Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Anders Wennersten]

do more edits in the same amount of time.' would be high on my list 
to investigate, and maybe even be reason to question the gain. The uptick in 
January conincided with a major site performance boost (faster PHP). I can 
imagine people who edit heavy articles like 'Obama' (heavy in terms of links 
etc, with iirc almost a minute of submit time), would edit online in one go 
without intermittent submits, and now these same people went back to 
precautionary intermittent submits, thus accomplishing same amount of work in 
more edits, in which case our gain would be mostly our editors' peace of mind. 
Building on this: perhaps part of the decline in previous years came from 
slowing submits?

(disclaimer : all of the above is only my personal opinion)

-Original Message-
From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org 
[mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Robert Rohde
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2015 21:00
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was actually 
around mid-to-late 2013.  The plateau and subsequent modest upward trend was visible 
first with occasional/new editing metrics like new active editors (>= 5 edits per 
month), but has since also appeared in measures of highly active editors (>100 
edits per month).

This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what Lila 
put in place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued improvement.

In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition.  The cohort of 
editors who registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki than 
any other annual cohort in every year from 2006 to 2014.  If you choose any 
edit at random since 2006, the most likely year that the account registered was 
2006.  That cohort, a legacy of Wikipedia's great growth period, has had an 
outsized impact on enwiki editing for nearly a decade.
  (2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing, 
though not as huge as 2006.)  If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort will 
finally lose their crown in 2015.  The 2015 cohort is likely to make more edits 
in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes in 2015.  It will also be the second year in 
a row that first-year accounts have increased their total edit count, after 
seven earlier years of declining edit totals for first-year accounts.

I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic.  I'm not sure we 
should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move towards a more 
stable or slowly growing community that would seem to make an apocalyptic 
collapse less likely.

-Robert Rohde



On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W  wrote:


James,

Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have.
On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond
like that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also
think of positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the
increased speeds of page loads may be having a desirable positive
effect on the productivity of highly active editors.

I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of
an editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll
have a better measure for how productivity is changing over time for
different cohorts of editors.

Pine

On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" 
wrote:

On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:


A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
<


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/
In_focus

We

now have the August figures
<https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm>, and August
has continued what we might reasonably start calling the new
trend. The

English

Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in
mainspace

than

for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the
figures

are

up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014,
though

this

doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.


​Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.​

Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty
offensive term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a
month", disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100
edits as non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the
normal term

is

"very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.

​[Snip]​

editors making 5 or more saves

​[is]
  down
across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.


​So, actually, your title​ is faulty and misleading. Instead, you
could

say:

- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but

meta-

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Erik Zachte]

James,

A) Should we value editors with many edits more than editors with just a few? 
Your counter-example (editors who write a long article in one go offline) is 
canonical, and probably uncontested, so you're stating the obvious, no need to 
use a loaded term like 'offensive', and to spell it out as if WereSpielChequers 
wouldn't know this, or would disagree. I use the term 'core community' loosely 
myself from time to time, knowing full well that any precise definition would 
be incomplete. Incidentally I think 'very active editors' is a misnomer (which 
I started) for the same reason. People can be very active editors offline per 
the same example. [1]

B) Agreed, we should be careful to interpret a trend (-change) in a very basic 
metric, or what that metric actually tells us anyway. But again I think you're 
stating the obvious. The only thing that surprises me is your timing: I never 
heard you utter these nuances so much when veteran foundation staff and other 
core community members overemphasized (in my opinion) countering editor decline 
as a primary target (I tried to nuance this all along as much as I could). 

So yes, 'editor count' is overly simplistic, and so is 'inflation rate', 'gross 
domestic product', 'population count'. All of these are overly simplistic, and 
without further breakdown don't tell us much. Yet these simplistic metrics 
survive, because everyone understands them, and much less people want to know 
the underlying complexity (especially decision makers), and importantly: they 
are collected consistently for a long time (more refined numbers suffer more 
easily from definition creep, or being en vogue temporarily). The most refined 
metrics are often from one-off studies, valuable but not gaining enough 
momentum for repeated collection.  

