Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by article count/Archive 1

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Spanish:Faltan 2 listas interesantes: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by category count y Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count (include redirects). [1] Saludos, cordialmente Globalphilosophy (talk) 21:30, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Is this list effectively retired?

Cross-posted from User talk:Himalayan Explorer

I don't do the listing any more... ‡ Himalayan ‡ ΨMonastery 21:37, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It just needs a refresh once in a while. I'm sure whoever manages the most edit list can update it. Lugnuts (talk) 08:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I wish that were the case, but it seems not to be. The number of edits list was updated just last month.
This list has only been done three times, October and April 2009 and once in 2007. — Robert Greer (talk) 17:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This will update weekly from now on. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:05, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Could someone update this list please

Could someone update this list please. It looks like it hasnt updated since March 2010. --Kumioko (talk) 10:00, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Just fix the date. The list last updated less than a week ago. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:26, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Took out date, since the /data is updated weekly, better to look at its history page, so someone doesn't have to manually update the date. --Funandtrvl (talk) 23:36, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Great thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 23:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Faulty update.

November 17th's update appears to be inaccurate. It says that I've only created 1,820 articles, but I know I've created at least 1,853. I'd like for this to be fixed, please. Wilhelmina Will (talk) 21:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh no! Lugnuts (talk) 11:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Link to query

Blofeld, you might want to link to or post the query used to generate this data, so that in the future it can be more easily re-run. I do remember that I posted a link to it somewhere. Raul654 (talk) 17:00, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

User:Bryan is the one who compiled it. I just thought it was worthy of having in the mainspace seems as we have related lists. Dr. Blofeld White cat 18:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, this is what I was looking for. Anyone with toolserver access can update this page, provided you supply them with that link. That's why I asked. Raul654 (talk) 20:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

AH I see. It should be updated probably at the same time as the edit count lis tis updated. Note though I cut the list from 5000 to the top 1000. Not sure if you want to include more, like 3000 or something. Dr. Blofeld White cat 15:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The query you pointed uses rev_id to search the first edit of a page. But rev_id is not ordered chronologically (ok, most times yes, but there is a few histories where they are unordered). Is it better to use min(rev_timestamp)? Regards. emijrp (talk) 07:49, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

List of Wikipedians by Category creation count

Should Category creation count be part of Article creation count, if not then do we have anyway to know top category creators on WP. Thanks, Vjdchauhan (talk) 10:26, 14 August 2009 (UTC).

No, category creations should not be included in this list - they are not the same thing (not even close). But it shouldn't be hard to tweak the query used to generate this page to get category creation numbers. Raul654 (talk) 20:46, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Agree and it would be interesting to have the category list created. Lugnuts (talk) 08:41, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Any update/movement with this? Lugnuts (talk) 09:30, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Bot removal

Can we remove the bots from the list? They're not really Wikipedians! --Bermicourt (talk) 19:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. And why are bots allowed to create articles in the first place?! Lugnuts (talk) 19:28, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Would anybody object if the bots were removed from the list? Jaguar (talk) 17:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't. Afterall, the title is List of Wikipedians..., not List of Bots.... Lugnuts (talk) 18:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
OK I'm going to have a shot at removing the bots from Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count/Data once and for all. Jaguar (talk) 19:33, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
Nice one - thanks for doing this. Lugnuts (talk) 09:30, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Users who change the name of their account

I am a Wikipedian with only one account and in May 2011 I was able to get my account renamed, from Moonraker2 to Moonraker. I am curious that the technology which produces this list treats my old identity as a separate one, whereas in the List of Wikipedians by number of edits the two identities are combined. So in the other list only Moonraker appears, with the total of edits for my account under both of its names, whereas in this list only Moonraker2 appears, with the article count for me on the day I was renamed. Is a more joined-up approach possible here, too? Moonraker (talk) 23:40, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Changed update schedule.

Why does the list only update every fortnight, instead of every week, now? Wilhelmina Will (talk) 01:44, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

And again I inquire as to why this list has not updated. The last update was on January 11th; that was two Wednesdays ago. I can understand why the Jan. 18 update was missed; that was when the SOPA protesting blackout occurred, but why was it not updated on the 25th? If it is not updated on Feb. 1st, I'd suggest that Bernsteinbot be examined, in case there is something wrong. Wilhelmina Will (talk) 12:42, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Looking at the data subpage, it looks like it gets updated every seven days, with two missing dates in January for no apparent reason. Raul654 (talk) 21:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Opt-in or something?

I like to see my name in the listing, but strange enough my account is not mentioned. Do you have to opt-in or so? According to SoxRed's counter, I have 165 articles. Seems enough to clear the glitches... Night of the Big Wind talk 20:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

You probably don't have an edit count high enough. I think the lowest count is in the 4000's. --Kumioko (talk) 20:39, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
As of last count, I have 12.000 edits, so that will not be a problem. Night of the Big Wind talk 21:28, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
Maybe create some more articles? Lugnuts (talk) 08:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
I think that is the only solution, yes... Night of the Big Wind talk 19:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Well it takes a while before the list is updated, usually once per week but it can take longer if BernsteinBot decides to take a vacation. I had the same thing when I passed the threshold but a while later I was listed. So be patient and you will appear in the list. BTW redirect pages don't count but DAB pages do. SpeakFree (talk)(contribs) 04:09, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I finally made the list , just. I think I have lost some points when an article is move away from the name I had chosen. For instance with Desmond Smith (Canadian general), that I published with the titel "J.D.B. Smith". But all is well now. Night of the Big Wind talk 16:24, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations! Moswento (talk | contribs) 16:38, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Are we running this or not???

OK, are we going to run this or not??? My vote is a yes. Has there been a decision??Coal town guy (talk) 17:56, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

It's run every week by a bot that updates a sub-page. If it hasn't been updated in a while, probably best to contact the owner of the bot. Lugnuts (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Tried that almost 2 weeks ago...what do you think?Coal town guy (talk) 19:02, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

More shortcuts!

The current shortcut WP:MOSTARTICLES is not a very good one! I suggest to add 1 or 2 easy to remember and shorter shortcuts. Suggestions–

--Tito Dutta (talk) 15:58, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

No more updates

This page should be archived, there are no more updates! Targaryenspeak or forever remain silent 15:26, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It's updated every week, actually. Just in a subpage so the history doesn't show it. Wizardman 01:22, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

should we get rid of this ranking?

I think all it does is encourage certain people to go and create thousands of stubs just to go up in the ranking, paying little or no attention to errors, quality, comments, responsibility, etc.

Could we please have this discussion? Is this the appropiate venue?

Thanks, Azylber (talk) 08:36, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

  • I would have thought there would always be editors who create thousands of stubs, regardless of whether you have this list or not. I'm also not actually aware of any editor who is currently creating stubs "just to go up in the ranking". The editors I know who mass create stubs generally do pay attention to errors and do respond to comments and fix mistakes when they arise. Moswento talky 08:53, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
    • this. If you are mass creating stubs, you generally need to get permission to do so. I create articles but not mass and at the moment, I try to get them to DYK and make sure all new articles pass WP:GNG at the time of creating. Not sure I see any evidence of problems. --LauraHale (talk) 09:03, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Hi Moswento, that's true, it won't keep it from happening, but I think it might make it happen less often. I've seen more than one example of people who create thousands of stubs with errors and ignore all comments left to them about errors, and then if you look at their user page it's all about how many stubs they've created. They seem to always mention "I'm position xx in the ranking", etc., it looks to me like they go, create 2000 more, and then go and check the list to see how many places they've gone up. Anyway, just a thought. Azylber (talk) 10:03, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Which user? There is more than one person in the top 50 creating that many stubs in order to move up? Since late April and 7 June, User:Carlossuarez46 and User:Doma-w are the only two users who created 2000+ articles as you cited. User:Jaguar had 7000 articles deleted. With only two people potentially causing problems, why should the page be deleted? Wouldn't it make more sense to open an RfC on their bulk article creating? --LauraHale (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
It causes no problems. It's the same as the edit count list. If a user is creating hundreds of sub-stubs of dubious quality, then they'll get blocked via ANI. That will happen if this list exists or not. Lugnuts (talk) 10:33, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
No, the list is just fun. For the more serious side: see the comments of Lugnuts. Night of the Big Wind talk 10:49, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
ok, got it Azylber (talk) 16:06, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Azylber just let it go and stop causing more trouble for god's sake. You have single handedly destroyed everything. 2.216.242.119 (talk) 12:20, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Destroyed what? By the way, your IP address is from Headley, UK. You're probably Jaguar. Azylber (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Destroyed stub creations - they are useful. 86.183.24.183 (talk) 16:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I just read this, yeah I'm a year and a half late, but that IP was NOT me! ☠ Jaguar ☠ 21:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
NO. I started in Wikipedia in March of 2012. I have created just over 1250 articles. YES, they are unincorprated communitites that are notable, are real, are populated, BUT are not documented in Wikipedia. SO, given the restrictions of no original research, I document these places with what I am able. In the US States on WV and KY, 99% of my articles in totum are for the unincorprated communitties there. It actually gives me a gauge on my work to know what I have created and WHY NOT recognize that? Are you telling me that preservation is not as important as what other lofty topics reside here? I hope not. If folks feel this is a category that is unfair, great, create query logic, with whatever absurd criteria and say here are the "real" Wikipedians and here are the losers who do stuff nobody really likes...Coal town guy (talk) 17:04, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

No you should not. It encourages stubs, and that is a great thing! Stubs are the start of articles, which can catch fire and create long, lengthy articles; or, well, they can be a similar length to any legit encyclopeadia, which is negligible. Besides, those at the top of this list are there for stubs, so why are new stub creators any lesser than those who got to it a few years ago? Maybe your argument here is actually for a new list for the most amount of words added to Wikipedia articles over time? That would be interesting... Jeremy112233 (talk) 00:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"No you should not. It encourages stubs, and that is a great thing! " < THIS. I create a lot of stubs, as usually other editors aren't keen on starting them (for whatever reason). Always good to see them appear on my watchlist when another user comes along and expands them. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 07:34, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I used to create a lot of stubs too, I created 10,000 till nearly all of them got deleted... some people don't appreciate stubs! ☠ Jaguar ☠ 16:05, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Toolserver

What's the tool in Toolserver that list all the article created by a user? Nvm, I found it Bennylin (talk) 04:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

  • Is there a new version of this tool? Or is it lost because of the fast track deletion policy when a user decides not to renew their account, disregarding that their tools could be useful to other people than the user who uploaded them? Targaryenspeak or forever remain silent 00:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Something is dreadfully wrong...

