On 09/10/2007, Phoenix wiki phoenix.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
The people who write wikipedia are the registered users that you can see on AFD, RFA, The reference desk and the help desk.
Well, no. The people who write Wikipedia are the people who go and write articles. Participation in community support activities (RD, HD), internal community processes (RFA) and editorial content meta-debates (AFD) is ancillary to writing articles, and there are no shortage of people who spend far more time there than they do actually, you know, writing.
There's only about 6,000 of them so that's a tiny amount. Also, I read somewhere that those with more than 3200 contributions account for 50% of our edits
But those with more than 3200 contributions have a higher proportion of automated or semi-automated edits with little or no editorial signficiance than the rest of the population, and invariably a far, far higher proportion of simple vandalism reversion (which whilst a useful role, is completely "content neutral" and adds nothing new to the encyclopedia).
Editcount and community involvement can be general indicators of a "significant user", and it's rare to name one without these factors, but they certainly do not *make* someone one.