Signpost statistics from 2005 to 2022

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

"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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26 April 2023 (all comments)

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Statistics "between" 2005 and 2022 would not include statistics from either year. These are actually statistics from 2005 through 2022.~T P W 14:13, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- @True Pagan Warrior:
  Query ~ Results Ratio
  from 2020 to 2022 ~602,000 results (google) ~67.488%
  between 2020 and 2022 ~290,000 results (google) ~32.511%
  --Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 21:57, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  If an online search isn't good enough for sourcing, I'm not convinced it's good enough for definitions, either. ~T P W 01:21, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  @True Pagan Warrior: So formal and colloquial English … Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 02:11, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  "colloquial" presumes a particular audience, which isn't realistic for a news article on one of the most widely-used sites on the internet. Precision is more inclusive. ~T P W 13:41, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The book Common Errors in English Usage – cited several times in Common English usage misconceptions – does not agree with TPW's complaint. Prof. Brians says "Between 1939 and 1945" is better written as "1939–1945", but they mean the same thing. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"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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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

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%	Gamaliel • Smallbones (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 Cuerden • David.Mestel (tie)
#18	99	1.34%	seresin
#19	96	1.30%	Greg Williams
#20	94	1.27%	Phoebe

Query	~ Results	Ratio
from 2020 to 2022	~602,000 results (google)	~67.488%
between 2020 and 2022	~290,000 results (google)	~32.511%