I've added a lot of pages to my count lately, but no part of this list seems to be updating. The history on the Data subpage indicates that it IS updated weekly or so, but the table there and on the main page isn't changing at all. I'm guessing that it won't be hard to fix, (or that I'm missing something), but as far as I can see, the counts are definitely not being incremented. Lou Sander (talk) 20:16, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

It has been fixed now. Thanks! Lou Sander (talk) 02:58, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

On this list

I expect to appear on this list once I have created 102 articles or more, without any other action on my part. Can someone please confirm my expectation? --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:39, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Probably 103 by the time you get there, but yes, I didn't do anything to appear on it.--Milowent • hasspoken 02:37, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
Speaking of which, note that the https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/pages page is non-operational and the http://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/ page isn't working either. For those of us who like to recall WHICH pages we are credited for creating, this is a loss. Can anyone check on this? Montanabw(talk) 20:31, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits#No_update more information.--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:53, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Counts on user page

Users can display some counts on their user page:

154,000+This user has made more than 154,000 contributions to Wikipedia.
105This user is ranked 105 on the list of Wikipedians by number of edits.
This user is ranked 4063 on the list of Wikipedians by articles created.

What is not displayed is the number of articles created, only the ranking. I would like that to be displayed, but I don't know where to ask. Any advice? Anyone able to make a display?--DThomsen8 (talk) 14:06, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

I have this template on my userpage:
 0.27% This user has created 18,424 of the 6,821,444 articles on the English language Wikipedia.

Just change the figure to whatever your number of articles is (it's correct for me, BTW). And there's this one I created for categories too:

This user has created 3829 categories on Wikipedia.

Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 14:12, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Just what I wanted, User:Lugnuts. If 18424 is humble, what is my 129? All of these numbers are both motivation to do more, and recognition, sometimes with computer database help, that others have done far more.--DThomsen8 (talk) 00:03, 21 July 2014 (UTC)
No problem! Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 08:35, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Query

I'm pretty sure this list has not been updated for a while, has something gone wrong? Hughesdarren (talk) 11:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Please see this. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 11:27, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Username change

I recently had my username changed from SpeakFree to Targaryen. Could this please be updated in the list as well? Targaryenspeak or forever remain silent 12:00, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

should we get rid of this ranking?

I think all it does is encourage certain people to go and create thousands of stubs just to go up in the ranking, paying little or no attention to errors, quality, comments, responsibility, etc.

Could we please have this discussion? Is this the appropiate venue?

Thanks, Azylber (talk) 08:35, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

NO, we should not. I say that because look at all of the other rankings on Wikipedia proper. Edits, for example. Are you telling me that the literal thousandas and thousands of edits that are performed, as small as, removing an error in punctuation, really really count? As to the stubs, most of my articles are geography stubs for unincorporated communitites. Sounds as though that does not mean alot right? Well, how about the fact that many of these places have people, who (gasp) go on Wikipedia to find their small town and actually begin to contribute dfata that makes a stub, an actual article? I know I did.Coal town guy (talk) 13:11, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
No, we should not. It is a service to other Wikipedians. There is no need to kill off a service that is appreciated by many Wikipedians because a few get hyped up by a ranking. By the way, can you proof that the stub-creators really do that because they want to get up in the ranking? Or is their upward movement in the ranking a side effect from the work they are doing? Night of the Big Wind talk 13:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Can we run this please??

This has not been updated in some time, can we run this soon?Coal town guy (talk) 18:48, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Opting out?

It would be nice if one could opt out of this list in the same way as for the number of edits, by putting one's name on this list. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:44, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The list is no longer being updated, so it's a moot point. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 18:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
It is being updated irregularly, most recently on 25 June 2014‎, on the sub-page Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count/Data. I consider that uncomfortably recent and will therefore not create any more pages. As time goes by, the people who standardize page titles in novel ways will probably move enough of my creations to unrecognizable titles that I'll drop off the bottom of the list at the 100 pages cutoff, and at that point I'll feel a pleasant aura of privacy once again -- problem solved. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:56, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
Meanwhile, in Gaza... Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 06:54, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I wish the list were more accurately updated, I have over 200 articles now, but the list doesn't reflect that. Montanabw(talk) 22:33, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Will this page ever be updated again?2602:30A:C06F:C4C0:342C:5FAF:3DDD:C0E0 (talk) 04:27, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Before reviving

Before reviving this, make sure the page accepts opt-outs. Otherwise, it's better to keep it historical. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:46, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree. Common courtesy would mean that people's wishes should be respected, without them having to hunt down any similar list to the one they opted out of. The removal can be done manually. It would be good if whoever does that at Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits would share any hints they have about how to automate the process, though one can imagine ways to generate find-and-replace commands for a text editor that would work. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
This page is linked to on the userpages of nearly 300 of our most productive users, and lists the people who wrote 60% of this encyclopedia. Would be nice if someone can make it work again and indeed with an opt-out. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 22:52, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
Agree, we need to activate this again. I think most of the various lists with various editcountitis stats all have opt-out provisions. Montanabw(talk) 05:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Suggest raising it at WP:VPT and WP:AN. If the edit count list can be updated daily, I don't see why this can't. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 09:03, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
Great idea. I'd do it myself, but have never posted anything at either. These editcountitis pages probably lead to more content creation than all of our editathon-type activity. Edwardx (talk) 17:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
There's some truth in that! It does sadden me though when I look to see what the editors directly above and below me are working on, and they haven't edited in years :( Send the month's biggest movers a massive cake or summat. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 01:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Asked at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#List_of_Wikipedians_by_article_count. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:24, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

FYI, I've been fiddling with some code to update this from the stub-meta-history files in the DB dumps (which would allow approximately monthly updates). Slow going -- even with all the files downloaded, it's taking ~ 24 hours to iterate through them on my machine (partly because I can't unzip them, due to disk space constraints). Basically, since actually parsing the XML is wayyyy too resource-intensive, I'm going through each "<page>" tag, skipping the ones that aren't NS0, and then looking for the first "<username>" tag in the page history unless it's preceded by a "<redirect" or "<ip>" tag, in which case I skip to the next "<page>". Preliminary results encouraging, but not quite there... Will post my code if/when I get results that more or less match up with the existing list. There are probably smarter ways of approaching the problem, but in the absence of other volunteers I figured I'd give it a shot. Once we have accurate counts, dealing with opt-outs &c. should be fairly straightforward. -- Visviva (talk) 16:48, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Par for the course at the village pump, I fear, but it's nice to see your efforts Visviva! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:35, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Maybe it's off topic, but it's interesting to note that London's 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak was caused by a misperforming "village pump". ;-) Lou Sander (talk) 23:11, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Update

Here is my current state of work. Here is the code I am using (Python 2.7). The discrepancies relative to the existing list are mostly small, but in a few cases almost comically huge, including some users who have lost hundreds of pages. For that reason I am keeping this in my userspace for now.

I am not entirely sure I understand the reason for the discrepancies, but I have a suspicion that the huge increase for the "Conversion script" count is a clue. I've turned a few ConversionScript-created redirects into articles myself, and across the length and breadth of Wikipedia, I could imagine such redirect-to-article conversions numbering 13,000+ over the space of a few years. If the previous list maintainer was only updating information for newer pages, s/he would miss those changes in status (along with any other changes to or from redirect status in older pages -- which might explain users like me who actually lost ground). Alternatively, there may still be some elementary bug in my code that I'm missing. -- Visviva (talk) 08:53, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

