites from around the world of cyberspace! Congratulations, Rich! When will we encounter a user with at least 400,000 edits? 202.190.153.69 (talk) 17:10, 9 September 2009 (UTC) And to think that once as Blofeld I once surpassed Rich at the 175,000 mark. I wonder why he was quiet for ages... Himalayan   21:25, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
 * When will we encounter a user with at least 400,000 edits? I'd imagine it would be when someone has 399,999 edits and then makes another one.  Lugnuts  (talk) 20:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Conrgarulations to superwikijanitor! (Or how it is politically correct job title: "facility maintenance engineer"?) Mukadderat (talk) 20:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Tools reopened
Is it possible to separate the number of users by edit using tools like Huggle, Twinkle, AWB etc from those who don't? Simply south (talk) 15:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You can filter out automated edits for an individual user on a case-by-case basis. Someone could probably automate it to apply this to every user on the list, but it's a processor-hungry task and doing it regularly would probably lock the servers. (The reason we post the edit count at RFA is to discourage people from running editcounts themselves; it's one of the most server-hungry processes we have.) User:X! would be the person to ask about the feasibility of bulk-automating this. –  iride scent  15:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

But X is not available and giving this more thought it may be useful as a way of showing how people edit in different ways. Simply south (talk) 12:40, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You could try User:MZMcBride. Like I say, I'd be very surprised if BAG gave permission for this task; it's so processor-hungry a job, it would bring the servers grinding to a halt. – iride  scent  19:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have left a req at bag, with a note pointing back here. Please see Bot_requests. Simply south (talk) 20:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest to run the filtered counters for top 100 wikiholics, so that we all see who are super-content-contributors and who are superwikijanitors. Mukadderat (talk) 20:08, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

There are a few issues with this: --MZMcBride (talk) 22:16, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * As iridescent notes, it's not a particularly easy thing to do, though it is possible
 * There's no clear definition for what constitutes an automated action (TW, HG, AWB are the recent ones; there are much older tools that most would consider automated)
 * Not all automated actions leave an indicator in the edit summary (I use AWB without any indication)
 * It would screw up the list continuity worse than it already is (think about trying to compare last year's list to this year's)
 * This could be solved by a separate list entirely, but I'm not sure if it's worth the time / effort...

Related reports
~betacommand/Non_Admins_With_High_Edit_Count.html, ~betacommand/Admin_Edit_Count.html, and ~betacommand/Edit_Count.html are all good reads that are related. βcommand 22:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * BC, can you remove the username with "Bot" keyword. I understand they are former Bots which no longer have Bot flag. If those usernames are removed, we can get a better list. Just a suggestion --  Tinu  Cherian  - 04:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * There are some non bot users with bot in their user name, a list of all accounts ever flagged as bots would identify bots no longer flagged as such, but if that's not practical an occasional trawl through the list searching for bot and having a quick look at userpages seems a quite effective way to keep our list of unflagged bots up-to-date.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  16:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

WTF
Why isn't the list transcluding properly? All I get is the date. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 23:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Um, click on the date. - Trevor MacInnis contribs 00:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not clickable. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 00:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Other reasons could be bad browser or really slow network. - Altenmann >t 00:31, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You all are silly. Fixed. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, clicking on the date was working for me. How does this make me silly? Never mind. - Altenmann >t 20:14, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I made the mistake above while updating the new stats. --  Tinu  Cherian  - 11:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

What are the odds?
Hmm, I was 222nd in the September list and I'm 222nd in the latests list as well. At first I thought I had been sucked into a time vortex or something, but it appears to simply be a coincidence. Useight (talk) 19:21, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, the Irony
Does anyone else find it strange that in order to not be on the list, you have to sign up on none other than a list? 67.251.24.248 (talk) 05:45, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, it is like Category:Wikipedians not included in any category. - Altenmann >t 08:47, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Dubious honour
Some of the top 4000 are in the list because of extensive vandalism. Is there some way to generate a list of wikipedians by number of useful edits? Matto paedia  Have a yarn  06:58, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Which ones are vandals? --Closedmouth (talk) 07:12, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I very much doubt that any vandal account could last long enough to get into this list, but there are certainly a lot of editors in this list who have reverted a lot of vandalism, there are also editors in this list who have subsequently left under a cloud despite doing a lot of useful work. In the former case, reverting vandalism, adding categories, welcoming newbies, fixing typos, disambiguating dab pages and fixing redlinks are all useful edits that take much less time than adding a well honed and cited sentence to an article. It might be possible to produce a list that ignored or discounted the value of edits made with tools such as wp:friendly or wp:hotcat, but as we found in the wp:CUP, while it is easy to get everyone to agree that some edits are "worth" more than others it is nigh on impossible to come up with a fair formula that measures the respective value of different edits. In the latter case just because someone's account eventually became compromised or their incivility lead to them being blocked, I don't think we should airbrush their contributions out of the Pedia. In either event please remember to take these figures with a pinch of salt, and remember that serious evaluations as to the value of someone's contributions are thataway.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:28, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Right you are. And I didn't mean to offend people, but reading the tone of my earlier post I can see that it would have. Sorry.  Rule number one - don't edit tired.  I was looking at this late and I remember seeing names here that also appeared in a block log I was looking at some time before.. They probably were blockers rather than blockees, as you suggest.  Again, apologies for any offence caused.  But seriously, if you're on this list, how do you find the time for that? I've been coming here from time to time for 4 years but still haven't reached 1000 edits.  Slow fingers, perhaps.  Cheers!  Matto  paedia  Have a yarn  14:28, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There are some blocked users on the list, as well many who give out blocks. At least two users on this list had their accounts compromised, which should be a reminder to us all to use a strong password. As for how people find the time to be on this list, I suspect a lot of it is using some of the automated tools. Most of my edits are manual, but I've installed wp:Hotcat because it makes it easier to categorise things, and wp:friendly speeds up welcoming people and a few other things. I think the very high scores are mostly from people who use wp:Huggle or wp:AWB.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  15:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I find that a combination of no life and a moderate case of OCD will get your edit count right up there, works for me. :) J04n(talk page) 15:06, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Update
I've updated it and removed some duplication - we had three see also sections, three mentions of the opt out and two of the Bot removal. I've subdivided the list into separate sections for each thousand, this makes it possible to update using my PC. One change I haven't made is to get the oldid of the previous version - my PC still crashes at the mere attempt of getting that info.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Where am I?
12,548 edits and I am not on the top contributors list. Where is my name? NorthernThunder (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 2988? --BaronLarf 07:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * According to the my preferences tab information, I have made 12,554 edits. I don't know where you got that number from. NorthernThunder (talk) 18:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It was gotten from the list in question. You're number 2988. Lost on Belmont (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The list was ran December 30, it isn't updated continuously. J04n(talk page) 18:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I did NOT do 10,000 edits since that time! LOL NorthernThunder (talk) 22:36, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It says that you 12,363 edits as of Dec 30, you are number 2988. J04n(talk page) 22:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * A link would be helpful. NorthernThunder (talk) 01:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * For various reasons the number you see in your prefs may not match exactly what comes up on the list, so your best bet is just to do a search for your username on the page.&mdash; TAnthonyTalk 23:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

