I know of the categories, but the problem is that they do not seem to be comprehensive. I can estimate, based on them, that there are at least 150k or so editors who were banned for vandalism, but it seems many vandals do not make it into those categories, suggesting this number is underestimated.

Still, we should be able to get some estimates. We know, for example, that  something like 5 or 6 million of accounts have made 1+ edit on English Wikipedia. How many of them were indefinitely blocked? This should give us some idea.

Alternatively, we know how many accounts make an edit to Wikipedia every given timeframe. About 100,000-120,000 editors make at least one edit to Wikipedia each month. If we knew how many are indef blocked in that period, that would be another useful estimate.

-- 
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus


On 9/30/2013 11:44 AM, Stuart Yeates wrote:
I guess it depends on whether Piotr is looking for an estimate of accounts used for vandalism or an estimate of the people who operate them. One seems straight forward, the other more challenging. Perhaps combining the categories below with sock puppet investigations and some fancy stats?

Cheers
Stuart

On 29/09/2013, at 12:13 am, h <hanteng@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Piotr, 
   I believe that in Chinese Wikipedia, "blocked indefinitely" is a user category called Wikipedians that are blocked indefinitely "被永久封禁的維基人"  http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:%E8%A2%AB%E6%B0%B8%E4%B9%85%E5%B0%81%E7%A6%81%E7%9A%84%E7%B6%AD%E5%9F%BA%E4%BA%BA
   Its equivalent Wikidata table has the following pages in other language versions:
http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4616402#sitelinks-wikipedia
Language Code Linked article
English enwiki Category:Blocked historical users
italiano itwiki Categoria:Wikipedia:Cloni sospetti
latviešu lvwiki Kategorija:Uz nenoteiktu laiku nobloķētie lietotāji
slovenčina skwiki Kategória:Wikipédia:Natrvalo zablokovaní používatelia
česky cswiki Kategorie:Wikipedie:Natrvalo zablokovaní uživatelé
български bgwiki Категория:Блокирани неприемливи потребителски имена
олык марий mhrwiki Категорий:Википедий:Йӧн петырыме
українська ukwiki Категорія:Безстроково заблоковані користувачі
中文 zhwiki Category:被永久封禁的維基人
日本語 jawiki Category:無期限ブロックを受けたユー ザー



   I hope that it helps.
Best,
han-teng liao



2013/9/29 Piotr Konieczny <piokon@post.pl>
Hi everyone,

Another question: do we have an estimate of a vandal population?

I also asked this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#How_many_editors_are_blocked_indefinitely.3F but so far no good estimates have been provided.

--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKonieczny
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus


_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l


_______________________________________________
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l