I need to explain my statement which was re-quoted in this thread: "The growth 
seems real to me". I first and formost meant "To my best knowledge the numbers 
are reliable". I expect no bug or other artefact (WereSpielChequers asked me 
about that specifically). The code is time-tested and stable. There is always a 
change that a hidden bug surfaces in a changing environment, but I see no sign 
for that. So at face value the growth is real then, more editors pass the 
threshold. But giving meaning to that figure is a process of never ending 
dialectic.   

Lastly, a more philosophical comment: shouldn't we rejoice if a partially 
understood metric seems to give ground for optimism. IMO we should, as joy (and 
fear) provide the incentive to dig deeper. Our news agencies make a living of 
incomplete news. Any scientific knowledge is temporary at best, until 
falsified. I rejoiced when I read that traffic accidents decreased in last 5 
years.Then someone countered that road traffic declined overall due to dip in 
economy, so the effect may be temporary and not systemic, so I lost some joy. 
But I gained from the exchange.

Cheers,
Erik 

--

Notes/details:

[1] I would be interested to see how often this happens: writing an article 
offline in one go. My hunch is less and less, as more and more people get 
speedier access, and site submits happen faster, thus reducing 'involutarily 
offline editing'. 

[2] Specifics on the examples you gave: 

I find some of your examples in your first mail a bit far-fetched. Very active 
editors reversing each other ad infinitum, hmm, when was the last time you 
actually saw this? And (spam)bots are excluded from out editor counts anyway as 
much as feasible. In general edits on wp:en grew in 2015, while reverts stayed 
more or less the same: https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/PlotEditsEN.png 

In your second response you name some positive reasons why our editor count 
could be growing, and they seem mostly plausible to me. But here is also room 
for nuance: 'Faster load/save times make the site feel more responsive and so 
people can do more edits in the same amount of time.' would be high on my list 
to investigate, and maybe even be reason to question the gain. The uptick in 
January conincided with a major site performance boost (faster PHP). I can 
imagine people who edit heavy articles like 'Obama' (heavy in terms of links 
etc, with iirc almost a minute of submit time), would edit online in one go 
without intermittent submits, and now these same people went back to 
precautionary intermittent submits, thus accomplishing same amount of work in 
more edits, in which case our gain would be mostly our editors' peace of mind. 
Building on this: perhaps part of the decline in previous years came from 
slowing submits?

(disclaimer : all of the above is only my personal opinion)

-Original Message-
From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org 
[mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Robert Rohde
Sent: Thursday, September 10

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Robert Rohde]

For enwiki, whose stats I happen to know best, one might say the bottom was
actually around mid-to-late 2013.  The plateau and subsequent modest upward
trend was visible first with occasional/new editing metrics like new active
editors (>= 5 edits per month), but has since also appeared in measures of
highly active editors (>100 edits per month).

This timeline would suggest that at least some of the change predates what
Lila put in place, though her team may deserve credit for the continued
improvement.

In 2015, we are also poised for something of a transition.  The cohort of
editors who registered on enwiki in 2006 have made more edits to enwiki
than any other annual cohort in every year from 2006 to 2014.  If you
choose any edit at random since 2006, the most likely year that the account
registered was 2006.  That cohort, a legacy of Wikipedia's great growth
period, has had an outsized impact on enwiki editing for nearly a decade.
 (2005 and 2007 cohorts also have a strong pattern of continued editing,
though not as huge as 2006.)  If current trends continue, the 2006 cohort
will finally lose their crown in 2015.  The 2015 cohort is likely to make
more edits in 2015 than the 2006 cohort makes in 2015.  It will also be the
second year in a row that first-year accounts have increased their total
edit count, after seven earlier years of declining edit totals for
first-year accounts.

