Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-04-22/WikiProject report

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See also this week's essay by WereSpielChequers: Going_off_the_boil? Erik Zachte (talk) 12:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Declining number of active editors and declining number of monthly edits from all editors

The peak number of edits on English Wikipedia was in March 2007 with 4.8 million edits. From all editors (logged-in and anonymous).

March 2007 was also the peak in the number of active editors.

Correlating with the declining number of active editors there was an overall steady decline since March 2007 in the number of monthly edits from all editors (logged-in and anonymous) on English Wikipedia. Until February and March 2013.

I am curious whether Wikidata bots and other bots are the main reason for the large increase in the number of monthly edits in English Wikipedia and in other Wikipedias in various languages in February and March 2013. I am studying the data dealing with these two charts:

Summary timeline table of edits per month on English Wikipedia, and all Wikipedias. Cropped from Wikipedia Statistics - Tables - Edits per month. This chart shows 4.8 million edits in March 2013 in English Wikipedia, and 1,200 edits in March 2001 in English Wikipedia. The chart shows 25.6 million edits in March 2013 for all Wikipedias in all languages. There is a more detailed monthly breakdown for English Wikipedia here: Wikipedia Statistics - Tables - English. See the "Database" header, and then the "edits" column. That column shows every month going back all the way to Jan. 2001 when Wikipedia started. Note the steady overall decline in monthly edits in English Wikipedia until February 2013 and March 2013.

See this summary chart below. It says the maximum number of active editors (5 or more edits in the last month) was 51,370 in March 2007.