Wikipedia talk:Wikipedians

@Levivich,

I'm open to wording changes, but "regularly active" isn't the right way to describe a group of people who average one edit per day during the last month, and whose total volume puts them in the top 0.75% of all the people (technically, accounts) that have ever made an edit. I've described that as higher-volume experienced editors. I'm open to other wording, but "regular" isn't really accurate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

"Higher-volume" is just as much of a misnomer. (And come on, you know it's not the top 0.75% of all people, because you know "accounts" isn't a "technical" thing because like 99.9% of accounts have no people behind them, and I think also no edits. We have tens of millions of accounts, but far fewer people have ever edited Wikipedia.) I'm not sure why 30 edits/month isn't "regular," but anyway, I just took out "higher-volume" because that's so clearly wrong. I don't think 500 edits + 1 year age = "experienced" so I changed it to "more-experienced," but even that, idk. Nobody thinks of an editor with 500 edits and 1 year as "experienced," and nobody thinks of an editor with 30 edits/month as highly active. I really don't want enwiki to do the WMF thing and inflate the numbers. Like, "40 million accounts!" (Bullshit, they're mostly all empty.) 100,000 active editors! (Bullshit, that's 100,00 editors with at least 1 edit, most of them only 1 edit.) 10,000 highly-active editors! (Bullshit, that's just 10,000 regularly-active editors; the highly-active number is 5,000/month.) Let's not overstate it, let's not misinform: the truth is, a hundred thousand people make at least one edit, but the really high-active editors are counted in thousands, not more. Levivich (talk) 21:55, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich, it's technically accounts, because it's counting what we get from Special:CreateAccount, which doesn't neatly line up with humans. Sometimes multiple humans use one account (though we officially ban that), and sometimes one human uses multiple accounts (thought we sometimes ban that). The calculation is only from accounts that made at least one edit: 500 edits is the top 0.75% of accounts that ever made one edit. See Template:Registered editors by edit count. Choose "Table 2" in the radio buttons if you want to see only the 14 million accounts that have ever made at least one edit, rather than all 47 million registered accounts. We do not have a comparable set of numbers for (e.g.,) the 800,000 registered accounts that made 1+ edits during the previous calendar year. That, by the way, suggests that only 59 out of 60 accounts are "empty", or 17 out of 18 if you prefer to focus on those that ever made an edit here – not 99.9%.

I agree that 30 edits per month could be regular, but so can 1 edit per year, or 1 edit per month. On the other hand, someone who did a burst of 30 edits on one or two days, but hadn't edited for months before then, would be "higher volume" but not "regular". The query measures frequency, not regularity.

You have removed higher-volume because, in your opinion, it's "so clearly wrong". The accounts in question have a higher edit volume than more than 90% of the other active accounts during that time period. They also have a higher total edit volume than more than 99% of the other ever-active accounts. I'm sure that you wouldn't describe the top 10% by volume as "lower volume" or "average volume", so why do you think it's "so clearly wrong" to calling them "higher volume"? That volume actually is significantly higher than the mean, median, or mode.

NB that I didn't choose highly active because that term has been used in other contexts (mostly years ago) to mean 100 edits during the previous 30 days. In that model, 5 edits/month = active user, and 100 edits/month = highly active user.

The definition of "experienced editor" in the Special:RecentChanges filters is 500 edits + 30 days, which is lower than the query uses. New page patrollers are described as experienced editors (e.g., in Help:Unreviewed new page), and the minimum requirement is 500 edits to the mainspace + 90 days. Wikipedia:RedWarn/Documentation/Multiple Action Tool#Usage defines experienced editors as 500+ edits. You're entitled to your opinion about 500 edits + one year activity should be called "experienced", but the evidence indicates that your opinion isn't universal.

I am always interested in what others think counts as experienced, so I would be very interested in hearing what your opinion is. I suspect that our notion drift over time. So, for reference, this query would have picked you up on 12 November 2019. Among the things you did that day was participate in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1024#Snooganssnoogans edits on Julian Assange. Were you still inexperienced at that point? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, despite having 10,000 edits at that point, I would describe myself as relatively inexperienced at that point, a "sophomore editor." Is a sophomore inexperienced? Well, a sophomore is more experienced than a freshman, but still relatively inexperienced. If you wanted to say that editors with 1 year and 10k edits are "experienced" editors, I wouldn't object. But not 500 edits. Levivich (talk) 16:01, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

This is basically the normal definition, as evidenced by its use in other pages, and I think we should stick with the normal definition.