In case it might help you, I did on the order of ten redirect-to-article conversions in the early part of 2014. I did them all by hand. I might be able to track down at least a few of them, if you think it's worth the effort. Lou Sander (talk) 20:10, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
Update: I was right about the Conversion script count discrepancy being a clue, but not in the way I thought. In fact the issue is a very simple one that's mentioned higher on this page: a lower revision ID (and earlier position in the DB dump) does not necessarily mean an earlier date -- and this issue seems mostly to affect Conversion script edits. Off to run the count again; I'll be back in a day or ten. -- Visviva (talk) 23:55, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
That sounds very promising. When I had created just a few pages, I checked the list from my contributions page and was disappointed that it was deficient (to my way of counting). Consequently, I haven't paid much attention to these matters since, so don't recall what all the pages I created actually are. I've noticed people who keep their own lists, so perhaps they could be invited to a discussion when the counts are looking ready for publication. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:49, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
FYI, I'm one of those people who keep a close count of the articles they have started. For what it's worth my count is at User:Lou_Sander#Articles_started. There is some background on what I count, etc., HERE. Just trying to help. Lou Sander (talk) 16:46, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
I'm pleased that this project is still being worked on; well done. I also manually keep track of how many articles I create (see my user page) and I can attest that your update as of December 8 is very accurate for me. I am listed as having created 104 as of December 8, whereas by my count at that date I had created 105 (not including articles that I expanded from redirects (of which there are currently 5), or redirects I created that were expanded by others (of which there is currently 1)). Freikorp (talk) 06:33, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
And there are a couple of tools that crunch this for us too. But (bwahahahaaha) what I like here is to see how I stack up against other editors. I hope that tool can be fixed! Montanabw(talk) 04:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
My latest count does in fact have you at 106 (105+1). Huzzah! (Unfortunately you get cut off the bottom of the list at present, while other 106s are in, which raises the question of how to handle that cutoff -- maybe having a cutoff in terms of number of articles created (say 100) would make more sense than just chopping the list at 5000?) There are still some weird discrepancies from the previous list, but without being able to peer into the bowels of the previous system, I suspect this may be as close as I'm going to be able to get. If anybody is curious about a rise or fall in their count and wants to do some detective work, I'm happy to furnish a list of the articles that my script thinks you started. -- Visviva (talk) 06:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Update: After patching various bugs, the latest count (currently with bots removed) is a lot closer to the original, though there are still significant discrepancies for a few users. Next step is probably to run this on the January dump and see if anything goes haywire. Among the fun bits of trivia I have learned while working on this: as of the December 2014 dump, there is exactly one article on EN Wikipedia that has zero attributed revisions. -- Visviva (talk) 06:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm. It's a start - it lists me with 204 articles and [2] says I have 212, excluding redirects, of course. Montanabw(talk) 10:39, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the impetus to try that tool again. It had always been giving me an internal error, so I figured it was broken, but apparently I just had to use Chrome. (Yay, more Google in my life!) ... Upon review, the 8-page discrepancy seems to break down as follows:
  • 4 deleted pages (not traditionally included in this count)
  • 2 pages created since December 8
  • 2 pages that, from a review of the page history, appear to have been created by someone else (Heck horse and John Lyons (horse trainer)) ... this is a bit odd, but the logs show that both of these had a WP:HISTMERGE done in 2009, so maybe that's part of the puzzle. I feel weird saying this, but for these two pages, I think it's actually the Xtools count that's wrong.
-- Visviva (talk) 16:01, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
LOL! (I used Safari, FWIW) I think that at least one of those articles had ben deleted and then I recreated it from scratch. Montanabw(talk) 19:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
Yes: thinking about this a little more clearly (maybe), it might be that you did in fact create the article from scratch, and then another version got histmerged (or undeleted and then histmerged, or who knows what), so that you are really the article creator but don't have the earliest revision in the revision history. It makes sense that Xtools would handle that more savvily, since they seem to have programmatic access to deletion info. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way a dump-based approach can make those kinds of distinctions. -- Visviva (talk) 07:11, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Update (rather belated in posting here, sorry): final version based on December 2014 dump, version based on January 2015 dump, changes from December to January. The largest downward movements appear to be properly accounted for by mass redirections and userfications (and now that I've tracked down some of these mass redirections in the wild, it seems more plausible that the large variations wrt the last version of this page might be of legitimate origin), while the largest upward movements appear to correspond to actual article creations. I also did some random checks on the smaller movers, and didn't find anything out of place. Please let me know if you see anything weird. I am having some issues uploading my raw attributions files, but will happily share them or a desired subset (articles attributed to a specific user) with anyone who is interested. -- Visviva (talk) 07:11, 2 February 2015 (UTC) Attribs files for December and January available here as a single ZIP file; note that each file is about 4.5 million lines -- one line for each article -- so a lot of GUI text editors will choke on them. Format for each line is just "article title[tab]username".
I like that in-month change report. Nice work. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 09:25, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
My count is still off by 10 compared to the stats at wmflabs. Feel free to use my numbers and articles as a playground - 200+ still manageable, I add new stuff periodically, and so on. Montanabw(talk) 22:22, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for checking! Looking it over, I think the discrepancy breaks down the same way as before: 4 articles created since the dump ran on January 13, 4 deleted pages, 2 histmerge artifacts. -- Visviva (talk) 23:31, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
Mine also off by nearly 10. 564 (wmflabs) vs 553 (Visviva, January). Wmflabs lists 8 deleted articles, so that would reduce the difference to just 1 (I think). — Brianhe (talk) 00:36, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
Looking at the list, there are also 3 that you've created since January 13 (when the last dump ran). 3 post-dump creations plus 8 deletions seems to account for the discrepancy (564 - 553 = 11). -- Visviva (talk) 00:59, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
You're right, I can math (sometimes). Thanks for your work on this. — Brianhe (talk) 02:41, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Updating this report

This report died with the Toolserver. Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count/Data updated from March 2010 to June 2014. Before the report's death, it was slowly rotting. The most noticeable issue was that user renames weren't taken into account. Earlier this year, I see above that there was a small (and admirable!) effort to get this report updated, but those efforts seem to have fizzled out. At this point, it seems nobody else is willing or able to update this report, yet it's still one of the most popular reports, as far as I can tell.

Over the past few days, I've been thinking about how I would update this report if I did it again. These types of reports are, of course, generally wrapped in a request to indefinitely update the report. But in addition to the lifelong data refresh commitment, there's also a matter of storing, in perpetuity, at least a few million data points and regularly expanding this data as new pages are created. It's not an enjoyable report to create or update, as anyone who has tried quickly discovers.

I guess we'll see how serious I am about updating this report in the next few days. I have most of the technical details sketched out in my head. I'll put some additional notes below. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:43, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Scratchpad

These items are now resolved.

Help

Perhaps you could post non-technical tasks that need work here, so myself and others can help make this happen. Let me know, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 19:21, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi FoCuSandLeArN. Unfortunately, there aren't many non-technical tasks to be done here. In looking at this list again, I see that bots such as Kotbot and Polbot are currently included. On the edit count list, bots, even unflagged bots, are excluded. Should this list similarly exclude bots? --MZMcBride (talk) 01:35, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
That's a question that the community needs to address. In my opinion, they shouldn't be included in the list itself, but rather as a side note. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 01:38, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Tossing a rock into the bush

Just a thought, while I have no idea whether it's even feasible: Possibly of more value than first edits/page creations may be the largest expansions done to an article - those would, after all, be the contributors who did most of the work. -- André Kritzinger (talk) 13:07, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Can that be done with current tools? I can see single largest edit ( and would cut down on the people who make 10 zillion edits to add three words and a comma), but can it accrue total size of contributions from an editor? I know current stats can count who made the most edits, but can they add up total size of contributions? - and how to weed out stuff like restoring blanked pages that vandals removed??? I like the concept, but wonder how to make it happen? Montanabw(talk) 06:15, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
At Wiki Ed we've been trying to think about how to do this sort of thing as a way to measure the impact of student edits in particular. I'll watch this thread in the hope someone else has figured it out, but the stumbling block seems, to me, to be sorting reverts and other more administrative edits from those working on content directly. In other words, by measuring character/word count, a single rv of page blanking could send someone to the top of the list. While page blankings may be easy to detect, it's not always so clear. So other than article count, the easy metrics are numbers of characters and numbers of edits -- both of which are also problematic. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:46, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Hi Ryan (Wiki Ed). Straight reverts and straight blank pages are both pretty easy to detect these days. For each revision, MediaWiki stores a fingerprint (hash) of the revision's wikitext contents and the length, in bytes, of the wikitext page content. Finding revisions with the exact same wikitext content, which is what happens with a simple revert, or finding pages that are completely blank (a page length of 0 bytes) is fairly straightforward by simply scanning through the revision table. It's the non-straight reverts and non-straight page blankings/vandalism that are significantly more difficult to programmatically query. That said, perfect is so often the enemy of the good. There are likely ways to programmatically query the type of information you're after with a 70–80% accuracy rate. It's that last 20–30% that would be full of ugly edge cases. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:51, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It would be possible to do something fairly crude in this line with the stub-meta-history dump, which contains revision size and hash (so that reverts and reverted edits could be identified and tossed out, and the raw magnitude of expansion for each revision could be measured -- this is one way I've thought about dealing with redirect expansion, but setting an exact threshold for "expansion" becomes problematic). More ambitiously, there are various "wikiblame" and "wikitrust"-type algorithms that could be (and perhaps have been) repurposed to break down the percentage of current page content that can be traced to each contributor. That might be useful for something like Wiki Ed, where you're presumably looking at a fairly small set of articles. But scaling those algorithms to run over the entire project would require some very substantial dedicated resources, because (1) you'd need to be able to process the full history dump, which is orders of magnitude larger than the stub-meta-history dump, (2) you'd be applying algorithms that are orders of magnitude more complex than what's needed to generate a list like this one, and (3) you'd need some very sharp coders to wring every last drop of performance out of those algorithms (it's amazing how significant the tiniest differences in performance become when you're iterating over 776 million revisions). Fun to think about, but unless some university's comp sci department volunteers for the task, it seems out of reach for now. -- Visviva (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
Hi André Kritzinger. Unfortunately, programmatically determining a single "largest expander" of a page is non-trivial. I'm not even sure doing it non-programmatically would be very simple. Who would you say is the largest expander of Britney Spears or Abortion? :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:37, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Point taken. Thanks for looking into possible solutions. And good luck with restoring the article count stats - even that was never perfect either. (I'm working on a largish article right now that will end up as expanding an existing redirect page...) -- André Kritzinger (talk) 11:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
To nitpick, I don't think quantity of prose added should be considered equivalent to the work done on an article. The expansion could double the prose but drastically decrease the quality. That "work" would be damage. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 04:05, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I would, by the way, like to see this list refreshed. Cheers! bd2412 T 14:31, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't we all? I don't know how we could go about making this solvable. An RfC, maybe? FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:44, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Breadcrumb

Hi. For anyone looking at this report's page history and wondering what the source of Dr. Blofeld's first edit was, the answer is User:Bryan/List of users by pages created. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:17, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Updates

  • I've restarted my dump-based page; it is now current as of the June 2nd dump. I had lost focus on it after the February dump failed to complete, but I've now set it to run as a cron job on my server, querying the "latest" page on the mirror site once a week to see if there's been a new dump, and then running a new scan automatically if so. So we'll see if that works to overcome the human element. ;-)
  • To the best of my knowledge, this data reflects the stub-meta-history dump accurately. (That is, any issues arising from redirect expansions, histmerges, merges, post-dump-date creations, etc., ultimately come from the limitations of the stub-meta-history files themselves.) I have not made any changes to the substantive code since my last report here in Jan/Feb, and efforts to find errors in the data at that time were unsuccessful. Which is not to say that there aren't errors to find. If anybody wants to go bug hunting, I'll happily furnish the (5-million-line) attributions file.
  • Just the other day, I realized that there is a way to have a pretty-good rolling estimate of page creation counts based on the API, backstopped by the dump, and without going to a huge amount of work. In a typical day, less than 1000 pages are created in article space by non-bots. Thus, it only takes a couple of API calls per day to keep the count updated. To make the count 100% accurate would require also tracking the move, deletion and undeletion logs, which is more complexity than I'm up for at the moment -- and that's what had held me back from this before -- but in any event, those inaccuracies are naturally ironed out when the next dump is processed. And by running the API query only for pages created at least 24 hours ago, any really egregious spam, mistakes, etc., will have mostly been addressed. I've set that up at User:Visviva/Pagecount experimental, and will be updating that as a cron job too, once I finish poking at it. -- Visviva (talk) 18:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
    Jolly good! I'm glad to see this back on track, although I would prefer an article count excluding redirects (on a personal level), like your experimental page shows. Kind regards, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 15:37, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
I second what FoCuSandLeArN said - I'm not in favour of the redirect count. But thanks for taking the time and effort to do what you have done - it is appreciated. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 18:47, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
Agree with the above. Glad to see it's updated but get rid of the redirect count. Wizardman 19:51, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
As long as the redirect count isn't used to calculate rankings, (I was wondering how I went from 2558 to 1593 on the list, but with four of my articles still not listed...?) I could go either way. But redirects definitely should NOT count toward the ranking! (takes two seconds to make a redirect, and given the capitalization wars, I've often made multiple ones off of a single article, definitely NOT something I want included in an article creation ranking of me or anyone else...) Montanabw(talk) 00:36, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