I think there are plenty of reasons to be modestly optimistic.  I'm not
sure we should every again expect dramatic growth, but if we can move
towards a more stable or slowly growing community that would seem to make
an apocalyptic collapse less likely.

-Robert Rohde



On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 7:56 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> James,
>
> Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have.
> On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like
> that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of
> positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of
> page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of
> highly active editors.
>
> I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an
> editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a
> better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different
> cohorts of editors.
>
> Pine
>
> On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester" 
> wrote:
> >
> > On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers <
> > werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
> > > <
> > >
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus
> > > >We
> > > now have the August figures
> > > , and August has
> > > continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The
> English
> > > Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace
> than
> > > for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures
> are
> > > up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though
> this
> > > doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
> > >
> >
> > ​Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.​
> >
> > Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive
> > term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month",
> > disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as
> > non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term
> is
> > "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
> >
> > ​[Snip]​
> >
> > editors making 5 or more saves
> > > ​[is]
> > >  down
> > > across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
> > >
> >
> > ​So, actually, your title​ is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
> say:
> >
> >- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but
> meta-editors
> >are up",
> >- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
> >even
> >- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
> >Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate
> attempts to
> >fix things"?
> >
> >
> > But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
> > >
> >
> > ​I'm not sure it is.​ What is the nature and value of these edits? Two
> > editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no
> > value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a
> > single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism
> > edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
> >
> >
> > Yours,
> > --
> > James D. Forrester
> > Lead Product Manager, Editing
> > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> >
> > jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://met

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[James Forrester]

On 10 September 2015 at 10:56, Pine W  wrote:

> James,
>
> Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have.
> On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like
> that to WSC's attempt to share good news.


​Then in my e-mail I have failed entirely, and I apologise.

My point is that we should all be very cautious in mis-reading a single
number (even sustained over a trend) as ​being "nice" when in fact we have
no reason to suspect that it is necessarily "good news". It is not "good
news" until we know that it is positive and can explain why.

Shouting from the rooftops about events as "good news" without the solid
evidence to back such a claim up risks damaging all the community efforts
working to find and fix the issues at play. If we are going to improve the
situation, we have a duty to ourselves to be honest and realistic about
what we know, and what things we find tell us. We need to hold ourselves to
the highest standards of truth, and not rush in with the first
interpretation that comes to mind.​


Perhaps you can also think of
> positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of
> page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of
> highly active editors.
>

​WSC has worked hard to come up with positive reasons. :-)

I felt we needed to be more balanced, nuanced and realistic viewpoint. To
use a metaphor, possibly this datapoint is a candle of light in a storm of
darkness, but it might be the transformer exploding in sparks just as much
as it might be a the end of the storm.

However, since you asked, some positive narratives that might also or
instead be true:

   - Faster load/save times make the site feel more responsive and so
   people can do more edits in the same amount of time.
   - Increased community quality criteria lead to many very-active editors
   taking up the baton and correcting dozens of articles each.
   - Simpler, more understandable community norms and processes mean some
   feel driven to improving their areas of the.
   - Cleaner, clearer designs for tools to make mass-edits more accessible
   and appealing to more users.
   - Decreased competition increases the reader demand and so eyes in some
   environments previously lacking, pushing more people over the line from
   "active" into "very active".

However, all these narratives are merely speculation.


I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an
> editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a
> better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different
> cohorts of editors.
>

​I too look forward to knowing more about the world, and measuring value,
effort and types of edits as Aaron is trying to do would be a fantastic
improvement in understanding the picture better, yes. ​This may take some
time though, and Aaron and his team needs our support, not just heaping of
expectations on him and their work. :-)

Let's not count chickens before they've hatched.

J.
-- 
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Peter Southwood]

Do you have any more useful or meaningful metrics?