In particular, I think that describing these people as "more-experienced" is making them sound, well, more experienced. I think it would be much better to have them described as plain old ordinary "experienced" instead of "more experienced". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

You've convinced me that editors with 30 edits in the last 30 days, 500 edits total, and 1 year account age, is an arbitrary place to draw a line, and this combination of metrics isn't used elsewhere. Elsewhere Wikipedia talks about active editors (1 edit/last 30 days) and very active editors (100 edits/last 30 days), and this page should just do that as well. No need to complicate things with arbitrary subcategories of activity. So I removed the line about 10k editors altogether. Levivich (talk) 05:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I think it is appropriate and informative to tell people that there are about 10K higher-volume experienced editors active in any given month.

The alternative for that news source would have been them saying that the decision about the ADL involved only "a fraction of the 117,000 editors who have been active in the last 30 days", rather than them saying "a fraction of the more than 10,000 high-volume editors on the site...[and of] the 117,000 editors who have been active in the last 30 days". I'd much rather than they indicated that most editors are not high-volume editors. The median number of edits, for an account that actually makes at least one, is two. That's two ever, not two in the same month.

Also, looking outside that one news source, I think it's important for Wikipedia editors to know that regular editors are not very common. Most of Wikipedia is determined by those 10K editors. If we set the query to pick up only people like you, (5 years old, 30K+ edits ever, 100+ edits last month), then today's answer is 1,523 highly active, highly experienced editors.

Or do you just want to stick with the 'tried and true' metrics? 7,138 editors made 100+ edits last month. Would you have preferred them to say "a fraction of the more than 7,000 highly active experienced editors on the site, let alone the 117,000 editors who have been active in the last 30 days" instead? I don't see that as having a materially different overall effect than saying 10,000 myself. At some level, we just have to acknowledge that the 121 editors who posted in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 439#RFC: The Anti-Defamation League is a small fraction of the number of editors who are active at any given point in time. But perhaps the difference between 1.7% and 1.2% of higher-volume editors seems significant to you, even if it doesn't seem very important to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't really understand why your query is returning a number that's 2,000 higher than wikistats. If that were true, it would be a new all-time record for Wikipedia. I trust wikistats, maybe I shouldn't, but as far as I know, the actual truth is that over the last 10 years, there are about 5,000 editors who make >100 edits/month, and the most there have ever been is just under 7k back in 2007. So when I read an article that said there were 10k "high volume" editors instead of 5k, that alarmed me. That's misinformation. I don't think your query is "tried and true metrics." Wikistats is tried and true metrics. Maybe your query is right and wikistats is wrong. This has nothing to do with the ADL RSN, it's about not propagating the false notion that there are 10k highly active editors, when we know the real number is 5k. Don't misinform, don't inflate. That's the goal. Levivich (talk) 21:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know enough about the query to know why it gets a different answer. However, I question your belief that it is "misinformation" or "wrong" to say that there are "10,000 high-volume experienced editors", solely because there aren't also 10,000 Very Active™ editors – according to one definition of that term. Must our interest in more active or more experienced editor be limited only to users whose accounts match the definition given in m:Analytics/Metric definitions#Very active editor, and all else be barred? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think one editor should be deciding what a "high-volume" or "experienced" editor is. I think we have established metrics and we should use those metrics. We categorize editors already: "active" = 1 edit/last 30 days, "very active" = 100 edits/last 30 days. If you think we should have a third category in between, propose it somewhere, make sure the data is properly vetted by people who understand these things (not me), get consensus, etc. Maybe the wikistats number is wrong, but the WMF has an analytics team with (I assume) professionals who know this stuff. The fact that you don't understand why your query differs from the official number is the evidence of why you should not be unilaterally deciding how many high-volume editors there are. Levivich (talk) 02:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

The original isn't my query; it's the number that the regulars at Wikipedia:Request a query gave me. I modified it to produce the age-free/experience-free number that you wanted, but the 10K number is not my work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:53, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

