Wikipedia:Editcountitis

This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously.

Shortcuts WP:ITIS WP:ECT WP:HIGHSCORE WP:OECD WP:COUNTITIS

This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.

Editcountitis
Other names	Obsessive edit-counting disorder (OECD), Edit count addiction (ECA)
A drawing of a woman suffering from editcountitis
Symptoms	Stress
Complications	Stress
Duration	Until the editor takes a break
Causes	Nothing else to do
Prevention	Not caring
Treatment	Taking a break

Editcountitis or obsessive edit-counting disorder (OECD) is an addiction consisting of an unhealthy obsession with the number of edits one has made to Wikipedia or another online resource. Luckily, no fatalities or serious injuries have been recorded so far. Furthermore, if caught early, resumption of normal life activities may be possible. Sequelae may persist.

Classic symptoms:

• Gloating over an extremely high edit count generated by excessive bot usage, often at the rate of 100s of "edits" per minute – and then boasting about being one of the most active Wikipedians on your user page.
• Announcing on your user page or your talk page that one of your main aims in editing is to reach 1,000 edits, or 10,000, or 100,000 edits, or any other number you pick out of the air.
• Using one of the tools listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters to check your edit count more often than you check your watchlist.
• Having an edit counter as your home page.
• Copy editing one sentence at a time to get more edits out of an article.
• Not using the preview button, so corrections to your own typos increase your count.
• Always making sure to be logged in before editing, for the sole purpose of not wasting this precious opportunity to increase your count. (This item was added by a Wikipedian who didn't log in. ;-))
• Thinking of your position in The List as a competition.
• Deliberately creating lots of typos in your edits so that you can fix them later, increasing your edit count.
• Getting frustrated if you click on "My contributions" and then click on "Edit count", only to be confronted with an icon saying that the replication lag is high so that any edits made within the last eight hours will not be counted.
• Being especially frustrated if you clicked on the "My contributions" icon and then clicked on "Edit count" at 22:52 UTC on April 2, 2012, when information was given that the replication lag was so high that any edits made within the previous "2 weeks, 1 hours, 36 minutes, 21 seconds" prior to that date would not be counted (or in severe cases, calling this "black letter day").
• Being overcome by overwhelming emotion and relief when the aforementioned replication lag problem ended on April 3, 2012.
• Getting annoyed every time you make an edit, but get into an edit conflict wherein someone else does the edit you wanted to do.
• In extreme cases, making bad changes just so you can revert them later.
• In really extreme cases, keeping a current manual count on your user page and frequently updating it (since the act of merely updating it increases your count!).
• When you update your manual count, habitually forgetting to include the edit in which you just updated your manual count, and making another edit or three just to correct it again. Technically, you could do this forever, adding one each time you increase your manual count, but we hope you don't.
• Voting support or oppose based on number of edits at Requests for adminship, rather than by checking the user's actual contributions.
• Editing the main sandbox, or your own sandbox excessively.
• Checking the edit count of any other editor that you come across in Wikipedia to see who has the most.
• Becoming a "New Page Patroller" for the sole purpose of being able to more easily increase your edit count by correcting typos and grammar and spelling errors.
• "Accidentally" vandalizing pages using your IP address, just so you can login and revert them.
• Using an edit counter script, and running it over and over again to increase your edit count. You could do this forever, thinking no one would see it as it would disappear from Recent Changes instantly, due to the fact that so many edits are made on Wikipedia. Please don't do this, though!
• Playing the random article game too much.
• Removal of whitespace characters, one at a time.
• Playing The Wikipedia Adventure over and over (even if they've been editing for years), as to artificially inflate their edit count with the automatic edits.
• Clicking "Save page" when you did not make any changes and saved it again, or deleting and then re-typing one word or letter.
• Joining the Birthday and Welcoming Committees so that you can easily raid the Birthday Calendar and the User creation log and easily ensure a hundred edits per day, or maybe per hour!
• Throwing a party each time you reach significant milestones on your edit count (e.g. one thousand edits, two thousand edits and so on and so forth).
• Renaming files over on the Wikimedia Commons using your unified username, causing said files to automatically be renamed on Wikipedia using your account (thus boosting your count).
• Creating a bunch of redirects to an existing article, no matter how tenuous.
• Mass importing short descriptions from Wikidata without checking to see if they meet WP:HOWTOSD.
• The persistent expression of grandiose delusions on Wikipedia.
• Turning short descriptions to local.
• Pressing a link that leads you to the "Edit source" of any page.
• Adding "?action=edit" at the end of the link of any editable page of Wikipedia.

