Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by article count

Mass article creation is very obviously not healthy

Here's the people who were top-ten right before the obfuscation/scrambling was introduced:

• 1) Retired under a cloud, appears to have regretted their mass-created articles after a bunch of AN/ANI cases related to them, presently the subject of an Arbcom case.
• 2) Retired under a cloud after ANI cases related to uncivil behaviour towards people trying to clear up his stubs resulted in them receiving a TBan against stub-creation.
• 3) Desysopped by arbcom in relation to an AN case concerned with mass stub creation, retired under a cloud.
• 4) No longer very active.
• 5) A deactivated bot whose owner has retired, apparently after an arbcom case and a TBAN
• 6) 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 two years after they retired.
• 7) A deactivated bot whose owner doesn't edit much any more and was desysopped for inactivity.
• 8) Desysopped for inactivity, hasn't edited since 2019, retired.
• 9) Still active.
• 10) Blocked indef for sockpuppeting.
  

I don't know about you, but with six out of the top ten blocked/TBan'd/etc. for bad behaviour, and another three no longer active on this project through apparent burn-out, I'm pretty happy with saying that mass article creation is very often an indicator of unhealthy and disruptive editing behaviour based on the above. As such, we should not encourage it. FOARP (talk) 11:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

When was the last time I mass created new articles FOARP?? I believe a few years back I even proposed deleting all short stubs and it was rejected. You're missing the point of why articles were mass created ten-fourteen years back, it was to try to tackle systematic bias and even up coverage at a time when we had a very poor coverage of topics in some areas. Since at least 2014 I've strongly discouraged mass creation and have myself tried to discourage editors from creating masses of articles with no content.. † Encyclopædius 11:55, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

A long time ago to be sure Encyclopædius. No implication meant here otherwise and my apologies for giving anything but that impression. FOARP (talk) 12:01, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I never created articles for article count, I even tried to get my name blanked out as I was embarrassed by it! I would visit a category on another Wikipedia and see hundreds of articles and only a couple on here. I would mass blue link articles and try to encourage them to be transwikied and I would drill through lists of villages and films from different countries to try to tackle systematic bias by encouraging people to expand on them. I agree that it was a downright shoddy approach but it was done in good faith, I was extremely passionate for the project back then! :-) Many articles were expanded but most won't be expanded when they're off the anglosphere radar. An obscure village in nothern Turkey for instance is not going to get traffic. I would support deleting all remaining short stubs and deleting our lists of editors by article and edit count BTW.† Encyclopædius 12:14, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Lugnuts did a staggering amount of groundwork with films, he should be commended for that, really he did some important work with award winning films in particular which have since been expanded. I had a dispute with him a few years back on the short sports bio stubs and tried to get the Olympic bio short stubs stopped from being created. I had a number of Olympian/athletics editors object so I backed off! Ser Amantio I believe was of the exact same mindset as me back then and it was about trying to address systematic bias and evening up coverage by country. † Encyclopædius 12:25, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

FOARP I removed the names from the list. The point is still made without them IMO. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:36, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Do those in favour of censoring the list really believe it made that much of a difference? That if the list didn't exist then these editors wouldn't have created all these articles? Or, now that the names are blanked, that will make any difference in the number of problematic stubs created going forward? (And that any difference at all is attributable to the censoring and not to other measures since taken to address the issue?) But, again my issue isn't so much that the list is censored, as has been pointed out, the info is available by other means, it's just the way it was done; with such an arbitrary decision made by one person, instead of by consensus of the community. (jmho) - wolf 02:37, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Wasn't this list ultimately created in the same way? FOARP (talk) 08:50, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

You didn't really address any of my questions, and just posed your own question in regard to the final comment of my post. But I'll answer yours; this page was created waaay back in 2009, there is an WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS in that alone. But further, by your own arguments, and the so-called need to hide the names of one hundred editors, (which is a lot of people), they and presumably even more are in favor of this list. Yet only one person just went ahead and censored it, and only after the fact have a couple more shown up to voice support for that action, (which is why I suggested above that perhaps an RfC would be more appropriate, but... ).

Now I've answered your question, will you answer mine? - wolf 13:07, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

My answer is basically a repeat of that made above by Valeree and other responders: this appears to have been a factor in the stub-creation campaigns of a number of the top-ten listed above, particularly numbers 2 and 3 and maybe number 1 as well, who appeared to have had this talk-page on watch-list given their rapid response to my original concerns. As for this being the actions of a single lone editor, actually it was not - I raised my concerns first before the change was made, and others also raised similar concerns earlier than I. Of course if you want to raise an RFC about this then the village pump is thataway. FOARP (talk) 14:17, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

To add to what FOARP said: this page is not mainspace rather a third party tool written and managed by one volunteer. So yeah, at the end of the day it's one person's decision how the tool works and where the data is posted, if at all. I'm a reasonable person and will listen to consensus about scrambling. Consensus is based on strength of argument and the talk page arguments are much stronger for scramble than non-scramble. Talk pages are consensus see WP:Consensus#In_talk_pages. For this reason I believe an RfC would confirm scramble. I could be wrong, but that's my reading and why it's scrambled. As for the questions they are based in counter-factual what-if ("if the list didn't exist") which is opinion thus have less weight than evidence-based arguments. -- GreenC 16:24, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I prefer scramble to unscramble but I'd prefer deletion even more. This sort of page just panders to those people obsessed with "collecting" article creations, edits, etc. We need quality over quantity and this page encourages the latter. Nigej (talk) 17:04, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, I can't tell you what the effects will be beyond a shadow of a doubt (I mean, can we ever?) but I'm pretty confident that it will take away a key incentive for certain editing patterns that are focused on inflating article count while having little to no negative impact. Since this doesn't involve blame, sanctions or policy changes of any sort, I think it's safe to try it and see what happens without an RfC. –dlthewave ☎ 19:51, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Deletion has been mentioned, so I'll just say the bots probably shouldn't be on the list at all. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Change to once monthly

The program used to complete in about 24hrs, now its taking two weeks or longer. I changed the schedule so it only runs once a month. Unclear what happened, but currently suspect a change in resource management by the WMF. API calls may be taking a long time to respond. -- GreenC 02:21, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

The next run completed in about 10 hours vs two weeks for the prior run. -- GreenC 17:28, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Just wondering

User Ser Amantio di Nicolao's number of articles created is public, no? It's on his user page; 34.5 thousand or something like that (ranking him as 9th in Wikipedia land). Why does it say Count Protected when it's on his user page? watermelon66 (talk) 21:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I honestly do not understand your question. What does the content on a user's home page, have to do with this page? The pages are not interlinked. And the criteria this tool uses has no site-wide enforcement. -- GreenC 22:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"The order of the top 100 editors has thus been scrambled in order to discourage mass creation by competitive users who seek a high rank, such as to become the #1 Wikipedia editor." ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 22:51, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

"List of Wikipedians by article count" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect List of Wikipedians by article count has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 14 § List of Wikipedians by article count until a consensus is reached. Toadette ^{(Let's talk together!)} 11:09, 14 April 2024 (UTC)