@Levivich, it appears that the difference is in what constitutes a "countable page". Only edits to a page containing a link to another page get counted. AIUI if you create a userpage that says "Hello, World!", then that doesn't count, but if you link to "Hello, World!" program, then it does. This will exclude a lot of userpages, sandboxes, and unsubmitted draft articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

We really should restrict our metrics to autoconfirmed or ECP accounts, especially when defining "high-volume". Accounts below that (well, really a statistician should be helping us determine what a meaningful threshold is, but obviously the WMF has better things to do than employ anyone who knows anything about stats) are really just noise that should be disregarded for these kinds of questions. This might be because I spend like 14 hours a day looking at histograms, but I wonder at what median edit count (if any) we'd get something that actually resembled a standard bell or bimodal curve when plotting #users vs #edits/user. JoelleJay (talk) 04:33, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, I think it would be better for you not to comment on the qualifications of the WMF's data scientists until you actually know what you're talking about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:16, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Brought here by this comment. I don't really care about what gets displayed on this page, but to take a step back, I think it's more productive to think in terms of competency, rather than experience. First, we should encourage editors who are competent and thoughtful to contribute, and encourage those editors to work civilly with others. It's counterproductive to pressure people to potentially churn out slop or make mistakes as a means of gaining community approval. Second, edit quality is more important than edit quantity. If someone has 2,000 edits, two FAs, and productively contributes to behind-the-scenes stuff (AfD, RMs, RfCs, etc.), I would probably trust them to have better judgment than an editor with 20k edits, who has 5 previous blocks for trying to edit war over minor MOS Issues. voorts (talk/contributions) 05:57, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

In 2023, 812,635 registered editors made at least one edit; most were not blocked. Levivich (talk) 06:12, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I have used your source for many years and the accuracy is unbelievably Poor!!!! Ex: Go to Barry Van Dyke, click on Mary Carey Van Dyke and you get a picture of Barry and a stated view of his wife. The woman in the picture is Shirley Jones, nit Mary Carey Van Dyke!! What is going on at your so called service. This is but one of hundreds of errors. I got so disturbed that, the public cannot trust, not only pictures but written materials as well. Your service is pathetic! Doesn't anyone check, Edit the work of of these volunteers many of whom don't speak good English. I check favorite actors on occasion and a few months ago, the article and picture told me he was dead. A little investigation showed that it was another elderly man with the same name. Pictures, Articles etc. are all mixed together and it can be a challenghe to figure out what is and isn't correct. 2601:183:C901:44D0:DD64:A324:DA80:7A2F (talk) 23:17, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

You sound like a Wikipedian-at-heart. Each of the errors you found should be corrected, and you could do it yourself although yes, it is often good to point them out to everyone. The Wikipedia logo correctly contains the globe with an open top which signifies that the project will never be complete, the work never ending. All we can do is nudge it along (which you've done here, sincere thanks). The errors will creep in, and many stay. Hopefully someone, somewhere, will eventually catch them, which is one of the strengths of an open-source collaborative project. Randy Kryn (talk) 23:57, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

p.s. Not finding the Van Dyke link you mentioned. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:09, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the Personality section, second sentence, change "off" to "offline" for clarity. AstronomicalNerd (talk) 18:11, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@AstronomicalNerd:  Done -- John of Reading (talk) 07:38, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

It is Wikipedia pagea nd not article 204.144.211.25 (talk) 04:29, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to see whether I can assemble the numbers for unique registered accounts. The problem is that the query is really slow, so I'll post what I've got and try to update it later.

More information Year, Made any edit(s) ...

Number of registered editors active in each year, by number of edits made during that year

Year	Made any edit(s)	Made 1–9 edits	10–99	100–999	1,000–9,999	10,000–99,999	100,000–999,999	1,000,000+
2024	775,435	625,188	122,273	21,784	5,514	653	41	3
2023	812,635	660,890	124,521	21,144	5,389	636	41	3
2022	816,631	660,807	128,664	21,149	5,349	627	39	1
2021	894,812	730,185	136,105	22,230	5,551	706	36	3
2020	967,559	799,427	140,229	21,872	5,294	703	36	0
2019	940,449	782,699	132,851	19,539	4,787	601	30	1
2018	950,684	792,055	133,854	19,461	4,679	614	37	0
2017	966,961	801,846	140,213	19,641	4,629	634	39	1
2016	948,216	787,604	136,200	19,227	4,599	625	41	1
2015	995,726	827,484	143,262	19,788	4,653	617	25	1
2014	1,027,316	859,395	143,867	19,263	4,332	540	25	0
2013	955,867	788,606	142,214	19,982	4,594	570	23	1
2012	985,841	811,547	147,848	21,008	4,898	641	32	0
2011	1,112,947	923,727	161,425	22,109	5,192	632	33	0
2010	1,098,912	904,798	164,929	23,015	5,672	665	36	0
2009	1,202,241	988,240	181,567	25,757	6,170	736	33	1