@Visviva: - please see the above thoughts. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 14:28, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I should perhaps clarify that I have not touched this page, only the draft pages in my userspace. It just so happened that a short time after I posted the above, this page was reanimated by @MZMcBride:, using (I think) the amazing and new-to-me functionality at Tool Labs. -- Visviva (talk) 15:12, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
Ahh, my mistake. Thanks for clarifying! Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 17:02, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

As chuffed as I am to have moved up the list by a few thousand places, I also agree that redirects should not count towards ones ranking. Nevertheless just wanted to say a huge thank you for getting this up and running again. :) Freikorp (talk) 15:26, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

I've dropped a note on MZMcBride's talkpage to look at the comments here. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 18:16, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Hi. If you want the list sorted by non-redirects, you can click the table header. The numerical "ranking" (the "No." column) is just a simple enumeration of the table cells, really. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:20, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

admin and Autopatroler flags

I would like to use this list to trawl for potential autopatroller candidates, would it be possible two add two markers denoting which editors are admins and which are autopatrollers? ϢereSpielChequers 07:49, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

  • WereSpielChequers: Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits has a few markers, but I don't know if that helps. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 23:14, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
    • Yes those are the flags I'd like to see on this list. That list is useful for things like reviewer, I've found a number of overlooked editors from that list who've never been allocated any extra userrights - what I'd like is to have at least some of the flags there on this list. Someone who creates lots of articles might not have enough edits to make that list. More importantly a large proportion of the people on that list don't create many articles, they might categorise or fight vandalism, but for Autopatroller you really need to look at article creators. ϢereSpielChequers 05:51, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
  • I think it was probably a mistake to add user groups to the edit count list. I'm not inclined to add user groups to the article count list. I've actually been slowly leaning toward the opposite: removing user groups from the edit count report for consistency with this report. (I also think the edit count report should include bots and sort by the total edits, deleted and non-deleted.)
    If you want a "Autopatroller candidates" or "Potential autopatrollers" or whatever report, that should be handled separately, in my opinion. Re-purposing the existing reports adds needless clutter for marginal benefit (I think WereSpielChequers is the only person who's ever requested that the user groups be included). A dedicated report for autopatrolled status would have a lot less noise and presumably a lot more signal. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:09, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Something has stopped updating

According to the page history the bot updates regularly, but something is wrong (I've been creating daily for the last month or so, but my counts stopped changing - I don't know when, as I don't check this page often). Materialscientist (talk) 04:16, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I think someone runs the update manually.... I think the bot is still messed up. :-P Montanabw(talk) 02:03, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It still looks to be missing something: according to this, I have a total of 124 pages (including redirects) created, but I'm not seeing my username pop up in the list yet (unless I'm missing something...). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:08, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it does seem to be faulty; it's recently increased my count by a mere 2 articles when I've created about 100 this past month. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 19:31, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Ditto. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 14:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh, now I see this section. Sorry, you need to ping me if you need my attention (e-mail, IRC, my talk page, this talk page...). I don't watch this talk page very closely and BernsteinBot is still "updating" the report for whatever reason, so I didn't know there was an issue in need of my attention. This also explains why I almost missed this thread and why I finally became aware of this thread and the underlying issue, after Lugnuts pinged me. Anyway, the report should hopefully be fixed by Monday. I need to write a quick test/verification script first and then diagnose and address whatever bug is causing the counts to not update. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:31, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I pinged you. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:15, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Err, right! --MZMcBride (talk) 06:01, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks MZMcBride. Fingers crossed it all works on Monday. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 10:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

I wrote a quick verification script (verify-article-counts.py). The output indicates that there is indeed an issue: 

Cached counts for Lugnuts:   24324   23028   47352
Calced counts for Lugnuts:   25620   23873   49493

Now it's just a matter of finding and fixing the issue. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:35, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so the underlying issue is that the replicated copy of the enwiki database available on Tool Labs is missing a few rows in its revision table. And being the fool that I am, I trusted the Labs database to have some integrity. These few missing rows caused the update script to keep stopping. The only reported changes the past few months would have been deleted pages, I suppose.

The data integrity issue is now tracked at phabricator:T118095. I hacked around it in update-revisions-database.py and now, re-running verify-article-counts.py, we get: 

Cached counts for Lugnuts:   25629   23878   49507
Calced counts for Lugnuts:   25630   23878   49508

This looks a lot better.

I (re-)committed to maintaining this report earlier this year, but I still rely pretty much exclusively on users to complain and notify me when this report is no longer updating as expected. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:42, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

The latest update looks promising – the bottom of the list is no longer 118 total articles (as it's been for ages now), but is now 119 total articles. Oh, and my name has finally popped up on the list too. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 08:09, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Looks like the list started working again. I jumped from 2,570 to 1,382. :-) Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 08:32, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Great work. Thanks MZMcBride. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 10:42, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

What the hell?

Why were relatively meaningless redirects added to this list? Admittedly, it's been quite some time since I've reviewed this list, but it is virtually impossible to tell what the numerical rankings are for editors based on articles created because the rankings include a combination of redirects and actual articles. I would urge a return to the format that only showed articles created, with a separate list created for combined articles and redirects. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:41, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

  • Good idea Dirtlawyer1. Although the current list shows both in separate columns, but the actual rankings go for toss due to redirects. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 05:03, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Agree with eveything above. Hughesdarren (talk) 05:21, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Indeed. For example, I have routinely moved thousands of articles per MOS:CAPS, automatically creating thousands of redirects; this has nothing to do with article creation - it involved (almost) no typing, only mouse clicks. Materialscientist (talk) 05:34, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
  • The "No." column is simple enumeration. Perhaps this isn't communicated clearly enough. Other users are welcome, of course, to take this data and use it to create their own silly rankings by excluding bots, only including certain types of main namespace pages, etc. Perhaps someone can find a ranking methodology that places me at number 1! --MZMcBride (talk) 06:17, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Splitting the current list probably makes sense – the current list, however, should probably be moved to List of Wikipedians by page creation or something (and continue to include redirects along with articles), while List of Wikipedians by article count should focus the list to just non-redirect articles (and, preferably, just non-redirect and non-disamig. articles as well, if there's a way to do that...). What I'm wondering is if the current BernsteinBot could handle both tasks, or would this require a second bot to work up the latter list?... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:11, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Too bad, useless list by now. The Banner talk 20:05, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
You're welcome, of course, to take the source code and generate your own report. Or you can write your own code to create whatever lists you'd like. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 15:57, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Name not on list

I have created 158 pages, yet my name is not on the list. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 12:12, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

You might be here, but it is updated sporadically. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 12:38, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
The full list of 10,000 users is currently updated daily. That is, the 5001–10000 list (a series of sublists) is updated just as often as the 1–1000 list. BernsteinBot was busted for a few months, but should be better now. As I said in threads above, if updates stop happening for any portion of this list, please let me know and I'll try to fix it. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:40, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi Capankajsmilyo. Looking at this list of your main namespace page creations, it looks like you're at about 44 pages currently. This is great! It looks like the list of Wikipedians by article count currently bottoms out at about 119 main namespace pages created, though, which explains why you're not listed there. I think your 158 pages statistic might include pages outside the main namespace, which this list ignores. If you still believe there's an error in the list, please let me know and I can investigate. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:52, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi MZMcBride, please check this. It shows that my article count now is 90+52-5=137. The name is still not on the list. Please check. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 09:10, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Hi Capankajsmilyo. If you look at Special:Permalink/700551202, you can perhaps see a clearer breakdown. You have 88 main namespace page creations currently on the English Wikipedia. Of those 88 pages, 34 pages are non-redirects and 54 pages are redirects. You currently need more than 121 main namespace pages created to appear on the list of top 10,000. Hope this helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:50, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Name not on list

I am not on it either. What's going on? [3] CrazyAces489 (talk) 01:22, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi CrazyAces489. You're on this page: Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count/5001–10000. This is what your counts were reported as on December 13, 2015. The subject-space page (Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count) only shows the first 5,000 results currently. The next 5,000 results are at /5001–10000. Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:32, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Neither am I

I am not either, and should be as well. This seems like it should be automated by a tool, or not exist. It seems impossible to be accurate or up-to-date otherwise.SecretName101 (talk) 04:31, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi SecretName101. You currently have 5 non-redirect page creations and 37 redirect creations on the English Wikipedia. This is great! Unfortunately, the list currently bottoms out at 121 pages created. You're only at 42. This report should update automatically daily. You can check the page history to see the updates. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Move to Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedia accounts by article count?

Hear me out on this one. There is a large number of bots near the top of the list, and the No. 1 spot is particularly glaring as User:RjwilmsiBot is particularly glaring as one of that accounts main purposes appears to be to create redirects, hence the enormous discrepancy between its full article count and its redirect count. I'm not initiating an RM because I worry I may be missing some instance where this has already been discussed and a legit argument was made for referring to this many legitimate alternate accounts and bots as "Wikipedians". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:59, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: - I think the issue would be on how the list is generated, as it's done by a bot. The sister article of Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits doesn't include bots, so it should be easy enough to remove them from this one. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 19:19, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
Hear, not here. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 17:47, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Bots?

