Wikipedia:Time Between Edits

Wikipedia: Edit growth measured in time between every 10,000,000th edit

I was interested in getting an idea of the overall edit growth on Wikipedia in the last few years. One way I thought to do it was to take a look the time between every 10,000,000th edit. On March 22, 2008, I noticed in the URL of the diffs I was seeing that the oldid value had just passed 200,000,000. So, that gave me 20 data points to start with.

Keep in mind that the oldid value I am using is the same as the value contained in the magic word {{REVISIONID}} and not the magic word {{NUMBEROFEDITS}}. I would prefer to use {{NUMBEROFEDITS}} as that includes all edits, both existing and deleted. However, there seems to be no way to backtrack that value in time. If I am wrong about that, I would appreciate knowing a method.

Incidentally, the current value for {{NUMBEROFEDITS}} is 1,240,793,704.

Table 1: Time between edits (incrementing by 10,000,000)

From this chart I learned that by around January 2007, the time between every 10,000,000th edit was about 6 weeks and has hovered around that mark ever since.

Edit Number (id)	Link to Edit	Date	Time between edits
291430 (see note 2)	[1] (earliest edit date)	20:08, 2001 January 16
1 (see note 1)	[2]	10:25, 2002 January 26
10,000,000	[3]	10:26, 2005 February 6	1483 days (~211 weeks)(see note 2)
20,000,000	[4]	16:03, 2005 July 31	175 days (  ~25 weeks)
30,000,000(see note 3)	[5]	04:23, 2005 December 3	125 days (  ~17 weeks)
40,000,000	[6]	07:42, 2006 February 17	76 days (  ~10 weeks)
50,000,000	[7]	19:54, 2006 April 24	66 days (    ~9 weeks)
60,000,000(see note 3)	[8]	10:22, 2006 June 22	59 days (    ~8 weeks)
70,000,000	[9]	08:10, 2006 August 16	55 days (    ~7 weeks)
80,000,000(see note 3)	[10]	05:19, 2006 October 7	52 days (    ~7 weeks)
90,000,000	[11]	06:17, 2006 November 25	49 days (    ~7 weeks)
100,000,000	[12]	11:12, 2007 January 11	47 days (    ~6 weeks)
110,000,000	[13]	00:57, 2007 February 22	42 days (    ~6 weeks)
120,000,000	[14]	12:11, 2007 April 3	40 days (    ~5 weeks)
130,000,000	[15]	22:26, 2007 May 10	37 days (    ~5 weeks)
140,000,000(see note 3)	[16]	18:30, 2007 June 22	43 days (    ~6 weeks)
150,000,000	[17]	12:37, 2007 August 8	47 days (    ~6 weeks)
160,000,000	[18]	08:34, 2007 September 24	47 days (    ~6 weeks)
170,000,000	[19]	20:55, 2007 November 7	44 days (    ~6 weeks)
180,000,000	[20]	15:32, 2007 December 24	47 days (    ~6 weeks)
190,000,000	[21]	14:04, 2008 February 8	46 days (    ~6 weeks)
200,000,000	[22]	00:24, 2008 March 22	43 days (    ~6 weeks)
210,000,000	[23]	00:42, 2008 May 4	43 days (    ~6 weeks)
220,000,000	[24]	21:40, 2008 June 17	44 days (    ~6 weeks)
230,000,000	[25]	16:23, 2008 August 5	49 days (    ~7 weeks)
240,000,000	[26]	16:04, 2008 September 21	47 days (    ~7 weeks)
250,000,000	[27]	09:33, 2008 November 6	46 days (    ~6 weeks)
260,000,000	[28]	23:06, 2008 December 24	48 days (    ~7 weeks)
270,000,000	[29]	10:07, 2009 February 11	49 days (    ~7 weeks)
280,000,000	[30]	08:59, 2009 March 27	44 days (    ~6 weeks)
290,000,000	[31]	20:49, 2009 May 14	48 days (    ~7 weeks)
300,000,000	[32]	01:14, 2009 July 3	50 days (    ~7 weeks)
310,000,000	[33]	12:53, 2009 August 25	53 days (    ~8 weeks)
320,000,000	[34]	08:05, 2009 October 15	51 days (    ~7 weeks)
330,000,000	[35]	00:00, 2009 December 6	52 days (    ~7 weeks)
340,000,000	[36]	2010 January 27 (projected)	52 days (    ~7 weeks)

Notes:

1. This appears to be the "first" edit in the database; it may have an oldid=1 but the earliest edit date found in the database is this edit dated January 16, 2001 at 4:08pm. Curious wiki historians can read WP:Wikipedia's oldest articles which contains some interesting information about the earliest "surviving" edits.
2. The earliest edit known in Wikipedia is January 16, 2001. This differs from the date associated by oldid=1 which is January 26, 2002. Since the oldids of these older edits are included within the block of the first 10,000,000 edits, the earliest date on record is used for the calculation of the number of days between the first edit and the 10,000,000th edit logged in the database.
3. The database did not find the text of this edit. The next edit that the database found is listed instead.

Graph of Table 1 Data

This graph is a detail of data points from July 31, 2005 to present.

I have had queries as to why time is not 'on the x-axis' in this graph. The reason is that I am using, as regular intervals, blocks of 10,000,000 Wikipedia edits, not time. I am specifically examining the amount of days (which will vary) between each block of ten million edits. Therefore, in this case, time is dependent upon the number of edits made, so time (measured in days) is the dependent variable and edits (measured in blocks of 10,000,000 edits) is the independent variable.

Table 2: Time between edits (incrementing by powers of 10)

For those people partial to powers of ten, here is another chart, similar to the above one (but not really that useful for drawing any conclusions about editing growth).

Power	Edit Number (id)	Link to Edit	Date	Time between edits
100	1	[37]	10:25, 2002 January 26
101	10*	[38]	10:35, 2002 January 26	0 days (0 weeks)
102	100*	[39]	12:55, 2002 January 26	0 days ( 0 weeks)
103	1,000	[40]	18:26, 2002 January 27	1 day ( 0 weeks)
104	10,000	[41]	20:47, 2002 February 12	2 days ( 0 weeks)
105	100,000	[42]	18:52, 2002 June 19	16 days (2 weeks)
106	1,000,000*	[43]	04:32, 2003 June 5	127 days (18 weeks)
107	10,000,000	[44]	10:26, 2005 February 6	963 days (137 weeks)
108	100,000,000	[45]	11:12, 2007 January 11	700 days (100 weeks)
10~8.3	200,000,000	[46]	00:24, 2008 March 22 (current)	436 days (62 weeks)

*The database did not find the text of this edit. The next edit that the database found is listed instead.