It took me about two seconds to load the page and 5 seconds to find your name. It's under this section. You definitely are #2988 with 12363 edits ;). Airplaneman  talk 05:17, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Update needed
This list is one and a half months old. Please update it. - Nerdy Science Dude :)  (✉ click to talk • my edits) 23:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I normally update it every couple of months, so will probably do this in a fortnight.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:56, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Done  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:49, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

user links
Next time this page is updated, could someone link the names to the respective user pages? Thanks, Griffinofwales (talk) 21:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Uhm, I'm afraid that would add 36,000 bytes to an already rather long page. So I'd prefer to leave as is.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  00:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah. Hadn't thought of that. Probably best to leave it. Griffinofwales (talk) 18:07, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Rival list deleted
I have deleted User:Emijrp/List of Wikipedians by number of edits, which was listing users who had opted out. There is clear consensus here that optouts should be honoured, and that page was ignoring and overruling this consensus. Hesperian 11:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That's probably just an unintentional teething problem - the same user is building lists on Meta which honour the EN wiki opt out list.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:41, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Why am i not on the list?
I have 13000 edits and thus should be on this list, but I am not? Why? Immunize (talk) 14:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Er… you are? (Currently #3253). – iride  scent  14:27, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Ctrl-F: Learn it. Love it. – xeno talk 14:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I just found myself on the list. However, it stated I had 12000 edits rather than the 13000 edits that I thought I had. Immunize (talk) 14:00, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * According to you currently have 13,900! The count in the list here seems to be slightly out of date by the time the list is made up --  Boing!   said Zebedee  14:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * None of the counts are right, FYI. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:47, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Please
Change spanish interwiki as es:Wikipedia:Ranking_de_ediciones Thanks! 83.55.47.208 (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅ EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:58, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Human value
Contrary to the statement
 * Consequently, edit count alone does not directly correlate with the effort put into improving Wikipedia.

the list directly correlate to human value by applying sign(X) on the number of Wikipedia counts, where sign is defined thusly:
 * sign(X) = 1 if X > 0
 * sign(X) = 0 otherwise.

Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 10:24, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What? --Closedmouth (talk) 10:55, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * But, it's us wikipedians against the rest of humankind! They live in peace on our grace, only! Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 11:17, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Not so, vandals also have a non-zero edit count, some of our friends at commons, for example, might not. Rich Farmbrough, 15:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC).
 * Ouch! I forgot that! if vandal then multiply with –1! Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 12:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

... though claiming that it doesn't "correlate" is a much stronger statement than what is being addressed in this discussion. I guarantee you that edit count correlates with just about any other meaningful measure of "effort into improving Wikipedia". Hesperian 14:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Just for fun and to add my 2 cents. The formula is not as simple as described above. To truly quantify the value of an editor would be impossible but if we look at volume of edits, in combinatoin with the number of articles created, edits reverted/deleted, the size of the edit in characters (did they add 1 byte to the article or a thousand). Along with the number of good or featured content contributions we can get a good idea. Of course this would apply less to say work on images or the efforts of the folks that work on the toolserver or programming tools such as AWB, Huggle or the like but it would get an idea. So I think it would look something like this:


 * E + A + (G x 5) + (F x 10) - D x C = T


 * Where
 * E = Total edits
 * A = Articles created
 * G = total Good articles or Featured lists x 5 (to give it mass)
 * F = total Featured articles or Featured pictures x 5 (to give it mass),
 * D = Deleted edits
 * C = Character size contributions
 * T = Total