I think we should remove bots from this list. It's sister list of Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits which does not include bots. The page is "wikipedians by article count" not "accounts by article count". Most of the bots have created a massive amount of redirects and not much else. Any thoughts? - Yellow Dingo (talk) 01:56, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Anyone? - Yellow Dingo (talk) 09:13, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, support the removal of bots. Makes sense to have the two lists consistent. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 09:16, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Me too, same reason. Hughesdarren (talk) 09:19, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Ditto. Bots aren't people therefore they don't belong on a list of Wikipedians. - Brianhe (talk) 13:52, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
The two lists (edits and articles) are done by two different bots. But I guess this one could be done in the same way as the edits list, IE without the bot. @MZMcBride: - would this be possible? Is it easy enough to change with your bot? Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 14:20, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Different bots? Nah, BernsteinBot handles both lists. Different scripts, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:08, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi. This has come up a few times in previous discussions. Personally, I'm still inclined to change Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits to include bots rather than excluding bots from this report. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:04, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Verifying article counts

Using verify-article-counts.py: 

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Instantnood"
Cached counts for Instantnood:   270   531   801
Calced counts for Instantnood:   271   531   802

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Draggleduck"
Cached counts for Draggleduck:   768   70   838
Calced counts for Draggleduck:   768   70   838

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "The JPS"
Cached counts for The JPS:   175   675   850
Calced counts for The JPS:   175   675   850

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Thibbs"
Cached counts for Thibbs:   68   611   679
Calced counts for Thibbs:   68   611   679

This all looks pretty good. Only off by one for Instantnood, but otherwise the numbers look legit enough. But then we get: 

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Lugnuts"
Cached counts for Lugnuts:   30919   26834   57753
Calced counts for Lugnuts:   30940   26857   57797

Ouch. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:57, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Am I being screwed over by the system?! Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 09:29, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
It seems so! I ran a few more tests:
tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Dsimic"
Cached counts for Dsimic:   41   1377   1418
Calced counts for Dsimic:   41   1377   1418

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Legoktm"
Cached counts for Legoktm:   84   868   952
Calced counts for Legoktm:   84   868   952

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Another Believer"
Cached counts for Another Believer:   3067   4893   7960
Calced counts for Another Believer:   3066   4893   7959

tools.mzmcbride@tools-bastion-03:~/scripts/enwiki$ ./verify-article-counts.py "Canley"
Cached counts for Canley:   864   1552   2416
Calced counts for Canley:   864   1552   2416
Everyone's numbers are pretty well matched up except yours, I guess. I suspect phabricator:T115207 is related. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
I'm literally mad with rage! If it was hundreds rather than a couple of dozen per section, I'd be worried. On a related topic, would a similar list for numbers of categories created be possible? Well, I know it's possible, but can it be done in the same style as this and the total edits list? Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 19:31, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
Zero one infinity rule: I chose one. Switching to infinity is certainly possible; it would be a matter of updating and re-running the relevant scripts. But adding support for categories seems like more work than it's worth. Unless, of course, we have reason to believe that I would be highly ranked in a list of Wikipedians by category count. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
Fair enough - thanks for the reply. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 07:37, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Updated Pie Chart

I would like to post an updated pie chart to accurately show the breakdown of articles by tier of creation (1-100-, 1001-2000, etc., everyone else) similar to the pie chart currently posted (current January 2014). Is that okay? Also, would it be preferred to show all pages or just non-redirects? Balon Greyjoy (talk) 23:26, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Updates are nice to have, although the data stopped being updated around October 2017. All page created should be counted, since that is what this page was doing. --Frmorrison (talk) 20:21, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Updating?

I don't think the list has been updated for a couple of weeks, would this be correct? Hughesdarren (talk) 09:41, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

See this. Doesn't look like it'll be fixed anytime soon. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 10:48, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
I've also dropped a note at VPT to see if anyone has the time/skills to fix it. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 10:51, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
Cheers Hughesdarren (talk) 10:56, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm one of probably only a handful of editors who have the userbox for this on their talk page. I realize it's supremely unimportant in the larger scheme of things, but I wanted to mention that for me it serves as a form of micro-encouragement on days when Wikipedia seems vast and formless. Like a tiny red balloon: the pages, they do add up. So I'd love to see it working again. Cheers, Alafarge (talk) 14:53, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
so thats why my count hasn't moved..... Coolabahapple (talk) 04:40, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
and nor has mine. Edwardx (talk) 23:35, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Can we get even an occasional update? Weekly? Monthly? bd2412 T 04:19, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

  • I have brushed the cobwebs off some code that I initially wrote as a stopgap some years ago. Updated output here: User:Visviva/List_of_Wikipedians_by_article_count. This version does not rely on Toolserver; instead, it runs off of the stub-meta-history database dumps. (I make no assurances that this will be run on future dumps, and welcome anyone taking on that task.) Code is on Github if anybody wants to fiddle with it. It currently only counts non-redirects, but could easily be adjusted to count both. Somewhere in the archives of this talk page there is extensive discussion about how certain corner cases are handled differently between this and the Toolserver approach (IIRC largely because Toolserver has access to information beyond the limited revision metadata in the dumps). Those differences have a significant effect on some users' counts. -- Visviva (talk) 04:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
@Visviva: - that's brilliant work - thank you! Is it easy enough to replace the existing bot/code to update the main list on a regular basis? Thanks again. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 15:01, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
@Visviva: Excellent work and many thanks from me also. I'd be happy whether or not it included redirects. Declangi (talk) 09:53, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
@Visviva: Awww thanks for going to the trouble of bringing this back! I too don't care either way about redirects being included. Alafarge (talk) 16:09, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Why has this list been discontinued?

I need this tool in order to see how many articles I've created. Unfortunately, X!'s tools won't calculate the number of new pages for any user with more than 350k edits.– Gilliam (talk) 15:20, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Try Wikiscan in the meantime. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 16:47, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks!– Gilliam (talk) 17:35, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Wikiscan

Need a version not split into sections

The division of this into sections like "1001–2000" make the table sorting worthless. It is no longer possible at this page to sort by non-redirects created (except within a section, which is useless and misleading).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Probably a moot point, as the list hasn't been updated in nearly a year. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 08:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Update

  • Hello, can this list be updated once in a while? Can an admin look into this? Thanks, Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 08:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
I've dropped another note at WP:VPT. Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 09:07, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
Following this request at WP:BOTREQ, the list is now updated again. Probably be a weekly or monthly update going forward. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:56, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

updating when?

For a very long time, I thought that updating of this list was stopped, to discourage editors from running up their article count scores. I thought this in part, I think, because of the talk page section title above about it being stopped. And I thought this because the edit history shows no updates.

Recently I tried to revise the lead to explain that this list was updated occasionally (my best understanding) and to address the weird fact (which needs to be explained IMHO) that the edit history of the page does not show the list updates (because the list exists in separate sub-articles where the updating happens, which are transcluded in or whatever).

My edit was largely reversed and I am told in an edit summary that my edit was: "Confusing and inaccurate (not "occasionally" but on a precise schedule). There is a date at the top of the table". The weird fact was somewhat addressed by explicit statement now that the list exists in separate locations, with a link to one of them. Less good than my wording I think, but okay i guess.

I don't mind being reversed or criticized or whatever, but, well, what is that supposed schedule? Is it updated weekly? Can that be said in the lede please? --Doncram (talk) 12:55, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Might be mentioned here, but I'm sure it's two times per month (start and mid-month). Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 14:25, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Read the FAQ, it answers your question. The lead needs to rewritten trimmed down etc. -- GreenC 14:47, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I've simplified the lead. I disagree we need to say anything about sub-articles, it is obvious by looking at the wikisource, and not weird, it is a standard method for dealing with large data sets. Also it's now explicit stated when it runs, with both a mention in the lead, and at the top of the list the last run date (which is updated automatically by the bot). -- GreenC 15:00, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Okay i do think the simplified lead is better, thanks. (I agree that with the now-explicit statement about twice-monthly and the date of last update, that providing a link to a subpage is not needed. About what was "weird", well that is how I think it might be perceived by relatively new/inexperienced editors, if they ever were told why their own checks on "history" weren't giving them the info they expected.) Another misleading thing, before, was the former first sentence "This list is a snapshot in time", which to me suggested it was a historical, fixed thing.
Hmm, now a further question: maybe a wording change is needed in the lead, to somehow convey that the first section, say, is not really a list of the top 1,000 article creators after all. It is a list of the top article creators who have not specifically objected to being listed, which is different. I recall the way this list once worked (and/or maybe how the list by number of edits worked), where there were entries for "[name withheld]" or something like that, conveying the rankings and numbers of articles for editors who did not want to be named. There were some very high-ranked non-named editors, I recall. Approximately how many of "true" top 1,000 editors have opted out could further be mentioned somewhere, maybe in the FAQ. I don't mind that details can be covered in the separate FAQ, but the explicit current claims about this list should be refined to avoid stating anything factually inaccurate on this point. Thanks again for the revisions so far! --Doncram (talk) 15:29, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Users who opt-out are in the list but have a placeholder name ("[Placeholder]") so opt-out doesn't effect overall rankings of other users. -- GreenC 16:03, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Hmm, further, where editors have {{User article count ranking}} on their User page, what is asserted is technically false, too, given the way the ranking is done now. Except maybe for the few, if there are any, editors who truly have created more articles than the highest-"true"-ranked non-named editor. I dunno, it seems to me that if I were going to claim I was the 23rd most prolific Wikipedia editor (what shows for my name now) in terms of article creations, I should properly give an asterisk (like for the home run record?) to qualify for fact that I am pretty sure there are more than 22 "truly" more prolific editors for this reason. And maybe also for the fact that my rank would be different if redirects were included or not included, whichever now applies. I recall the list in the past showed rankings both ways. --Doncram (talk) 15:45, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Redirects are no longer included for a couple technical and other reasons. BTW this list probably shouldn't be used to claim anything as the underlying methodology doesn't and can't account for scenarios, like articles created and lived for 10 years then merged into another article; articles created as a redirect by user X and converted to a lengthy article years later by user Y (in this case user X gets the credit), etc.. -- GreenC 16:03, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Oh, oops, i am sorry, i thought there were no "Placeholder"-type ones showing. I thought i recalled there being one or more near the very top of rankings in the past, when i didn't see any (the top one is in fact at 96 now), I concluded (incorrectly) the methodology must have been changed. And yes about those significant types of scenarios. And I don't think I use that template anywhere, myself. Thanks! --Doncram (talk) 16:12, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
I changed "[Placeholder]" to simply "Anonymous" is more clear I think. It will take effect next run. -- GreenC 17:01, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! --Doncram (talk) 14:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Unicode escaping

