The Signpost

Special report

Signpost statistics from 2005 to 2022

Our last Special report on The Signpost itself appeared in 2020. In this article, we will look again at some statistics on The Signpost. More precisely: article statistics by year, TOP 20 categories of articles, TOP 20 article authors, and the home wikis of article authors.

The data is current as of 2023-01-16.

Signpost article statistics by year

While number of issues went quite a bit down after 2016, the number of articles in each issue went up substantially, partially making up for this. We hit an average of 16.2 articles an issue in 2022, which does a lot to justify the move to biweekly this year.

Article statistics by year
Count
Year Issues Articles Articles per issue Unique authors
2005 51 412 8.1 35
2006 52 425 8.2 52
2007 52 431 8.3 70
2008 46 398 8.7 75
2009 52 400 7.7 111
2010 52 350 6.7 91
2011 52 355 6.8 92
2012 53 340 6.4 80
2013 50 319 6.4 70
2014 51 280 5.5 99
2015 51 335 6.6 115
2016 30 212 7.1 63
2017 12 110 9.2 57
2018 13 162 12.5 55
2019 12 141 11.8 67
2020 12 149 12.4 70
2021 11 103 9.4 57
2022 11 178 16.2 71

TOP 20 titles of Signpost articles

The Signpost has a number of defined titles for regular features and irregular items, and a looser set of titles for special columns. Here are the top 20 article titles that have appeared.

Note that some of these are related. For example, if "Featured content" was combined with its predecessor, "Features and admins", it would be in first place. "In the news" and "In the media" are also arguably the same, and would jump to third (fourth if you boost "Featured content" as well) if combined.

TOP 20 Categories of articles
Rank Count Percentage Categories
#1 588 11.53% News and notes
#2 489 9.59% Arbitration report
#3 407 7.98% Technology report
#4 325 6.37% WikiProject report
#5 307 6.02% Featured content
#6 304 5.96% Features and admins
#7 299 5.86% In the news
#8 217 4.25% Traffic report
#9 199 3.90% In the media
#10 132 2.59% Recent research
#11 130 2.55% Discussion report
#12 103 2.02% From the editor
#13 94 1.84% WikiWorld
#14 88 1.73% Op-ed
#15 86 1.69% Special report
#16 65 1.27% Dispatches
#17 55 1.08% Gallery
#18 39 0.76% Humour
#19 37 0.73% In focus
#20 36 0.71% Interview

TOP 20 article authors

These are the top 20 contributors mentioned in a byline.

TOP 20 article authors
Rank Count Ratio Authors
#1 471 6.35% Ral315
#2 356 4.80% Michael Snow
#3 240 3.24% Tony1
#4 239 3.22% HaeB
#5 190 2.56% Jarry1250
#6 185 2.50% Mabeenot
#7 156 2.10% The ed17
#8–9 142 1.92% GamalielSmallbones (tie)
#10 136 1.83% Bri
#11 131 1.77% Ragesoss
#12 119 1.61% Serendipodous
#13 112 1.51% Jayen466
#14 105 1.42% Pine
#15 102 1.38% Flcelloguy
#16–17 101 1.36% Adam CuerdenDavid.Mestel (tie)
#18 99 1.34% seresin
#19 96 1.30% Greg Williams
#20 94 1.27% Phoebe

"Home" wikis of article authors

The assignment of the user to the "home" Wikipedia was based on the indication in the "home wiki" (image flag) for users with unified login, then on the indicator of the "new account" (image flag), otherwise set to "UNDEFINED"; from the page Special:CentralAuth.

"Home" wiki table of article authors
Rank Count Ratio "Home" Wikipedia
#1 565 72.07% en.wikipedia.org
#2 61 7.78% UNDEFINED
#3 26 3.32% meta.wikimedia.org
#4 17 2.17% commons.wikimedia.org
#5 13 1.66% de.wikipedia.org
#6–7 8 1.02% fr.wikipedia.org, zh.wikipedia.org
#8 7 0.89% www.mediawiki.org
#9–10 5 0.64% pt.wikipedia.org, sv.wikipedia.org
#11–13 4 0.51% no.wikipedia.org, pl.wikipedia.org
#14–19 3 0.38% ca.wikipedia.org, en.wiktionary.org, es.wikipedia.org, it.wikipedia.org, nl.wikipedia.org, outreach.wikimedia.org
#20–27 2 0.26% ar.wikipedia.org, cs.wikipedia.org, en.wikisource.org, en.wikiversity.org, et.wikipedia.org, hu.wikipedia.org, strategy.wikimedia.org, uk.wikipedia.org
#28–53 1 0.13% av.wikipedia.org, be.wikipedia.org, bg.wikipedia.org, bg.wikiquote.org, da.wikipedia.org, el.wikipedia.org, en.wikinews.org, en.wikivoyage.org, fa.wikipedia.org, fi.wikipedia.org, foundation.wikimedia.org, fr.wikisource.org, ga.wikipedia.org, hr.wikipedia.org, id.wikipedia.org, it.wikiquote.org, ja.wikisource.org, nl.wikimedia.org, nl.wiktionary.org, pt.wikibooks.org, ru.wiktionary.org, simple.wikipedia.org, te.wikipedia.org, ua.wikimedia.org, vi.wikipedia.org, wikimania2006.wikimedia.org, www.wikidata.org
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  • "Home Wiki" is a meaningless data point. A user's "home wiki" is wherever they created their account, and has nothing to do with what they consider their main project. This data point is why English Wikipedia always appears to have such a huge proportion of global editors, while the number of edits on English Wikipedia has a much smaller proportion of total global edits. (As an example, the majority of active contributors to projects like Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikinews, Wiktionary have their language's Wikipedia project listed as their "home wiki".) This is a data point built into the MediaWiki system, and it is apparently extremely complex to modify this. Wearing my Movement Charter Drafting Committee hat, we are actively working with the WMF to modify polling software so that users can select their "voting wiki" from all projects for which they have met activity criteria, so that it is more likely to give us a better and more accurate perception of the opinions of individual projects. The MCDC has published its "early draft" of the ratification process here and invites editors from all projects to participate in the discussion. Risker (talk) 19:28, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not so sure. When a user goes to www.wikipedia.org, they choose a language, which may become their "home wiki". You don't think that has anything to do with which language they prefer to utilize? Lacking any other information I don't see this as a poor default choice for reporting (especially informal reporting like this). ☆ Bri (talk) 19:49, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Risker: For me, partial results are better than none at all. Maybe it shouldn't be taken so seriously. Do we have something better (rhetorical question)? In Special:Contributions, the "homa wiki" indicator could be characterized in one or two sentences, with its pluses and minuses. --Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 21:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]


















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