jeluf wrote:

Determining the number of edits is a very expensive DB query.

wikimedia-bugzilla wrote:

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...

ropers wrote:

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.

the.r3m0t wrote:

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.

the.r3m0t wrote:

I see what you mean. I'm unvoting.

makoline wrote:

I think that the newest 1% of all users should be marked as newbies. For more information look at bug 3226.

robchur wrote:

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.

webmaster wrote:

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...

avarab wrote:

(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?

robchur wrote:

No idea...

...BAM! ;-)