Close

Key:

• ± 2% compared to previous year
• Down more than 2%
• Up more than 2%

WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

quarry:query/89569 splits the editors by number of edits made that year, but gets a slightly different total (different handling of bots?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:05, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Answer: Since articles get deleted over time, and some deleted/suppressed contributions are invisible to Quarry, every time we run this, we should expect slightly lower results. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Note: This query will probably need to be re-written to get 2025's numbers, to differentiate between registered accounts and Wikipedia:Temporary accounts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:49, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by the percentages given in the table reporting the 2023 October YouGov survey on US editors. The raw numbers in the sample size consistently sum to 998, but the corresponding percent values do not generally sum to 100%, and their values do not consistently match the percent that you'd obtain by dividing the raw number given by 998. I would be tempted to correct these values if there were just a few errors that might have been typos, but these values are so far off that I wonder if I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something. If that's the case, then I suspect that other readers will be similarly confused, and the article should provide some explanation of what these percentages signify, since what I take to be the most parsimonious interpretation would not be correct. Matthall.research (talk) 02:35, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh, what we have is badly written. If you look at the cited pdf (page 9), the table asks whether you've ever edited Wikipedia. Only 7% of the 998 respondents said yes. That's 6% of the 611 white respondents, 5% of the 119 Black respondents, 13% of the 155 Hispanic respondents, and 10% of the 113 respondents from other races.

So with a quick little bit of math, that means their survey found that the small minority of people who had ever edited Wikipedia were 50% white people, 8% Black, 27% Latino, and 15% from other races.

The whole table has this problem. Would you like to update it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:58, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

The redirect Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 16 § Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia until a consensus is reached. Justjourney (talk | contribs) 23:21, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@JBW: Regarding this edit, can you shed some light on where you got the above stat? Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:22, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

@Ed: Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#Determination_of_ranking_as_a_percentage JBW (talk) 19:13, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! I added that link to the page. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 20:25, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

@The ed17, see also Template:Registered editors by edit count. The /doc page has links to the queries if you need up-to-date numbers or want greater precision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:21, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Thank you very uch for that and for putting the original page together! Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 15:12, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

I've never understood why these counts include people who've never edited. Since they have not edited they are not Wikipedians. It's not like in American professional baseball with a 25-person roster where players, even if they haven't played on the field, are members of the team. At most, these account-only people are potential editors (potential Wikipedians) but not quite there yet. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:44, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Both sets of numbers are supplied.

Whether someone who tried to edit but gave up (a very common outcome), or who edits another Wikipedia, or who edited as an IP and then created an account that they never used, is "not a Wikipedian" is a personal opinion. Different people have different opinions. If you dislike the "all accounts" approach, then click the radio button at the bottom to switch the display to all successful contributors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Not a matter of personal opinion, counting someone who hasn't edited as an editor or a Wikipedian is inaccurate. The chart should remove that metric and reflect the correct number. Of course if they edited another Wikipedia they would count as Wikipedians, but not for the English Wikipedia chart. There is no way to determine your other exceptions. The chart isn't the only place where this inaccuracy exists, the "This page in a nutshell" wording at the top of this WP page includes a number implying that all of the people with an account are Wikipedians. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:40, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I mean, a version of that stat has been on this page since 2002. I'm not really confident your annoyance is shared by others. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:31, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