  1. 202, "U0410u043bu0435u043au0441u0430u043du0434u0440_u041cu043eu0442u0438u043d"

is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Александр_Мотин

if you replace each u in the string with \u, and prefix the string with u8 you'll get the UTF-8 encoded value "Александр Мотин"

like this in C: printf("%s\n", u8"\u0410\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0441\u0430\u043d\u0434\u0440 \u041c\u043e\u0442\u0438\u043d");

or in shell: printf "\u0410\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0441\u0430\u043d\u0434\u0440 \u041c\u043e\u0442\u0438\u043d\n" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:405:4900:43F:CC:2223:3E19:6549 (talk) 07:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

both result in: "Александр Мотин" being printed, and wiki converts the url encoded form User:Александр%20Мотин into User:Александр_Мотин — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:405:4900:43F:CC:2223:3E19:6549 (talk) 07:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

So yeah, you should fix your Unicode encoding problem — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:405:4900:43F:CC:2223:3E19:6549 (talk) 07:03, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Got it (we'll see next run), thanks. -- GreenC 13:49, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
It will be probably still be broken as of the April 1-2 run, will see on April 15-16. -- GreenC 14:54, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Turkish Wikipedia

Hi,

I want to create same page on Turkish Wikipedia. What should I do?-Thecatcherintherye (talk) 10:10, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok. The bot runs from Toolforge and it should run for other wiki languages. I've never done it before, so this will be a first. Can you provide some help with translation. The top of the table says "No.", "User" and "Pages". And what is the page name where the list will be? Thanks! -- GreenC 13:27, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
"No." for "No.", "Kullanıcı" for "User" and "Sayfa" for "Pages". And the page will be "Vikipedi:Başlattığı madde sayısına göre Vikipedistler listesi". Thanks.-Thecatcherintherye (talk) 19:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
I started a bot request.[4] -- GreenC 14:26, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Thanks.-Thecatcherintherye (talk) 23:59, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@GreenC: The bot request you started has resulted positively. Would you activate it for us, please. Thanks.Thecatcherintherye (talk) 16:55, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Slovenian Wikipedia

I would like to add a similar page to Slovenian Wikipedia. Would you like to add the bot request? My request seems similar to the previous one (by Thecatcherintherye), so these are the suggested translations: "No." -> "Ne."; "User" -> "Uporabnik"; "Pages" -> "Strani". The name of the page is "Wikipedija:Seznami Wikipedistov po številu člankov". Thank you for your time! – AstroFizMat (talk) 14:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@AstroFizMat: I submitted a bot request to sl:Wikipedija:Prošnje_za_delovanje_botov. While waiting, could you create the page with the text currently used or worded similar in the lead section? -- GreenC 18:20, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
The software is updated with the localizations. Once a bot flag is added can try it out. -- GreenC 18:39, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
I have sent the wrong name by mistake. Correct is: Wikipedija:Seznam Wikipedistov po številu člankov – AstroFizMat (talk) 08:51, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
AstroFizMat it should complete in a few hours (ie. same day). It was brought to my attention the existence of Wikiscan which I had never heard of, and is superior to this tool. However the advantage of this tool is being located on-wiki and doesn't cost anything to have it - could you add a link to Wikiscan at the top of the page somewhere as an alternative site? -- GreenC 16:29, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

AstroFizMat, it appears to be working. Reduced to top 1.000 because beyond that it is mostly IP editors with 1 edit. The bot still posts the top 10.000 you can control how many are displayed via wikicomments, like in this edit. Also created sl:Wikipedija:Seznam_Wikipedistov_po_številu_urejanj/Neznanec could you translate? -- GreenC 15:09, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

GreenC, sorry to disturb you again. When I had to translate "No.", I thought that it represents the word for denial. I figured out that it represents the word "number", so here is the correct translation: "No." -> "Št.". Thank you! – AstroFizMat (talk) 11:04, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
Fixed. It will run again in about 12 hours (first of month). -- GreenC 13:58, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

This page may be encouraging disruptive editing

I understand this is essentially a fun, not serious page, and I'm all for fun and not being serious. However, we've got a serious problem with stub-creation by some of the present leaders on this board - we're talking potentially tens of thousands of non-notable and even basically false articles, particularly for geographic locations. This risks real-world harm as this data gets mirrored onto e.g., Google Maps and then we could end up with people going to a location thinking it is populated when actually it is just e.g., open desert. I think maybe it might be a good idea just to add some kind of note at the top saying that creating articles is just one of contributing to wiki and you don't encourage creating stubs just to get in the lead on this table.

Sorry to be so serious on this but I and some other editors having been trying to deal with problematic articles created by one of the board-leaders for the past year or so. We wondered why they had done it it and then worked out that it was probably to get into the lead here, then noted that some of the other people ranking highly on this board had done the same thing. FOARP (talk) 08:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Instead of vague accusations, name names, get your evidence together and go to WP:ANI if there is indeed disruption. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 09:28, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Believe me, if the articles were being created by the board leaders today ANI is straight where I'd be going. Instead the articles we've been dealing were created (by an admin) in the period 2009-2014 or so, and as such are too far in the past to be an issue for there. For a concrete example please see this AFD and this list, which a little work with Google translate will show contains many, many articles about "villages" that are actually pumps, wells, offices, etc. etc. etc., and every one of which openly states that the source they used to create the article did not say that the location was (or had ever been) populated. If it is too late to stop the disruptive editing that occurred in the past, we can at least try to discourage any taking place in the future by a simple health-notice on this page. FOARP (talk) 10:25, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
For the admin in question, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Carlossuarez46 (8 April 2021). Narky Blert (talk) 11:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
Wow, what a mess! I guess this isn't helped by having a non-Latin alphabet source as the starting point. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 12:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, like I said some of the people on this list appear to have been mass-creating stubs in order to get higher rankings. This is not a blanket accusation of everyone and should not be taken as such. As an explanation of why I think this list may have led that particular editor to start mass-creating stubs, the worst of their stub-creation seems to have coincided with the start of this list.
As an improvement suggestion, I think the ranking should exclude stubs, or at least there should be a second ranking that excludes stubs. I understand this may not be easy to implement in code, though. FOARP (talk) 13:54, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Each article would have to be checked for stub status at the time of creation but that is probably true for most articles since the first edit is not a fully formed article, often articles are developed over time. Theoretically you could create an algo that looked at the article length after 2 months, counted the number of bytes contributed by the original creator, etc.. but it's so arbitrary and weird, plus the computing cost and time would be high to parse through all the revisions. I'll leave that project to someone else who wants to create a list of that sort. The list is not meant to encourage or discourage behavior, what people do with it is beyond control. -- GreenC 14:08, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: It's the coolest idea in the world that this ranking should exclude stubs You find me totally in agreement with you. --Kasper2006 (talk) 19:42, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@Kasper2006: - Thanks for the support.
@GreenC: - Thanks for replying. I suppose there's no way of checking to see if each article has been tagged as a stub? I suppose there's no single stub-tag, but different tags used in different pats of Wiki. Could we instead simply exclude all articles under 100 words in length? Apologies for my complete ignorance on this subject. This article, which is currently at AFD, is an example of the kind of article that it might be a good idea to exclude (or at least provide an alternative ranking excluding it). I fully understand that this list is not supposed to encourage this kind of behaviour, but an alternative listing showing how many non-stub articles various editors have created might actually do something to encourage good editing. FOARP (talk) 19:55, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Regardless of this list existing or not, the article for Banstali, and others like it, would have been created in any case. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 20:55, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Considering that of the three currently top-ranked members of this list:
Can we please take seriously the idea that this table, as presently constituted, may be encouraging unhealthy editing practises? FOARP (talk) 19:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Given there remains legitimate concerns over No. 2, could you not have held off on this? Jevansen (talk) 02:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

A case can be made self-aggrandizement has been a problem with a few editors (won't go into details unless required). One possible solution is to list the top 100 alphabetical with no ranking. That would mitigate unhealthy competition for the #1 spot, and allow 100 people to say "in the top 100". If we see unhealthy competition for the top 100 (doubtful) increase it to 500. With that said, there are other lists that show the full results, hosted off site, even if this list was deleted it might not matter for those determined editors so long as they have a list somewhere to point to. -- GreenC 03:50, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Jevansen - I've removed the link. I am conscious of the need to be sensitive but at the same time I've seen that "not the time to talk about this" can code for "never talk about this". Sometimes right after something has happened is exactly the time to talk about it. Mass stub creation is just not healthy editing TBH, it leaves the editor concerned responsible (as creator) for a vast number of articles that may all have the same point of failure - you can see hundreds of AFD/prod notices piling up on the talk pages of some of the people high on the list here and that may have a detrimental effect on mental health/self-image. I'll admit that I should have been more aware of this as well, particularly I should have been more aware of burnout symptoms, and should not have referred to these articles emotively as "garbage" articles.
GreenC - Listing the top 100 with no article-count or ranking sounds like a good suggestion. Yes, there may be off-wiki pages carrying such rankings but they won't be hosted by Wiki and won't have as much incentivising effect. FOARP (talk) 07:45, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I added new code, but the April 1 run is already started so won't be able to test until the April 15 run. Being untested I expect it will break or do something unusual on the first try. The April 1 run is a twice a year scrub which takes about 7-10 days to complete. The April 15 will finish in 30 hours or so. -- GreenC 01:55, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Top 100 protected