--Kumioko (talk) 15:31, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Page Updates
How does this article get updated? Is it done manually, or is there an automatic tool that does it. Is there a real time reference list that shows how many edits each user has, or does each editor need to be checked individually?--Jojhutton (talk) 01:34, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Kinda both. There are scripts that are written that will go out to the toolserver and bring back the information but the process of running the scripts and updating the page are manual. It also requires some limited programming knowledge and the .net framework installed. Hope this helps. --Kumioko (talk) 03:14, 8 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There is a weekly automated update at User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3, every couple of months I use that to update this page. There are a few manual things including checking for deregistered bots and some of the totals.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  18:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Vandals
Are any of these peoples vandals? Us441(talk)(contribs) 00:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Not likely. In order to even be on the list they would have to have at least several thousand edits and its unlikely that a frequent vandal would last long enough to make the list. --Kumioko (talk) 01:18, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Confusion
The list still keeps giving my number of edits as 12,548 but I really have about 14,000; the edits are REALLY still attributed to User:Shannon1 (usurped3), it also says so in the preferences section. My account's preference section gives the number of edits as ~1500 but the editcounter says 14,000. S'weird. Shannon talk   contribs  05:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

My Way
My way of raising my edit count is extremely unusual. I am a victim of fairly severe editcountitis, and I use preview, but split some edits into parts to raise my edit count. However, I am far, far away from the list, as this shows. Us441(talk)(contribs) 21:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Latest update
I have updated List of Wikipedians by number of edits/latest from the latest User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 3‎ as of Sep 29, 2010. It doesnt seem transculded to List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Any ideas why? --  Tinu  Cherian  - 12:53, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Understood the reason. Fixed it now. -- <em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000"> Tinu  <em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000">Cherian  - 14:18, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It appears that the most recent update has the same numbers as the one from August. Could someone please verify this? --Kumioko (talk) 15:04, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't remember the last rankings. But the new one is showing an edit count of 22,661 for me, which is pretty close to my current total - at the end of August I would have had about 20,200. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:20, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * @Kumioko: The links to the two previous revs did not have correct historical version of /latest. I've fixed it. Frank  |  talk  15:37, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 16:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Frank for fixing it. My browser was crashing while trying to get the oldid from the page history. -- <em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000"> Tinu  <em style="font-family:Kristen ITC;color:#ff0000">Cherian  - 18:34, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That's what happens when you try to mess with the fabric of the universe. :-) Frank  |  talk  19:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
 * For info, there's a request to update the related list of articles created here. Can anyone help?  Lugnuts  (talk) 19:32, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:NA
WP:NA links here, based on an old naming convention. I'd like to have WP:NA redirect to WikiProject North America instead. Thoughts? Sven Manguard <sub style="text-shadow:#ffd700 0.14em 0.14em 0.14em"><b style="color:black;">Talk</b>  02:55, 29 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Support - I think more people would easily be able to associate NA with North America than with this page. Without actually checking, I can't think of a reason WP:NA would link here. Sellyminime (talk) 05:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, why not? Seems non-controversial enough. Netalarm talk 05:20, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Done.  Jujutacular  talk 02:26, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. North America is a more obvious link for NA than lists of Non-Admins, especially as that no longer exists separately.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

How can we summarize this data?
I propose that we improve this page by starting it with a summary statement that would provide the following information:.

Total wiki population broken down into register and anonymous users Total amount of contributions A statement which sounds something like: X percent of users made X percent of edits, over this period of time....

What do you think? --Damis (talk) 14:41, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Its fine with me. --Kumioko (talk) 15:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * We already have that sort of data at Stats, I would prefer that this concentrate on just the big task of listing our 4,000 editors with the most edits. Otherwise we overcomplicate this and add both to the updating and the excessive length.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd also prefer to just leave this as a simple list - we don't want to over-complicate the task of updating it every couple of months. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Speaking of every couple of months - why can't this be automated like the WP:MOSTARTICLES list?  Lugnuts  (talk) 18:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * While the data is there, there is no summary statement on the statistics page, as the one that I suggested. My opinion is that summary data does not complicate a reader's experience, to the contrary, it makes it much easier. It is hard to understand what the significance of this list is without this necessary context. What is the role of this list, anyway, other than tell us how much these people matter in Wikispace? And, in fact, the data I suggested to summarize is present on this page, just not in a nice, summary format. So, let me try this. Can we say that the 4000 editors listed here represent about 0.0003% of the total number of Wikipedia contributors, while their contributions represent 35% of the total number of edits, as of October 27, 2010? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Damis (talk • contribs) 23:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Active or not
Is it possible to add a field showing whether each editor is still active? Any edits in the last month/2 months. Ideally whether or not they have made over say 10 or 100 edits in what ever the period chosen is. I fear the results would show many are no longer active, but it would be interesting to see. Johnbod (talk) 17:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That might be possible but it probably would only apply to folks lower than about the first hundred or so. Most of the first hundred are very active. There is also a separate list already for recent edits. --Kumioko (talk) 17:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Most but not all, even if 008's resignation last night doesn't stick. It would be good to see anyway. Johnbod (talk) 17:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Like Kumioko said, there's List of Wikipedians by number of recent edits which (although it hasn't been updated since March) includes the top 5,000 most active recent editors with both edits within the past month and overall edits, sortable by either. I imagine if there was interest it could be updated more often and the code could probably be tweaked to include total rank as well as recent. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:41, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is it would add a lot more processing time to the building of the list. Im not going to tell that it cant or wont be done but... I will also ask if the Recent edits list can be updated. --Kumioko (talk) 17:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It would be nice to have, but as the list is already very large, adding something would make the list less useful. An active flag isn't the only addition that has been suggested. I'd rather have 4,000 unclickable than 3,000 with flags for active and admins and so forth.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:58, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Do we keep historical versions of this? Doing acive/inactive on one every year or 6 months would be useful I think. Johnbod (talk) 16:42, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The archives of the bot reports (from which this list is generated) are here, if anyone really wants to look them up. As with most things regarding this list, I think it misleads more than it illuminates, since "editcount" is such a meaningless figure. – iridescent  17:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's very crude indeed, as the arbcom election is I hope reminding people. But whether or not an editor has edited in the last x months is both unambiguous and useful info. Johnbod (talk) 17:28, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I'm with you. The data must exist somewhere, as That Spreadsheet I'm always posting must be drawn from it. MZM should know. – iridescent  17:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Every Wednesday?
Is this list really being updated every Wednesday, as it now claims? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 07:51, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think its every 2 weeks but even then it shouldnt be updated here more than once a month. --Kumioko (talk) 12:05, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not? Why can't it be automated and weekly like WP:MOSTARTICLES?  Lugnuts  (talk) 13:45, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Here are some comments I have about this:


