Statistics of total (content) edit rate are also available on WikiStats at https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseEdits.htm etc.
Edit and revert trends charts tend to be more useful: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotsPngEditHistoryTop.htm
WereSpielChequers, 25/01/2017 16:10:
One area that perhaps someone on this list can explain is the difference between number of edits as measured by revisionID and as measured by NUMBEROFEDITS
{{NUMBEROFEDITS}} and other magic words, just like Special:Statistics, should be assumed to be cached and not necessarily current or correct. They shouldn't be relied upon for any serious usage, except perhaps after a successful run of initSiteStats.php --update .
That said, both {{NUMBEROFEDITS}} and the total number of edits in Special:Statistics are supposed to count the number of revisions, included deleted ones. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/master/includes/SiteStats.php;b843994408cd0b4d9f2676ae87225258e0497913$135 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/MW/browse/master/includes/parser/Parser.php;b843994408cd0b4d9f2676ae87225258e0497913$2775
Nemo