Tim Starling wrote:
At the time, the user_editcount field had been recently introduced, but it clearly wasn't sufficient to provide the information users were looking for, as Simetrical notes.
Hm, you are being a bit ambiguous -- your message /could/ be taken to mean that the edit count is already displayed on Special:Contributions. However, I can't see it. Am I not looking in the right place, or did I misunderstand you?