 * 1) I was wrong it is weekly
 * 2) it is automated in MZM's Sandbox 3 and it updates every Wednesday but it does not have the break down into groups by a thousand like this page has (no big deal to me if its grouped)
 * 3) It could be linked directly to his User page rather than have to manually update it but in the past it has been discrouraged from linking to user pages/sandboxes and the like.
 * 4) We can link it weekly but we should not archive it any more frequently than once a month even if we update the numbers weekly
 * 5) We could also tranclude the monthly numbers to his sandbox assuming his sandbox doesnt change.
 * 6) I would be more inclined to ask him to modify the code so that it updated this article instead of or in addition too his sandbox. If it updated automatically here then we wouldnt even need to worry about pointing to his--Kumioko (talk) 15:07, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was unaware of any discussion here, as I was watching List of Wikipedians by number of edits/latest, but I figured what was the point of having two identical pages? 117Avenue (talk) 15:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem and although I fundamentally agree that we dont need 2 identical pages I dont like the idea (and it is generally discouraged) to linking or transcluding to User pages or sandboxes. As I mentioned I would much prefer it be done by asking MZM to modify his script to update the Latest subpage (either in-lieu of in addition too) his user page. We could then simply link the Main page history to the appropriate revision page once a month. --Kumioko (talk) 16:27, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I kind of like having a gap of a couple of months between updates, if only as a defence against editcountitis. also there are a bunch of stats recorded every month which give an idea as to how these figures are changing over time, and I don't think they would be as meaningful if they were changed more frequently  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  16:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The two month gap is fine. We don't need a report card every week...Buster7 (talk) 17:08, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I also dont mind it being every month or more but the truth is it builds it every week via an automated script so there is a good point made that we might as well use it. --Kumioko (talk) 17:44, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, I would like to have the information as often as possible, I don't want my userbox to be two months out of date. 117Avenue (talk) 19:33, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Somebody seems to have changed this to pick up the new version every week, though reading the above discussion I'm not convinced there was consensus for such a change. Anyway one of the things that now needs to be done is checking for bots and adding them to the unregistered bots list. I've been doing this for more than a year now, but I'm not happy doing it weekly as opposed to doing it on the run before the two monthly update. So someone who wants this to be weekly needs to do this, ideally every week - and you can't just check for the letters bot in a user name because we have some users with names that predate the rule about not having bot in your username.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  00:09, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The list was already a direct copy of the bot updated page before it got redirected. See this . 117Avenue (talk) 00:58, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I know, it was usually me doing that every two months, and the previous week I'd check for unregistered bots and add them to the unregistered bots list. So the only version of the weekly updated page that was definitely bot free was the one I used for the bimonthly update. I found two more bots quite recently, so if you want this list to be accurate and updated weekly you need a volunteer to look for bots much more frequently than I have been doing.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  09:06, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I've just done an update, I'd have used the last one in Dec 2010 as closer to the new year but there was a newly unregistered bot in it.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:47, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Most real edits?
Is there a way to make a list that reflects edits made solely in article space, rather than on talk pages? I have my suspicions that a number of editors placed highly on this list as it stands are using Wikipedia primarily as social media, rather than working on improving the encyclopedia itself. 87.114.101.69 (talk) 19:39, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No but I can say with certainty that isn't true of the top 25 or so. Most of them use tools that allow them to do several edits a minute. --Kumioko (talk) 19:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I was thinking more of the top 500 or so. It'd be interesting to see a list with talk pages, AN/I, AFD, Ref Desk and so forth stripped out, but if that isn't possible then so be it. 87.114.101.69 (talk) 19:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It would be difficult but not impossible. For what its worth I doubt that your going to find too many of the top editors using it that way. IN order to be in the top 500 you have to have about 35000 edits and most of those have either been around for a very long time or use tools like AWB. --Kumioko (talk) 20:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * AWB is the tool of the devil. I bet most editors on the list have the same percentage of edits on talkpages as in the mainspace (eg, someone with 100,000 edits has say 1% of talkpage edits, ditto someone with 1,000 edits).  Lugnuts  (talk) 20:24, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not a big AWB fan huh..lol. I think what your saying is true but there are some exceptions like myself and Magioloditis. Im not sure what he has but out of 161000 edits I have about 13.5% talk pages. Most of that is from adding banners or cleanup though and not in conversations. --Kumioko (talk) 20:33, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Just see too many pointless/strange edits with it (esp. recently). Of course that doesn't happen with human edits...! Never thought about the banner edits - every single new page I create, I also add the necessary tags, etc. It would be impossible to count talkpage edits purely as discussions and not cleanup & tagging edits.  Lugnuts  (talk) 20:38, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No its doable. Usually when you add banners or do cleanup you dont add your UTC and name. So any talk page that has your user name linked is probably a conversation. --Kumioko (talk) 20:42, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Lots of edits that aren't in mainspace are "real", and I suspect most are not social media edits. For example article reviewing for Good and featured articles involves edits that are not in mainspace, and many editors develop articles in their sandboxes.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:55, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