-Original Message-
From: wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org 
[mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James Forrester
Sent: Thursday, 10 September 2015 5:52 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequ...@gmail.com> 
wrote:

> A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago < 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/
> In_focus
> >We
> now have the August figures
> <https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm>, and August has 
> continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The 
> English Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in 
> mainspace than for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias 
> combined the figures are up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase 
> on August 2014, though this doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
>

?Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.?

Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive term 
to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month", disregarding the 
continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as non-core regardless of the 
value they add to the wikis; the normal term is "very active editors" to avoid 
implicit disparagement.

?[Snip]?

editors making 5 or more saves
> ?[is]
>  down
> across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
>

?So, actually, your title? is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could say:

   - "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors
   are up",
   - "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
   even
   - "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
   Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts to
   fix things"?


But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
>

?I'm not sure it is.? What is the nature and value of these edits? Two editors 
endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no value; one 
hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a single edit 
counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism edits by a single 
spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?


Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Romaine Wiki]

Hi!

In economics there is a business cycle with ups and downs. This is a
naturally process that also exists in the number of editors.
If there would be a trend that only exists in more and more users editing,
just like the dot-com buble ,
a growth that is too large collapses at some point as the existing
community can't handle it.

In multiple years I have given workshops and edit-a-thons where new editors
learned how to edit. They all are very interested in continuing with it.
But for some reason they actually did not. Asking why received in a very
simple answer: on Wikipedia it lacks of an environment where new users can
actually work together in an easy way, where they can form a group and
easily follow the group edits, having a joint project, etc. They experience
that after an workshop, they walk into a large wiki where it is not easy to
start from blank, they experience the doorstep as too high. As long as this
issue, noticed with many many groups of new editors, is not solved, the
core problem is not solved.

And beyond that issue, there are also other issues we can think of,
including how newcomers are treated, or the difficulties of online
communication, and more. There is a lot of work to do before I think we can
be really positive about the number of users. Not to be negative, but to be
realistic.
As movement we should work together on getting a more social environment.

Greetings,
Romaine

2015-09-10 16:21 GMT+02:00 WereSpielChequers :

> A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
> <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus
> >We
> now have the August figures
> , and August has
> continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English
> Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than
> for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are
> up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this
> doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
>
> We aren't out of the woods yet as other metrics are still declining, for
> example both new accounts and editors making 5 or more saves are both down
> across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
>
> But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
>
> Regards
>
>
> WereSpielChequers
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Pine W]

James,

Yes, there is more to the story than can be told in the data that we have.
On the other hand, it seems to me that it's a bit harsh to respond like
that to WSC's attempt to share good news. Perhaps you can also think of
positive ways to interpret the data, such as that the increased speeds of
page loads may be having a desirable positive effect on the productivity of
highly active editors.

I believe that Aaron H. is working on ways to measure the "value" of an
editor's contributions. When that work is done, I hope that we'll have a
better measure for how productivity is changing over time for different
cohorts of editors.

Pine

On Sep 10, 2015 8:58 AM, "James Forrester"  wrote:
>
> On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers <
> werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
> > <
> >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus
> > >We
> > now have the August figures
> > , and August has
> > continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The
English
> > Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than
> > for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures
are
> > up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though
this
> > doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
> >
>
> ​Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.​
>
> Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive
> term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month",
> disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as
> non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is
> "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
>
> ​[Snip]​
>
> editors making 5 or more saves
> > ​[is]
> >  down
> > across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
> >
>
> ​So, actually, your title​ is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
say:
>
>- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but
meta-editors
>are up",
>- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
>even
>- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
>Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate
attempts to
>fix things"?
>
>
> But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
> >
>
> ​I'm not sure it is.​ What is the nature and value of these edits? Two
> editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no
> value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a
> single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism
> edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
>
>
> Yours,
> --
> James D. Forrester
> Lead Product Manager, Editing
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[Theo10011]

Greetings James. Your response here seems unhelpful and mind I suggest,
snarky. You are essentially arguing over semantics. You object to the usage
of a term - "core editing community", then suggest his titles is faulty and
misleading while suggesting almost antithetical alternatives. You end by
questioning his logic, suggesting that might just be vandalism being
reverted, while ending it all with what you plan on doing with this next?

