2008/10/10 nsk <nsk(a)karastathis.org>rg>:
Regarding
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=41921
I congratulate the decision to make it off by default. However, I think
we could code a better alternative (perhaps in addition to the edit
counts, sine other mediawiki users may want them): instead of counting
edits, let's count how many characters each user added or changed in the
wikitext database.
Counting characters added or changed is much more indicative of the
contributions of users than mere edit counts, although not perfect. It
should be easy to code, considering that the software already counts it
in diffs/rc (albeit also taking deletions into account).
That existing count is the change in the number of characters, not the
number of characters changed. If you want to replace edit counts, you
need the latter, since the former doesn't account for edits that just
change existing text rather than adding or removing it.