FOARP , it's now showing as discussed. It wasn't easy to code! Hope that helps per discussion above. -- GreenC 15:54, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for putting the work in. Is this intended only as a trial? I'm just not sure that it is necessary and there didn't seem to be any consensus to make the suggested change. By having the list this way means we're in agreement that there are users creating stubs in order to place higher on the list, a theory which has only been proposed by one user (perhaps you as well but I'm not sure if your interest in this was more as a coding exercise). Jevansen (talk) 08:18, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't really know why we'd want to hide information. Especially as the exact numbers can be found elsewhere regardless, it just hides who is the most prolific article creator - but arguably, if someone is mass creating article, either they are notable, and they are doing a good job - we should be praising this, or they aren't notable and we should be getting them to stop. Hiding the values seems to be a reaction to a non-issue. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:31, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
As you can see here and here, as well as the numerous objections raised in the archive, I am not the only editor who has expressed the concern that this page is encouraging disruptive editing. A simple look at the history of the top ten shows the following:
1) Dr Blofeld/Encyclopædius - Semi-retired, appears to regret their mass-created articles after a bunch of AN/ANI cases related to them.
2) Lugnuts - recently sanctioned at ANI with loss of autopatrolled for mass-creation of stubs.
3) Carlossuarez46 - effectively desysopped by arbcom in relation to an AN case concerned with mass stub creation, retired.
4) Wilhelmina Will - no longer very active.
5) Kotbot - a deactivated bot, written by Kotniski, who has retired, apparently after an arbcom case and a TBAN
6) Ruigeroeland - blocked indef for massive Copyvio. They were copying their articles directly out of field-notes for lepidopterists in order to mass-create stubs. This was only discovered last month, two years after they retired.
7) Polbot- A deactivated bot, written by Quadell who doesn't edit much any more and was desysopped for inactivity.
8) Ram-Man - Desysopped for inactivity, hasn't edited since 2019.
9) Ser Amantio di Nicolao - Still active.
10) Starzynka - Blocked indef for sockpuppeting.
(By comparison there is only one indef ban and two retirees among nos. 301-310 on the list last time I checked)
This isn't to gravedance on these editors, just to point out that mass-creation of stubs is not a positive thing even for the editor who creates them, let alone for the encyclopedia as a whole, and we should not encourage it. Healthy editing practices simply do not look like the kind of obsessive-compulsive cut/paste article-every-90-seconds activity typical of a number of editors on this list, and is very difficult to achieve without some form of disruptive editing (be it copyvios, WP:V/WP:GNG-fails, or what have you). Even bot-driven editing is better as human error is reduced. FOARP (talk) 09:42, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I believe the change to be largely beneficial, though I don't have a strong opinion. Still, I believe there are several things we can all agree on, even if we may disagree about their relative importance:
    1. Some people do indeed give the appearance they care about their creation count.
    2. Some of those people seem to undertake unhelpful mass creations.
    3. Such editors probably get a stronger kick from having their large count advertised on their user page than from seeing their name at the top of this list here.
    4. Nevertheless, placement on the list may be a motivating factor for some. Possibly not so much for those long timers who are already set in their way, but it may influence the motivations of new editors who come across this list for the first time.
    5. Therefore, the benefit of hiding the stats for the top 100 is likely to be had in the long run, rather than immediately.
    6. Hiding has costs too: if the information is visible, then an abrupt change from one period to the other may be an indication that a mass creation has taken place (whether motivated by the increase in one's article count, or not). Hiding this information removes one easy avenue for tracking down mass creations. – Uanfala (talk) 11:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes #6 is a very valid point. There is an offsite list. It is offsite, and is slow to load, so is not going to be visited by most people, but the info does exist. It's not hidden so much as obscured and de-emphasized. -- GreenC 16:29, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Could we just remove all the users that are indef blocked/banned, as we shouldn't be listing all these people with copyvio or socking issues? Joseph2302 (talk) 10:17, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Unobscured, please.

I come here very once in a while to see how many articles I've made. I am no where near even breaking 1000, but I'm disappointed by the obscuring of the top 100. I don't think this move will last long, as obscuring data/information is not in the spirit of the open source movement that Wikipedia is based on. In my experience, obscuring information on "open" projects just brings more attention to the issue. I'm trying to think of another place where this kind of public information has been intentionally obscured on wiki, but cannot come up with an example. Anyway, I can see the rationale, but at the same time I think this solution is not going to last long. --- Possibly ☎ 07:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

PS since people arriving at this page are probably wondering what the heck is going on when they see "Top 100 Random Sort... [Count protected]", I added this text to the top of the page: "Since April 2021, the order of the top 100 editors in this list has been scrambled, in order to discourage mass stub creation." --- Possibly ☎ 07:33, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

It says right at the top where you can get the data it's not like you can't get it if you want it. The FAQ also has a whole section about it. -- GreenC 13:19, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

The fact that it is available elsewhere does not change the fact that it is being censored on-wiki. Wikipedia is not censored. If we can stomach that in article space, why not here? What about an RFC for this? It seems like the consensus above could be more robust. --- Possibly ☎ 17:11, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
That's not what censorship means, only the government can censor. Such a loaded term often misused. An RfC might be useful because we can finally lock this down. You better be prepared to deal with the issues - why do we have this in the first place? BTW we do obscure a lot information for privacy, security and other reasons. This is being obscured for similar reasons to help mitigate abuse. -- GreenC 17:58, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
It's clearly censorship; I am not sure where you get the idea that only governments can censor... why would we have a policy of WP:NOTCENSORED if only governments did it? To censor is a very commonly used term that means exactly what is happening here: content is being removed because it is believed to cause harm. Whether that is justified is the question. --- Possibly ☎ 21:20, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
Would support the RFC suggestion by User:Possibly. I know we shouldn't reference Wikipedia as it is not always reliable, but the third line of the Censorship article does state "Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies." Jevansen (talk) 00:52, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
I guess that is a broader view of censorship. Non-government organizations can't censor in the traditional sense as they don't create laws, or control property beyond what they don't own. Only governments can do that (ultimately through the monopoly of force). WP:NOTCENSORED is in the section "Encyclopedic content" concerning Wikipedia content and this is not an Encyclopedia content page. The section that follows titled "Community" is what this page is, a literal list of community members. That section has a policy WP:NOTANARCHY that says "Wikipedia is free and open, but restricts both freedom and openness where they interfere with creating an encyclopedia" which is precisely why this information is restricted. -- GreenC 03:56, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
@GreenC:, I see what you are saying. But there are at least a couple editors who may disagree. I'm going to propose a question of ran RFC below so that there is consensus on the matter. --- Possibly ☎ 04:12, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

RFC question

Before I post the RFC, what does everyone think of this as question, including both A and B versions?

  • Question A: In an effort to reduce competition between editors, should List of Wikipedians by article count list the top 100 article creators as a randomized list without the number of articles created? Alternately,
  • Question B: should List of Wikipedians by article count list the top 10 article creators as a randomized list without the number of articles created?

--- Possibly ☎ 04:09, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Suggest:

  • Should the list obscure counts, as is done currently for top users? How many it obscures is a different question not part of this RfC.

Will get better consensus on the core question. The exact count has never been discussed and I don't think we need an RfC for that, hopefully, and including it in the RfC creates some confusion as to what the RfC is about. -- GreenC 04:56, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Please enhance by linking page count to pages created

Please enhance by linking the page count in col. 3 to the list of pages created per user. This is mocked up in the 7000-series, at Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count/7001–8000. (Note that you'll need one <div> at the top, and an end </div> at the bottom as well.) If this has already been overwritten by the bot and you don't see any links in col. 3, then please consult rev. 1040664398‎. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:03, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Ser Amantio di Nicolao

Why isn’t Ser Amantio di Nicolao at the top of the list?CycoMa (talk) 20:02, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

He is at the top of the list on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits but he hasn't created the most pages, so he wouldn't be at the top of this list. The top 100 in this list is also randomized and hidden, for reasons discussed above on this page, so the order of names doesn't mean much. - Simeon (talk) 18:24, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count

Why are the Top 100 article creators basically anonymous or, at least, their article creations are obscured? The editors who might "game the system" to make the list are probably a small number of editors while the editors who might be interested in reviewing the list is much higher. I don't think concealing this information has much influence over the dozen or so editors who are overly invested in their article counts. I came to look at this list specifically to see if articles that were deleted were included in the article count but this is impossible to determine with this information hidden.

I really don't think hiding or censoring statistics is ever a good idea. If articles that are deleted are not included in the count (which I hope they aren't), then that would remove any benefit an editor might get from mass-producing junk articles. Liz Read! Talk! 01:33, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

It's discussed in the sections above. Deleted articles are not included in the count. -- GreenC 01:41, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
Can we not revert back to the previous format until a clear consensus is reached that all top 100s should be left obscured? For the few users who are causing concern with their article creations, we can simply have their name appear as blank next to their count. I presume this would be possible as the edit count list has the option for a name to appear as "placeholders" if someone wants to be anonymous. We seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater with the current approach. Jevansen (talk) 07:54, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
To the extent that this is still a live issue, I'd strongly endorse the current "top 100" approach. It's not a competition. Editors can still rightly be proud of being part of the top 100 which is still an impressive achievement. My only nitpick is that rather than "edit count hidden", just say something like ">5000", and give the top creators some cool title - change the left column from "top 100 random sort" to "Member of the 5k club" or the like. Doesn't need to be locked to exactly 100 editors that way as well, just acknowledges anyone who's made more than 5,000 articles. SnowFire (talk) 19:59, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
Well, GreenC, I've changed my mind now that you clarified that deleted articles aren't counted in the totals...though if the totals aren't shown for the Top 100 then I guess it really doesn't make any difference whether they are included! I'm not sure why I was so insistent in my original message but, generally, I think transparency and sharing information, rather than obscuring it, is a good thing. But if the consensus is that this list promotes mass creation of articles, then I'll accept that. Liz Read! Talk! 22:12, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
Endorse all of SnowFire's suggestions. FOARP (talk) 16:19, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
Hi there, I also see this article count issue could be enhanced. I was thinking of a mechanism which would also award the ones who bring very basic stubs of a phrase or two to an actual article of a few sections. It would leave the ones who like to create stubs in peace but would encourage other editors to work on stubs.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:27, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Search yourself

Why doesn’t this one have a search yourself option? The user by Edit count has that option.CycoMa (talk) 00:13, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

No reason, other than I didn't know it existed. Added. -- GreenC 05:35, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Top 100 scrambled...?