It certainly seems like more is going on here behind the scenes than what
one can infer from reading. The article mentions Erik Zachte, who I would
always trust on these numbers, that "The growth seems real to me". It also
mentions lila's different leadership style that may be bearing fruit.

Please have another read at your response. I read a nice email earlier from
Lila on this list[1], about distracting with polarizing rhetorics. And to
bring up issues, in good faith and with care for each other. I hope staff
members, especially senior members, along with other readers, take note.


On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 9:22 PM, James Forrester 
wrote:

>
> ​Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.​
>
> Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive
> term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month",
> disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as
> non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is
> "very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.
>

That would be just an opinion, and that too, over terminology not the data.
Interesting data though, you are correct.

I don't believe that term is offensive, other opinions may differ. However,
what I don't know if it's the new terminology WMF wants to use? You can
make some delineation here about this being your own personal opinion, you
are using your staff email and your title in signature.


> ​[Snip]​
>
> editors making 5 or more saves
> > ​[is]
> >  down
> > across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
> >
>
> ​So, actually, your title​ is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could
> say:
>
>- "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors
>are up",
>- "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
>even
>- "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
>Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts
> to
>fix things"?


> But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
> >
>
> ​I'm not sure it is.​ What is the nature and value of these edits? Two
> editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no
> value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a
> single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism
> edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?
>

None of the part above, or those alternative titles are helpful. Perhaps
you want to look in to this issue and work with WereSpielChequers.

Thanks
Theo

[1]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-September/079054.html
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[James Forrester]

On 10 September 2015 at 07:21, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
> <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-08-26/In_focus
> >We
> now have the August figures
> , and August has
> continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English
> Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than
> for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are
> up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this
> doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.
>

​Interesting data, but it's just data, not a conclusion.​

Also, and a bit off-topic, "core editing community" is a pretty offensive
term to use for "editors who make more than 100 edits a month",
disregarding the continuing editors who make fewer than 100 edits as
non-core regardless of the value they add to the wikis; the normal term is
"very active editors" to avoid implicit disparagement.

​[Snip]​

editors making 5 or more saves
> ​[is]
>  down
> across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.
>

​So, actually, your title​ is faulty and misleading. Instead, you could say:

   - "English Wikipedia editor numbers continue to decline but meta-editors
   are up",
   - "Editor diversity falls as more edits are done by fewer editors", or
   even
   - "Beset by a falling number of editors, existing users of the English
   Wikipedia feel compelled to edit still more in their desperate attempts to
   fix things"?


But it's nice to have one metric be positive.
>

​I'm not sure it is.​ What is the nature and value of these edits? Two
editors endlessly reverting each other counts as "more edits" but adds no
value; one hundred editors each writing a beautiful Featured Article in a
single edit counts as less "work" than one admin reverting 101 vandalism
edits by a single spambot. What's your next step to evaluate this?


Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester
Lead Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforres...@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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[Wikimedia-l] Increase in size of the core editing community

[WereSpielChequers]

A quick follow up to the signpost article of a couple of weeks ago
We
now have the August figures
, and August has
continued what we might reasonably start calling the new trend. The English
Wikipedia has more editors with 100 or more live edits in mainspace than
for any August since 2010. Across all Wikipedias combined the figures are
up almost as steeply with a near 10% increase on August 2014, though this
doesn't quite get us back to 2012 levels.

We aren't out of the woods yet as other metrics are still declining, for
example both new accounts and editors making 5 or more saves are both down
across Wikipedia generally when comparing August 2015 with 2014.

But it's nice to have one metric be positive.

Regards


WereSpielChequers
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