A core element of the way Wikipedia is supposed to function is consensus. Building consensus at talk pages is critical, especially when working on contentious material. Any suggestion that talk page edits are purely social media is missing the point. --Dweller (talk) 10:25, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The figures here and in surrounding tables distinguish between types of edits, though I would echo wsp's caveats. 10% is more typical than 1%. Johnbod (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

What seemed to have stimulated this debate is a talk about whether people's edits were edits to articles, or the talk sections linked with articles. I have to point out here that in the talk page, people could be adding extremely valuable information. A more sensible question to ask would be whether people are making MAJOR edits, or simply minor edits (such as putting in a missing comma - the type of edit that would get "minor edit" in the article's history. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Heads up
We might want to fix this issue as it doesn't appear to be the first time this has happened. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * See Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits above. –  Kerαu noςco pia <sup style="color:#A60000;">◁ gala xies 22:46, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Further expansion

 * OK the first run did uncover an extra unregistered bot. But I've now updated the list with 5,000 editors and subdivided by sections much like RFA does. In theory this would allow for a much longer total list, or potentially extra info such as userrights, whether someone is "active" or clickable links. Between those choices I'd suggest extending the list to more editors would be the most useful.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:20, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I support clickable links, then expansion when necessary. Clickable links would be really helpful, and we probably won't need to expand for a few months at least. Sellyme Talk 12:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

A longer list would make this more inclusive. Userrights and an active flag would make this much more useful for finding currently active editors who would qualify for wp:reviewer and maybe admin, though I don't see this as a good way to spot potential Autopatrollers and I'm not sure about Rollback. I don't see as big a benefit from making the links clickable as that can easily be fixed by copy paste, whereas all the other things can only be done by adding info to this list. So I suppose my preference is to extend to say 10,000 editors, add an on off flag for whether they have edited in the last month and an admin/reviewer/neither field.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  13:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That all sounds sensible. Johnbod (talk) 13:22, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That would make this list less of a novelty, and more of a tool. Sumsum2010 · T · C  03:37, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If we just make the active ones clickable then we can combine two enhancements in one, and on further thought it is the currently active editors who have two or more of Account creator, Autopatroller, Reviewer and Rollbacker that I think we should be checking out as potential admins. Having separate tranches for each 1,000 enables us to add a little more detail So does anyone object if I make the following request to the bot writer:
 * Extend the list to 10,000 editors, but in the new structure of a separate tranche for each 1,000
 * If the editor has edited in the last month and has not opted out, then make their username clickable
 * Add a userrights column with Ad for Admin, B for Bureaucrat, AC for Account Creator, Au for Autopatroller, Re for Reviewer and Ro for Rollbacker.
 *  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:40, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
 * OK MZMcBride has recoded his bot and this is now nearly live, the current version contains 17 unregistered bots so counts will be out by up to 17, but that will be fixed for next weeks run, and I'll update the stats then and maybe mention it in the Signpost. Does anyone notice any other problems?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  18:44, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Now scaled back to 6,000 for the sake of the serverkitties. Hopefully we can compress this a bit and extend the list, but ten times >50k was causing problems.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Like the new list, but (having just looked at the first 20 or so) it appears that the rights for users who have opted out ([Placeholder]) are being shown. No big deal, but it would probably be better if the user rights section was blank for all those who have opted out. Jenks24 (talk) 17:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Good spot, MZMcBride has now fixed that.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)