If you find yourself exhibiting at least one of these symptoms, consider seeking professional help. Remember:

• Unless you want to be an admin, nobody really cares how many edits you've made. Even then, it's really not quantity, but quality, that matters.
• After your 500th edit, there is no prize for making 1,000, 2,000, 10,000, 2¹⁶ (65,536), 2¹⁷ (131,072), or even 2¹⁸ (262,144) edits. Full disclosure: there are some privileges based on edit count, related to Wikipedia elections, edit filters, image moves, AutoWikiBrowser software, and access to paywalled sources, but the vast majority are granted on or before 1,000 edits.
• No matter what your current count is, if you've edited Wikipedia at all, you are already above average.
• No matter how high you rank on the list of Wikipediholics, you'll never catch me! (That's what the creator of this page thought anyway. He's number 3595 in the list!)

Editcountitis is used humorously to suggest a belief that a Wikipedian's overall contribution level can be measured solely by their edit count. This is a phenomenon which some think may be harmful to processes such as requests for adminship, as well as to the Wikipedia community in itself. The problems with using edit counts to measure relative level of experience are that it does not take into account that users could have an extensive edit history prior to registering an account (posting anonymously), and that major and minor edits are counted equally, regardless of whether the edit is a typo fix, or the creation of a full article.

Furthermore, edit counts do not judge the quality of the edits, as insightful comments on talk pages and acts of vandalism are counted equally. Hence, it is not always a reliable way of telling how experienced or worthy a user truly is. Nevertheless, using the edit count tool is often useful for obtaining a very rough idea of how the editor interacts with Wikipedia and how much experience they have, and tools which allow a breakdown of an edit count by month can give a good impression of how consistent an editor's activity has been over the years.

All edits are perfectly welcome, including wikignomish edits like fixing typos. However, please do not edit in a manner intended to increase your edit count artificially, such as never using preview; remember what we are all doing here is building an encyclopedia, not competing to see who makes the most edits.

Editing tools such as Twinkle and Huggle inflate edit counts, and because many people think that some use these tools solely to inflate edit count, some have opposed the adminship of candidates who heavily use such tools, as judged by relative edit counts. This is a more subtle form of editcountitis. A narrow focus of any sort for a prospective admin is surely a concern, but discouraging people from constructively using the tools available to them is a concern as well. The irony is that this logic is likely a misguided response meant to discourage editcountitis, to discourage those who would inflate their edit counts with "easy" edits to gain credibility.

Not everyone with a high edit-count is actually a sloppy editor, with change a phrase & save, change a phrase & save, etc. They might have tried to keep their edit-count below 40,000. However, some people, in their daily roles are, more or less, forced to make many minor edits, such as reverting a whole collection of random articles that a vandal has quickly trashed. Presto: 30 edits (for "nothing"). Many major articles are edit-protected from public enemy #1 (the "anonymous IP vandals"). However, vast numbers of articles are not, due to bizarre vandalism ideas: a vandal finds article titles with letters "boo" to become "boob" (or such), in an endless universe of puns. Even privileged users must increment their edit-counters for undoing bad edits or fixing categories (etc.), as part of their daily tasks. Those people shouldn't be condemned for having a high edit-count.

Edit count

• Wikipedia:Edit count
• Wikipedia:Edits Per Day (The truth! Not these lies! Signed: The Editcount Fairy.)
• Wikipedia:Service awards § What is counted?
• m:Grants:IEG/The Wikipedia Adventure/Final § Summary

Others

• Wikipedia:Adminitis
• Wikipedia:Articlecountitis
• Wikipedia:Barnstaritis
• Wikipedia:Userboxitis
• Wikipedia:Watchlistitis
• Wikipedia:Wikipediholic

• Edit counting (at the Meta-Wiki)