To be clearer, both placements contradict the first sentence of the WP page, "Wikipedians are volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia by editing its pages". Either that's untrue or the number is untrue, one or the other. I don't know what year that descriptor was applied, but in essence it exists on the 2002 link you've provided. At a minimum I'd suggest that the chart should be set so that the default shows only editors and not all users (which could then be the clickable option). Randy Kryn (talk) 03:34, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Errm... "Not a matter of personal opinion". You think that someone who has created an account but never edited should not be included; there are other people who think they should (obviously, or they wouldn't be included). What would be a matter of opinion, if something where some people think one thing and some people think another thing isn't? JBW (talk) 15:29, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I know, many think that the users who've never edited should be counted as editors, something I can't understand, but yes, of course they have that opinion. Recommending though that the visible chart be flipped to the second option as the immediately visible chart ({{Registered editors by edit count}}. Those who wish to see the chart which includes everyone who has made an account but hasn't edited (apparently 70%?) would have to switch to the second option. Switching options gives a much more accurate view of how many English Wikipedian editors, actual editors, have existed. What would be the main reason to keep the chart as it is? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:22, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I find the single most interesting fact about these statistics the extent to which the distribution of number of edits is extremely J-shaped: a significant majority of people with accounts have made no edits; of the minority who have edited, most have made only one edit; of the smaller minority who have made more than one edit, most have made two edits; of the still smaller minority who have made more than two edits, most have made three edits... and so on down to an absolutely tiny proportion who have made huge numbers of edits. The number who have made no edits is very much a part of that picture, and I don't see any reason to exclude it. As for the semantic question of whether this should be called the number of "Wikipedians", the number of "editors", the number of "people with Wikipedia accounts", the number of "potential editors", or whatever else, I absolutely don't see that as significant or interesting at all. Words are servants, not masters. Call it what you will: to me, and I suspect to many others, the fact that the substantial majority of ... whatever you like to call them ... have never edited is at least as interesting as the fact that 0.1% of ... whatever you like to call them ... have made at least 1,000 edits, if not more interesting; removing that interesting information (or hiding it, so that only people who look around and find a way to display it can see it) would therefore be a disservice. On the other hand, anyone who isn't interested in how many people have registered accounts but not (yet) used them can very easily just ignore it. JBW (talk) 16:50, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it is interesting that so many people have made accounts without editing. Kind of like people who've registered to vote but never voted, or who have taken out a library card but never used it. But if we are calling them "editors"? They just aren't. Even someone with one edit can accurately be called an editor, because they've edited. But I repeat myself (replicator-like). Thanks for discussing. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:57, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I think the main reason to keep the chart as it is is because the number of unsuccessful editors is surprising, or even shocking, to many people. Every time someone says that wikitext is easy, they need to be told that it's so "easy" that two-thirds of people who created an account never managed to get their first edit posted. The WMF looked into this as part of their work on the visual editor. The number of abandoned attempts in the wikitext editor is very high. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:23, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

All well and good, but are they Wikipedians - the subject of this page? The summary at the top of the article reads "Anyone can edit Wikipedia and become a Wikipedian. There are currently 51,299,459 Wikipedia accounts", implying that there are over 51 million Wikipedians. This is just not so. Randy Kryn (talk) 07:17, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

That's a great argument for explaining how few of those were actually successful in completing an edit, no?

Also, that nutshell ("Anyone can edit Wikipedia and become a Wikipedian. There are currently 52,016,525 Wikipedia accounts, of which 285,173 have made at least one edit during the last month") might need to be re-written. I think the introduction of Wikipedia:Temporary accounts has created and apples-and-oranges situation. We have 51 million accounts, 15 million of which have actually made an edit ever, and about 120K of which made at least one edit during the last month. The other ~170K are TAs, which are "Wikipedians" by the "ever successfully made an edit" definition, but they are (AIUI; I could be wrong) not part of the 51 million. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:12, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

There's a lot of making of assumptions going on here. For example, why assume that all of the people who have created an account but never edited "never managed to get their first edit posted"? Over the years I have made accounts on a number of websites but never used them. There have been various reasons for that, such as: I thought I might take part but changed my mind; I thought I might take part but then forgot about it; I started writing a question about something but while I was writing it realised what the answer was; ... etc etc ... JBW (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, there are a lot of reasons why this happens. But the devs had data in ~2010 showing that a significant number of new accounts attempted to edit in the old wikitext editor and gave up, so we know that this is one of the reasons why zero-edit accounts exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:13, 2 February 2026 (UTC)