 * One of the rights listed is "autoreviewer", but the current correct term is "autopatrolled". M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  18:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed, sort of. But there is a tradeoff between list size and usability, so in order to reduce the number of bytes I've abbreviated some of these and may replace them with 2 digit codes and a key as that should allow us to extend the list without slowing things down further. I've now taken it to 7,000 users.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Update
How frequently is this list updated? It says that I have 10,064 edits but I actually have 11,013 now! :S Mar4d (talk) 04:33, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No, you have 10,439, according to the database this list is generated from. Sellyme Talk 04:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What about this Mar4d (talk) 06:27, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a script which provides an infobox when I hover over your name, with an edit count included. It uses the edit count provided by Wikipedia itself, not any toolserver counters. Check your Special:Preferences to see the count that it should show. Sellyme Talk 07:46, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I normally update this every couple of months, and the last update was the 9th March so the next one will probably be in the first half of May. Most of the work is actually done by a bot, but updating also involves a bit of manual faff such as looking for any newly unregistered bots. I'm not personally willing to do this more frequently than every couple of months, and there is also an argument that doing it more frequently encourages editcountitis. Though it is possible we could get an extra update in April based on the discussion earlier this page about expanding the list.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:15, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As someone who would be somewhat impartial (8,000 plus edits off the list), I say an update every month would be reasonable. Every second month just seems a bit too long, in my opinion. Sellyme Talk 11:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The list is automatically created every tuesday based on a script that runs on the toolserver. It is then manually moved here, broke into 1000 editor groups and the history table updated. I agree that once a month is more than sufficient for this page to be updated. --Kumioko (talk) 19:58, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Now weekly and the list itself is automated. However if people still want the stats updated I'm inclined to do that bimonthly - it has the same issue that one has to keep finding unregistered bots and adding them to the table.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Bot missing?
Where exactly is BetacommandBot? It seems to have edits on every other page, yet it is not on the list at all.

There is a note before the list: 'Unflagged bots are not included.' Is this the reason? Don't know what it means.

And I am referring to 'Wikipedia:List of bots by number of edits'. 82.141.67.243 (talk) 00:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The list pertains only to Editors so bots have been excluded. --Kumioko (talk) 00:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sort of true. But, when I click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:List_of_bots_by_number_of_edits it redirects here. So my question is still valid. And didn't find that bot even now. 85.217.50.66 (talk) 05:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * He's correct. List of bots by number of edits has a talk page redirecting to this one, despite a separate article. And BetacommandBot is not on the list. Maybe it just hasn't been flagged as a bot? Sellyme Talk 07:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * List of bots by number of edits has its talkpage redirected here because usually the conversations would be overlapping. Unflagged Bots including BetacommandBot are listed at List of Wikipedians by number of edits/Unflagged bots. In theory they could include bots that have never needed to be flagged because they only edit their own userpages. But I suspect that all the ones on that list are bots like Betacommandbot that have been retired and had their flags removed. But just because a bot has lost its bot flag doesn't mean that those edits are no longer bot edits. So I suspect we need  a tweak to include them in List of bots by number of edits.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  18:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think they should have the latest count when they were active, and then a note like 'Not active' or 'Inactive'. Two separate lists of each category (non-bots, bots, any other) could be fine, other list with any editor ever, and other with current editors. And there is the list of the unflagged bots, but the edit count is not showing, so it is quite hard to compare those with the active bots. 85.217.15.109 (talk) 15:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think a neater solution would be to change the criteria for this list from currently flagged as a bot to "flagged as a bot or on the unregistered bot list". But that presupposes someone being willing to rerun it and it is now a year old....  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  19:36, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Why am I not on the list?
Over 16500 edits and still I must update this manually... Shannon talk   contribs  05:27, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, you should be higher than #3585. 117Avenue (talk) 06:25, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Because, according to the API, you only have about 4300 edits . Seems to be a fairly extreme example of this bug . --Closedmouth (talk) 07:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You are on the list, at no. 3598, as "Shannon1 (usurped3)" with 12,548 edits. This suggests to me that although you've used one username, you've had two different unique user ID numbers (see WP:USURP), and their edit counts are separate. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:03, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Merging accounts

 * There was a username change problem a while back... is it possible to merge the two accounts edits? Shannon  talk   contribs  06:31, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry but no it isn't currently possible to merge accounts, and I don't see this changing as it would have little benefit and cause confusion disentangling whether someone had been participating with one or both accounts in particular discussions. However it might be possible to merge accounts for the purpose of this report, if MzMcBride who does the processing was agreeable to do this we could create a table of multiple accounts. Of course this would only involve known alternative accounts.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  22:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * O well... I know this is a zombie thread... I guess I'll stick with inserting my username manually... Shannon  talk   contribs  23:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Please don't. All the other editors with multiple accounts seem to accept that this does not combine accounts. If you want to have your count combined from multiple accounts then ask MZMcBride if he would be willing to factor that into his bot, we could then create a table that would allow editors who wanted to to have multiple accounts combined.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  18:39, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, missed by a a bit. I never used multiple accounts. This is what actually happened: I change usernames through usurpation. A usurped account (User:Shannon1/usurped3, Idk why the 3's there) is created. About 13,000 of my edits were moved there temporarily. They were never moved back. Shannon  talk   contribs  21:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * OK I understand now, having your edit count split in two must be annoying. However the same solutions would apply, either we need a fix to Mediawiki that allowed the merging of accounts or someone needs to sweet talk MZMcBride to allow the creation of a table of multiple accounts, and to use this when recalculating wp:edits. Manually changing the list as you've been doing won't work because the list will be recalculated and replaced every few days.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:05, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I see how complicated and demanding this fix would be; I'm not an admin or a "super-contributing" user in any way so I'll just stick with inserting my username. It isn't too much work, and I'll refrain from commenting out curse words ;) Shannon  talk   contribs  05:59, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Although I do see that this page has my edit count fairly accurate.  Shannon  talk   contribs  05:46, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