Skimming through the talk page and its archive, I don't see where this was proposed and supported by a clear consensus. It appears one editor posted a questionable concern, with no clear linkage to this list, and then another editor just went ahead and censored the top 100. I see Possibly mentioned posting an RfC on the matter last August (don't know if that happened), but there should've been an RfC on this before the fact, clearly explaining, with evidence, just how this list is causing dozens upon dozens of editors (up to 100 apparently) to go on wild, unchecked stub-creation-rampages that are somehow, ultimately causing people to become "lost in the desert" (?) and then demonstrate a clear consensus to alter this list. Being "bold" is one thing, but concealing data on a open project, created and maintained by a volunteer group of equals, is quite another. This list should be "unscrambled" until there is clear support for it, as provided for by the policies and guidelines. - wolf 22:04, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree. The very small amount of ink spilled on the matter might be fair enough, since in my opinion it's commensurate with the importance of keeping track of exact edit and article counts. But assuming that people have such bad articlecountitis that they're creating useless articles just to game a silly list — let alone people who have donated so much volunteer time to building an encyclopedia that they've created thousands or tens of thousands of articles — sounds to me like a major departure from AGF. - Astrophobe (talk) 21:38, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
I suspect some of the people who are most obsessed with their numbers might be healthier without lists like this. I think we should keep it scrambled. —valereee (talk) 14:01, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Well you're assuming that all editors listed only create articles to up their article counts, which in my case is completely false. I was never into that, in fact I was embarrassed back then for how many I'd create and I believe I even asked for my name to be blanked out. Mass creation back then, which I agree was excessive, was intended to try to get us covering more countries in depth globally and covering a wider range of topics which might be poorly developed on English Wikipedia but have poor coverage on other wikipedias. Given time you realise that a lot of articles won't be expanded and it is your responsibility as the creator to make sure they're half decent when created. To paint all editors with the same brush or assume bad faith is wrong. I personally would be happy to see both the edit count and article count lists nuked BTW.† Encyclopædius 12:09, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
As you can see by my comment at the talk of this page, I was initially against this scrambling of names, primarily because I was searching for an article count for someone specific (and you can see Page creation numbers in the Edit Count option in User contributions). But recently, I've come to see over the past year a few editors who are obsessed, and I mean seriously obsessed, with article creation numbers...so much so that they will seek to have a draft article deleted so that they can recreate it a few days later with the exact same content as the deleted version so that they could be credited as the page creator. It's ridiculous. We don't need to feed this misconduct. I'll admit that it's not a huge number of editors but having encountered it a few times, I won't minimize the phenomena any more. Liz Read! Talk! 05:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Liz, wow, I hadn't seen that. That seems very strange, and certainly I'd call that disruptive editing. —valereee (talk) 13:49, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Maybe if there was a recognition for upgrading an article? Or elevating an article to the next level? Or only for the creation of at least start class articles? This would be (at least in my imagination) quite a task for the programmers but I believe we have some editors who could do that. I guess something similar would be good for wikipedia. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
I think recognition for start-and-above only would be a really useful change, if it's possible. DYK does provide recognition for creating something at least 1500 characters of prose or expanding an article x5, which often means improving a stub. —valereee (talk) 14:44, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
We could suggest the deletion of the articles which are below a certain amount of words, bytes or notable info. For the article creators who really know something on the subject they write about, it'll be easy to bring on some citation for something notable the article in question is about. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 15:17, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
I don't think you mean deletion from the 'pedia, just exclusion from the listing? (And I don't think you can assume it's easy to find citations just because you're familiar with the subject. It can depend on a lot of other factors, such as the language the sources are in, whether that language is transliterated, and geographic location in which the subject is notable.) —valereee (talk) 15:38, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
If we click on the history tab and then on "Page statistics" it goes to Xtools page Example and therein are some attempts to quantify user contributions. Possibly some of that data could be aggregated into another list like this. I have no idea how to access that data or if available.-- GreenC 15:42, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
valereee, hmmm. I don't know. What notable article would you have in mind, that wouldn't be able to be sourced?
And I like the suggestion from GreenC of using user contributions for a list. Be careful though on the rescuing sources edits. I guess those edits could go to another statistic. Gog the Mild was mentioned as the top editor at the article Foreign Involvement in the Syrian Civil War for having refilled the sources in the article. But as to me it is better to have editors sourcing articles than creating stubs. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:12, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
@Paradise Chronicle, well, one I'm having trouble with right now is Draft:Braised intestines in brown sauce, a dish I suspect is notable but which because of the issues I mention above is difficult to source in English. It's not uncommon for notable dishes in underrepresented languages to be difficult to source for editors who don't speak those language, especially when we're dealing with multiple names, multiple spellings, transliteration, and a dish that is unlikely to become trendy in the English-speaking world because of its unfamiliarity. We often have to depend on speakers of the language who are familiar with the dish to come along. I am quite familiar with food, but it's hard to find stuff in other alphabets, especially when there can be multiple names for a dish. —valereee (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
@Valereee: I highly recommend reaching out to the Wikiproject of the relevant country to find people who know the language and can help. Cobblet (talk) 23:16, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
@Cobblet, I've done that on occasion, such as asking for help for Inyama Yehnloko at Special:Permalink/1038765195#Draft:Inyama Yenhloko, and I didn't get a single response. —valereee (talk) 23:24, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
Unfortunately I do expect far fewer people on Wikipedia to know Zulu as opposed to Chinese, and I can see how finding reliable sources for African cuisines could pose more of a challenge. Cobblet (talk) 23:31, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
@Cobblet, yes, Africa especially is difficult. The less-represented areas of Asia and Central/South America also. Also underrepresented traditional cultures in North America, etc. —valereee (talk) 02:02, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
Valereee, there you are right. But this is also not an article of the likes we have a problem with. Articles by editors I like to call stubbers would mostly not pass the requirements asked for in the AfD process. The article stubbers was created with the edit summary a stub about a stubber by myself. If anyone nominates it for deletion, I'd agree with it. This article would I assume not have passed the AfD process, but I was extended confirmed, so I was able to create it.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:44, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
No, this isn't a problematic general topic at all. I just wouldn't want to put in place a rule that further limited the creation of this kind of promising stub. —valereee (talk) 00:54, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

arbitrary break

Well, there's plenty of replies, (and thank you all who showed up), but unfortunately not really any clear answers to the questions I asked. I get that a couple people here seem to agree with the scrambling of the list, and from there, the thread went on to discuss related issues, but still no answers as to how this list was seemingly just summarily censored, with virtually no input from the wider community. I see the concerns that were posted by Valereee and Liz, and I share those concerns. But if a "small number" of people are causing the problems that led to this, why not just warn, warn, warn, block and move on? Meanwhile, whether or not that is being done, should there not be an RfC, such as Possibly mentioned, to invite a broader discussion about this? Has the scrambling of this list even had any measurable effect on the problem? Was this action the only one available to us as a possible resolution? (I know... more questions)

On a side note; Happy Holidays all and thanks again for the replies. - wolf 10:13, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem with warn warn warn block and move on for editors who have created tens of thousands of articles is that they tend to have lots of supporters, too. A recent ANI for a mass stub creator was one of multiple ANIs that the person simply ignored for years because enough of their friends would come in and oppose any disciplinary action, and the amount of cleanup is massive. —valereee (talk) 16:21, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
That is separate behavioral issue that needs to be addressed then. Avoiding dealing with disruptive editors because they have bunch of friends that support their disruption is not the best way to handle this issue. (imo) - wolf 13:48, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
The two behavioral issues are connected, and they're both made worse by this list, which encourages competition for no good reason. If I were czar we'd stop keeping track anywhere after a few thousand articles. Knowing that editor X has created 90,000 "articles" while editor Y has created 90,001 "articles" provides zero actual benefit to the project, and creates work for other editors who have to clean up the mess created by editor X scraping yet another database to create 150 permastubs so they can get their title back. It's a clear net negative. And I seriously doubt it's good for the editors involved. —valereee (talk) 14:45, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
I think the benefits of statistics outweigh any cons, and we shouldn't be blaming the list for the disruptive behavior of an (apparently) small group of editors, we should be blaming the editors. Do you, or anyone else here, really believe that obscuring the top names is going to stop them? That they're not still mass-producing garbage stubs and using all these other work-arounds to bump up their numbers? We should be seeking ways to address their behavior, whether in an RfC or individual ANIs. (jmho) - wolf 19:32, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
What are the benefits of knowing who has created the most permastubs? —valereee (talk) 20:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
Do we have such a list? - wolf 22:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
I think you are missing some previous discussions. It's more than a few today, the list is a motivator for those who are not (yet) causing a problem. Being ranked highly is sufficient to receive press coverage (even jobs), some users on this list have received real world gain. Wikipedia is the 5th largest website in the world, it's a big deal culturally. Others see that press coverage, and a few will say "I can do that too". As for censoring, that is not really accurate. The data is available and linked at the top of the list. Censors don't provide access to the data by definition. I have the sense the complaints are largely a matter of principle over open data, but, not all data on Wikipedia open, in this case it's more like obscured and de-emphasized. -- GreenC 16:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
No, I read that. Btw, can you clarify: "The data is available and linked at the top of the list. Censors don't provide access to the data by definition." - Thanks - wolf 13:48, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
He's pointing you at this; there's a link to it at the top of the page. —valereee (talk) 14:46, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with the scrambling. Per this discussion, it looks like motivation to be on the "Top 10" list has led to counterproductive activities such as mass stub creation and copyright violations. Editors who are here to build an encyclopedia will continue to do so regardless of where their names appear on the list. It's not censorship to decide not to highlight certain statistics on a wall of fame or scoreboard. –dlthewave ☎ 17:08, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
The point was that a significant change was made with significant input from the wider community and a solid consensus to support it. There should have been, and still should be, an RfC on the matter. - wolf 13:48, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
I'd support an RfC for the list simply ignoring any article categorized as a stub in calculating the leaderboard. That would be the right kind of motivation. After that, fine, unscramble, as we're no longer encouraging counterproductive behavior. —valereee (talk) 15:30, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
One of the leaders was (is?) making 100s of non-stubs a day using automated machine-generated article methods.. FWIW the software development for this was non-trivial. 2 or 3 previous developers abandoned prior versions because Enwiki is so large you can no longer do a SQL query. I'm probably not going to put a huge more time into it, as much as I would like to explore new ideas. With that said anyone can make their own version of a report if they want, we can have multiple versions. If I can make changes easily I will. -- GreenC 22:01, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
I don't know if much more can be added here, among the few that have replied, and I don't see this resulting in the scrambling being removed, so unless and until there is an RfC... thanks for the replies. Happy 2022 - wolf 22:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Article Count

Is this a list of all encyclopedic articles created or simply a list of all pages created on Wikipedia? Thanks in advance! 😁 Urban Versis 32 (talk) 01:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Encyclopedia articles ie. mainspace pages (code 0). -- GreenC 02:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
Thanks Urban Versis 32 (talk) 11:44, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of this page

It has been proposed that this page be deleted at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale#Question 8: Delete ranking of editors by created articles. Please see the discussion there. – Joe (talk) 13:26, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

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