Thanks, Roan, for responding to my post. It did occur to me I had hit
upon an account renaming but I think something else is happening here.
Let me give an example of an account renaming that seems to be the most
common:
User:Penrithpanthers was renamed to User:SATidball -- which you can see at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=renameuser&a…
04:53, 3 December 2010Nihonjoe
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nihonjoe>(talk
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nihonjoe> |contribs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Nihonjoe>)renamedUser:Penrithpanthers
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Penrithpanthers&action=edit&redlink=1>to
"SATidball" ?(94 edits. Reason: WP:CHU)
If we look up Penrithpanthers and SATidball in the API, using
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=P…
we get:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
<query>
<users>
<user name="Penrithpanthers" missing="" />
<user name="SATidball" editcount="96"
registration="2010-09-25T00:30:16Z" gender="male" />
</users>
</query>
</api>
The old account name is now "missing" and the new account SATidball
picks up the registration date and all the contributions that used to
belong to Penrithpanthers.
What happened with User:Katr67 seems to be a bit different. We can find
a renaming event for User:Katr67
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=renameuser&a…
shows
03:31, 18 September 2010Nihonjoe
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nihonjoe>(talk
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nihonjoe> |contribs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Nihonjoe>)renamedUser:Katr67
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Katr67>to "Valfontis" ?(53,420 edits.
Reason: WP:CHU)
However, the User:Katr67 account is not deleted (as was
User:Penrithpanthers). Instead, going to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Katr67 redirects to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Valfontis And we look up both users
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=K…
we get
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
<query>
<users>
<user name="Katr67" editcount="4"
registration="2010-12-10T08:09:19Z" gender="unknown" />
<user name="Valfontis" editcount="53627"
registration="2006-01-06T10:23:49Z" gender="unknown">
<groups>
<g>autoreviewer</g>
<g>reviewer</g>
<g>rollbacker</g>
</groups>
</user>
</users>
</query>
</api>
So what's happening with Katr67/Valfontis ?
Thanks,
-Raymond (User:RaymondYee)
On 12/13/10 6:24 PM, Roan Kattouw wrote:
2010/12/14 Raymond Yee<raymond.yee(a)gmail.com>om>:
In computing statistics for many recent accounts,
I have these assumptions
to be true for the vast majority of accounts. I'm puzzled, however, for
accounts in which one or both assumptions are wrong. An example is
User:Katr67
You probably hit an account rename here. Edits are reattributed for
those, but I guess the editcount isn't updated for that, and of course
the registration timestamp will be different too.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)