5,000?
✅

Now that we've split latest into sections of 1,000 editors I wonder if we should add the 4001-5000 group. This would bring the threshold down to more like 10,000, making it more feasible for editors who don't use tools to get on the list.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As long as it's not too much of a server strain, I'd say yes, definitely - we should want it to be the best incentive we can realistically achieve. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:50, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I support a bump to 5,000. It seems like a more round and simple number. Not to mention that with Wikipedia's rising editor growth, we want to keep this list at a reasonable amount in relation to total editors. I say we keep the lower bound from 10-12 thousand if possible. Sellyme Talk 00:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I always thought 4000 was an odd number as a cut-off. I assumed it was some sort of wiki-thing. Support for 5000, although not for the reasons of including users who don't use tools. I doubt very seriously that they even know this page exists.--Jojhutton (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure I was aware of this page before I started using tools, and even without them I think I'd be on the list. One of the editors who I meet at the London meetups is almost certainly in the 4,001-5,000 range, has 0% tool based edits and is well aware of this list. But even if they don't currently know about it, such an extension would be a good excuse for a signpost article.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  01:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should expand it for non-tool editors, I think we should expand it because we can. How is more data ever a bad thing? Sellyme Talk 01:29, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Complete support! 4000 has always seemed a little off. And also an opportunity for people who have accumulates over 10000 edits to be on the list! (even at 6000 edits 10000 still seems like a huge amount!) Sumsum2010 · T · C · Review me! 02:50, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, the list should be maintained to around 10,000 edits. 117Avenue (talk) 03:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * OK the wheels are in motion. But this may take a week or two as I expect the first version will include some unregistered bots that we will need to filter out.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:57, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should publish it on here anyway, as I doubt it really makes that much of a difference for a short time, and it allows anyone to visit the page to fix it, as opposed to some obscure user sub-page that no-one will ever see. Sellyme Talk 00:54, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Should these userboxes also be updated to read 50, 500, and 5000?
 * User MAW40
 * User MAW400
 * User MAW (4000) -- &oelig; &trade; 07:41, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * We have plenty of choices for userboxes that would include all 5,000 at List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits. I'd be reluctant to change these userboxes as doing so will change people's userpages.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  09:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would suggest changing the table too include all editors with 5,000 edits or more, this would make it more dynamic?

MikeBeckett (talk) 14:36, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Include my sockpuppet
My position in this list is 2955, having made 15,375 edits. However, this excludes my sockpuppet Joyson Konkani from which i have made a total of 2,145 edits. I haven't used the sockpuppet for months. As such, my edit as of 11 May was 17,520. I would appreciate it if a future edit count would include those done by this sockpuppet as well. Thanks. Joyson Noel Holla at me!  17:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a straightforward statistical summary of the contributions of accounts, not the Wikipedia High Score Table. As clearly explained at the top, editors operating multiple accounts get multiple entries. If different rules are applied to different editors, the table loses what (dubious) purpose it currently has. – iridescent  17:12, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, My bad! I didn't read it. Joyson Noel  Holla at me!  17:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

The Thing That Should Not Be
Why is the User currently ranked at #27 listed as "The Thing That Should Not Be" with no (blue) Wikipedia link? Is that a mistake or an error? Or is that vandalism? I don't see how such a highly active editor could possibly have a User Name that is not linked with a (blue) Wikipedia link, as all the other users seem to have. Please advise. Thanks! (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC))


 * See . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Yes, I already had seen his User Page ... and I saw that he had retired.  However, my question is ... why doesn't his name on this list come up as a Wikipedia link to his User Page, just as everyone else's name does?  Thanks.   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC))


 * Only editors that are currently 'active' have their usernames wikilinked. Scroll down the list and you will see gradually more users that aren't wikilinked. Jenks24 (talk) 18:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Whilst that is the general idea, that is not technically correct. Some more active users delete their user pages or have never used them. Simply south...... unintentionally misspelling fr 5 years 20:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks! I did not realize that the listed names of inactive users were not linked to their Wikipedia User Pages.  Thanks for the replies!   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:56, 18 May 2011 (UTC))


 * Active users without a user page are shown as redlinks; the highest that I can find is at no. 328.


 * List of active users (one action in the latest 30 days) is at Special:ActiveUsers; it seems that The Thing isn't in it. Checking Special:Contributions/The Thing That Should Not Be shows last edit as 8 March 2011, hence the absence. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:22, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, great ... thanks for the info! I understand how the list works now.  Thank you.   (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 13:57, 21 May 2011 (UTC))

Live edits versus deleted edits
If one goes to the Wikipedia edit counter, it tells you both the number of your live edits (i.e. ones that have not been deleted), and the total number of edits - i.e. the number of edits you have made to Wikipedia including your deleted ones. Is this list simply of Wikipedians by LIVE edit? It would be more impressive if it were. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 11:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm fairly sure that it is by all edits, and of course some (in fact, most) deleted edits of people with thousands of edits are actually legitimate. Sellyme Talk 11:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Those prod tags don't add themselves.  Lugnuts  (talk) 11:37, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, it's total edits. And that is legitimate, as most people's deleted edits will be things like accurate Speedy and PROD tagging of articles for deletion, or commenting on the Talk pages of such articles before they're actually deleted, which should be counted as positive contributions. (And anyone with lots of edits deleted for policy violations etc should be blocked long before they get near this list) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Plus, some people such as myself construct articles in user space and when ready copy them to article space, then have the user drafts deleted. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  17:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)


