Wikipedias very active editor numbers have

stabilizeddelve into the data with us

4 COMMENTSBY ED ERHART AND AARON HALFAKER ON SEPTEMBER 25TH, 2015

Very active editor numbers (>100 edits per month) since the English Wikipedias launch in 2001.
The thick red line symbolises a five-month moving average. Graph by Joe Sutherland, in the public
domain.

The English Wikipedias population of very active editorsregistered contributors with

more than 100 edits per monthappears to have stabilized after a period of decline.
Were seeing some of the same trends globally on other language Wikipedias.
On a month-to-month comparison of 2014 to 2015 on the English Wikipedia, very
active editor numbers have been consistently higher this year than last year. Augusts
very active editor total of 3,458 was the highest since March 2011. Globally, five of the
last eight months have had more than 10,000 very active editors per monththe first
time weve seen that consistently since July 2013. Broadly speaking, it appears the
number of very active editors has recovered from a mid-2013 drop and, for the
moment, is continuing upward aseasonally.
This trend is intriguing and raises several questions.
For example, active editor numbersthose with more than five edits per month
appear to be flat, both on the English Wikipedia and globally. Why are they not rising

alongside the number of very active editors? And where are the new very active
editors coming from? Are existing editors editing more? Are inactive editors returning?
Today, we are releasing a new dataset (documentation) to invite community members
and researchers to join us in analyzing this trend. Some potential directions of
investigation include:

Existing editors could be editing more

Fewer editors could be leaving

More editors could be coming back

The community could be reaching its new carrying capacity

Faster editing as a result of December 2014s performance improvements (How we

made editing Wikipedia twice as fast) could be enabling more edits

A temporary resurgence, known more colorfully as a dead cat bounce

Please let us know what you find.
Ed Erhart, Editorial Associate
Aaron Halfaker, Senior Research Scientist
Wikimedia Foundation

Active editor numbers (>5 edits per month) since the English Wikipedias launch in 2001. The thick
blue line symbolises a five-month moving average. Graph by Joe Sutherland, in the public domain.
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Categories:Community, Data analytics, Research, Wikipedia

Tags:data, datasets, open data, research, trends, Wikimedia, Wikipedia

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4 Comments on Wikipedias very active editor numbers have

stabilizeddelve into the data with us
mahmutbulut81 6 days

sizi tebrik ediyorum gzel bir deerlendirme

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Andrea 3 weeks
In my experience, I have lost the pleasure to contribute a few months ago. The reasons: long
discussions, unclear policies and rude administrators who apply rules arbitrarily; People who
take possession of items (alone or in groups) and that erase almost systematically new
contributions.

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ezachte 3 weeks
Related: http://infodisiac.com/blog/2015/05/active-editor-trends-as-year-over-year-changes/
For those of you who just want a quick peek on how other Wikipedias are doing, in editor
trends and more: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ReportCardTopWikis.htm

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ckoerner 3 weeks
Ed & Aaron, youre such a tease! Why do you think these numbers have stabilized? Do you
accredit them to some recent (in the past few years) change to the way folks interact with
Wikipedia? You mention speed improvements, but that alone wouldnt seem to make such an
improvement on its own. However there are many other initiatives (technical, on-boarding, etc.)
that might have an impact.
Im really curious as to the why and I hope further research helps us learn more.

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