Last modified: 2005-12-16 16:18:15 UTC
Proposal: Let's list the number of total user contributions next to each user name in [[Special:Recentchanges]]. Rationale: This will make it easier to focus on new users who may not yet be familiar with what's acceptable and what not. While it is true that no straightforward relation exists between a bigger number of contributions and contribution quality, it can by and large however be assumed that if a user regularly submits substandard and/or mischievous contributions then the community probably knows about that user. So despite the shortcomings, seeing a user's number of total previous contributions in the Recent changes list would be a step forward. -- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
Determining the number of edits is a very expensive DB query.
I'd be wary of doing that - one look at web-based bulletin boards will demonstrate how the prominent display of "post counts" (or in this case, "edit counts") promotes spam...
Maybe I'm naive, but instead of determining the number for each user each time, can there not be a counter associated with each user account which just gets incremented whenever a user commits an edit (and, for good measure gets synced/checked daily or weekly with via a "proper" DB query)? That shouldn't put much load on the servers I should think.
Maintaining an edit count in the user table is technically possible, but there are social reasons to avoid it. Having made a lot of edits does not and should not be considered to connote high status or reliability; many well-known cranks have huge numbers of edits, for instance. If the number is kept and made prominent it becomes a target for social engineering: racking up a large number of edits to gain status. The wiki way is to avoid starting "arms races" in the first place. I would not support maintaining or displaying such a count.
I would support showing counts for accounts with under 10 edits.
Having a threshold under which the edit count is listed won't solve the problem. You'd still get an 'arms race' from new users to reach the 10 edit boundary so they aren't marked as 'newbies'. It's a great idea for commercial sites like eBay - I remember the excitement of getting my first star upgrade - but I think it would encourage newbies to make a bunch of quick edits, rather than getting to know the site a bit first.
I see what you mean. I'm unvoting.
I think that the newest 1% of all users should be marked as newbies. For more information look at bug 3226.
Having the threshold also doesn't reduce the query size. You'd still have to run the query and then compare the values. I'm with Brion on this one; we don't want to discriminate/compare users according to edit counts. Too many people have editcountitis.
I propose that the 'count' is displayed only on the Special:Contributions/User page. This would allow users to keep track for their own interest, but it isn't easily comparable to others 'counts', thus preventing 'arms-races'. Also, I agree with Jens Ropers' idea of an incremental count modified upon committment of an edit. This keeps DB queries to a minimum. Since this count isn't in any way mission-critical, it doesn't even matter if it is completely accurate. An index-rebuild style query could be made to update/fix the counts upon request...
(In reply to comment #10) > I propose that the 'count' is displayed only on the Special:Contributions/User > page. You might want to install my Contributionseditcount extension, it's in the extensions module in CVS, it does just that.
How did this ever escape the dreaded WONTFIX stamp of doom?
No idea... ...BAM! ;-)
