Gwern Branwen wrote:
"User:MBisanz has charted the number of new
accounts registered per
month, which tells a very similar story: March 2007 recorded the
largest number of new accounts, and the rate of new account creation
has fallen significantly since then. Declines in activity have also
been noted, and fretted about, at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship."
My take on this is that all this tells a story of ever fewer people
joining, and casual editors continuously winding down & leaving. This
means that the small group of dead-ender hardcore editors will grow as
a percentage, which may seem like a good thing ('yay, more editors are
becoming obssessed!') until you consider the larger picture.
(My cynical sarcastic take on this is to thank all the reference nazis
& deletionists & vandal-fighters; we couldn't've done't without ye!)
But note that most accounts don't edit _at all, ever_. Account creation
may be the simplest statistic to get, but it is also the most simplistic.
The English Wikipedia is around 10,000 editors, basically.
Charles