 * If you're starting an article entirely from scratch in a user space, technically you're supposed to move the draft into the Wikipedia namespace. This way your edit history moves along into the article space. If you are working on a pre-existing article in a sandbox, you should create a name-specific sandbox for that article. You can then include (copy over) your edits to the article, but your name-specific sandbox will survive to provide attribution for those edits, especially if someone else comes along and works in your sandbox. You're not really supposed to copy/paste text from one page to another. Of course, if the work is entirely yours, then this isn't as big a problem (I sometimes draft up paragraphs on a text program offline before including it into an article). You can use the copied template to keep attribution. And, remaining on topic, this would also keep those edits from being deleted from your count. – Kerαu noςco pia <sup style="color:#A60000;">◁ gala xies 18:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I was talking about articles created exclusively by me in my user space. Not only is it not "as big a problem", it's not a problem at all and is, in fact, absolutely acceptable. M AN d ARAX  •  XAЯA b ИA M  06:19, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay okay, I thought I was helping you out : ) – Kerαu noςco pia <sup style="color:#A60000;">◁ gala xies 06:32, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick responses here - I should have read the article more carefully, as I have just seen that in the first few sentences it does say "Including deleted edits"! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 14:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, this list includes deleted edits? I've been updating this using live edits for a very long time... Shannon  talk   contribs  03:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Whatever number of edits you have under "My Preferences" is the number used on the list. The Toolserver counter usually has a higher total count, but I've never seen any of the live numbers actually match. Doesn't make much sense to me, but I've never dug into it. – Kerαu noςco pia <sup style="color:#A60000;">◁ gala xies 04:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * According to Special:Preferences I have "Number of edits: 33,873", which is confirmed at en.WikiChecker/user; these are the figures used for compiling the list at List of Wikipedians by number of edits. However, according to X!'s Edit Counter, I have "Live edits: 33,832; Deleted edits: 247; Total edits (including deleted): 34,079"; according to Wikimedia User edit counter I have "Total edits 33832; Deleted edits 247" and "The total edit count does not include deleted edits" so I guess the Special:Preferences includes a proportion of deleted edits, but not all of them.
 * Clearly there are at least two different ways of counting edits. As my father used to say... "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches never knows the correct time." -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
 * See bug 19311 for an explanation of that discrepancy. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:46, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Users with zero edits
Anyone have any idea how many registered accounts have never made a single edit? ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  12:54, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * No doubt includes a whole lot of sockpuppets-in-waiting. WWGB (talk) 13:03, 11 June 2011 (UTC)


 * With or without deleted edits? There's a lot of blocked accounts with no edits, because all they did was create bad pages. 117Avenue (talk) 02:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I was specifically wondering about zero edits total. Since we don't require an email address to start an account, if a new editor forgets their password, their account is locked forever, and they leave or make a new one. Also, I've heard it mentioned that some users create accounts simply to make prefs and watchlists, but I don't know how true that is. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  04:02, 12 June 2011 (UTC)


 * This list actually includes deleted edits anyway, so that's really the only option. Sellyme Talk 04:25, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The Crats seem quite happy to allow people to usurp accounts that haven't edited, so I don't see this as a problem. It may be an opportunity, unless we ask them we won't know whether people are signing up to indicate their support, change the skin or reserve their user name here. We do know that there are lots of people who start editing and then give up before saving, but we don't know how many of them were vandals deterred by the edit filter or goodfaith editors freaked out by the templates and other code. Also there are quite a few editors who start by contributing an article that then gets deleted. Usually the deletion is correct, but then many newbies need some help with their early edits, and we aren't very successful at developing newbies who start by writing articles.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  06:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am not concerned with accounts that have been usurped, because they will have likely made at least one edit, even if it was deleted. I was wondering how many accounts have never made an edit. I don't really care why they made accounts or why they never edited (at least not right now). There is no security danger to an account being compromised if it has no history, as generally people check up on editors through contibs, not account creation date. It is easier to make a new account than steal these, with equal benefits. We supposedly have 14 million registered users, I am certain some have never made an edit, I am just wondering how many. I assume that whatever process made this list, this page is the top of that list (most edits), and my query is the bottom. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  07:17, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think would probably be the man to ask. Jenks24 (talk) 07:39, 12 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Because of SUL, I think that list would be rather unwieldy. Killiondude (talk) 22:45, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, MZMcBride responded. Almost 10 million accounts on EN WP have never made a single edit (to EN WP), probably greatly increased due to SUL. Still, only 5 million of our 14 million users are actually editors. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  02:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This is very interesting to me personally. Add to this users who haven't edited in 6 months and we probably have less than 25,000 active editors. --Kumioko (talk) 02:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The magic word returns 143,206, but I don't know what that is based off of. That is only one percent of the total. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  04:02, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The data is updated by User:Acebot. — kwami (talk) 05:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to see how many have made at least one non-talk (or mainspace) edit in the last 6 mos. — kwami (talk) 02:56, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That figure is from Special:Statistics. Killiondude (talk) 06:01, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The 143,000 figure is the number of accounts and IP addresses that have made at least one action in the last 30 days. This exaggerates things partly due to alt accounts and accidental IP edits by logged off users and by counting some IP editors multiple times if their IP has changed several times in the month (if I was IP editing rather than editing logged in, and if I remembered to switch off all my kit including the modem each night then I would be a dozen of the 143,000). But it also underestimates the number of editors making IP edits because some IPs, especially those of educational institutions, libraries and Internet cafes are used by multiple editors.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  06:46, 22 June 2011 (UTC)