Hi Pine,
I think that the definition on Special:Statistics
makes more sense for "active editors" than the >=5 definition than is
commonly used in discussions on mailing lists.
tl;dr 'active editor' is a term with a long history. If we recoin that term and
keep informing the public how many active editors we counted we will make our public stats
more vain and empty.
Long version:
This is a recurring discussion, with minor variations.
In my personal opinion our movement has a tendency to publish too extreme numbers already,
however bloated, as if our more substantial achievements aren't awe-inspiring enough.
(examples are 'Wikipedias in 280 languages', '800 wikis', not to mention
our extreme 'article' counts)
As long as we keep these extreme counts with little substance for ourselves I wouldn't
care much about terminology, but we tend not to keep these for ourselves.
Can I illustrate my point by reductio ad absurdum (sort of)?
Would you call a person who jots his name on a paycheck once a month and writes nothing
else a writer?
Would you call a person who climbs three steps to enter a bus a climber?
Are you a reader if you glance at a glossy's cover once at your local barber?
A person with one edit in one particular month and maybe none in the rest of the year to
me is not much of an editor really.
It's one more person who knows of Wikipedia (we have 500+ million of those) and found
the edit and submit buttons and tried those, to see what happens.
Now if that person likes what happened and wants to do it again we are on to something.
The threshold of edits a person should reach before we can infer intention and motivation
is of course arbitrary, but clearly more than one in my view.
I'm not saying we shouldn’t count one-off's. If people get deterred by one
problematic edit that is hugely relevant. And the enormous gap between 1+ and 3+ edits is
of course a major concern.
I would just prefer a different term rather than 'active editor', which is what
you suggest to adopt.
Cheers,
Erik
From: analytics-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:analytics-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]
On Behalf Of Pine W
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2015 23:29
To: A mailing list for the Analytics Team at WMF and everybody who has an interest in
Wikipedia and analytics.
Subject: Re: [Analytics] User statistics for video marking ENWP 5m article milestone
Aha, I just figured it out. The two pages are using very different definitions for
"active editors".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics refers to
anyone who has made a *single* edit in the last 30 days as an "active editor",
while
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm refers to edits that have made
*5 or more* edits in the past month as active. This mix of terminology is confusing. I
think that the definition on Special:Statistics makes more sense for "active
editors" than the >=5 definition than is commonly used in discussions on mailing
lists. Can anyone suggest a better set of terminology to distinguish the >=1
"active editors" from the >=5 "active editors"?
Pine
On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Next question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics> shows that ENWP alone has had
123,512 active editors (5 or more actions) in the last 30 days. But
https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/ shows that for June 2015 (the latest data available
there), there were only 31k active editors on ENWP and 77k active editors for all projects
combined.
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm> seems consistent with the
latter, showing that for August 2015 there were 30,789 active editors. Is there an
explanation for the large difference between the 123,512 active editors shown on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics, and the 30,789 active editors shown on
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm?
Thanks,
Pine
On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 11:29 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks!
Pine
On Sep 11, 2015 11:20 AM, "James Forrester" <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
On 11 September 2015 at 11:13, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Analytics,
On ENWP, does the number of 26,163,773 users
You mean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics "Registered users"?
Assuming yes…
include IPs who have made edits?
No.
Does it include editors on all Wikimedia projects
No.
or just those who have registered and/or edited on ENWP?
Registered, regardless of having edited.
J.
--
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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