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Requests for comment/Add a statistic to show registered users excluding locked accounts

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The following request for comments is closed. This is a technical issue of the sort that would need to be reported on Phabricator, not a RfC matter. * Pppery * it has begun 04:12, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Should we add a statistic that shows the number of registered users (excluding locked accounts)?

The number of registered users currently includes locked accounts, of which a majority of locked accounts are cross-wiki abusers, sockpuppets etc. This number may be used to know the number of people editing a wiki, assuming one user = one person, but vandals may use sockpuppet accounts to continue vandalizing and therefore increase this number. When this statistic is deployed, it should be closer to the true count (except for editors with alt accounts).

For more info:

  • When a user registers, one is added to the number of registered users
  • When account(s) are locked, that number is decreased from this statistic, and vise versa

Sheep (talk) 18:54, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think it is a significant issue. What makes the number of registered users different from the number of people of community is that more than 90% of registered users have zero edits (even counting edits in any wiki).--GZWDer (talk) 09:25, 4 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral Neutral For the reason pointed out by User:GZWDer, I also find 'registered users' a fairly pointless statistic, because there is no correlation between registered users and activity. The number doesn't say anything about the 'health' of a wiki. We're 2 decades into the project now, with the overwhelming majority of registered users across all Wikimedia projects permanently dormant. Some of the account holders may have passed away meanwhile. So what's the value of the 'registered users' statistic other than a metric for clutter in a database? ArticCynda (talk) 21:05, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]