Wikipedia:Editcountitis

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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page.

Shortcut: WP:ITIS

This page contains material which is kept because it is considered humorous. It is not intended, nor should it be used, for any research or serious use (unless the research is about Wikipedia itself).

Editcountitis is a serious disease consisting of an unhealthy obsession with the number of edits you have made to Wikipedia. It may even be fatal in its later stages. If caught early, though, a full recovery can be expected.

Classic symptoms:

Checking your current count (using one of the tools listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters) more often than your watchlist
Making changes to articles continuously, instead of using the preview button
Making changes that you immediately revert
Thinking of your position in list of Wikipedians by number of edits as a competition

If you find yourself exhibiting one or more of these symptoms, you might want to remember:

Nobody really cares how many edits you've made (even though you might think otherwise).
There is no prize for making 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, or even 10,000 edits.
It doesn't matter how high you rank on The List.

[edit] Seriously, though ...

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 the Wikipedia and how much experience he or she has.

All edits are perfectly welcome, including trivial edits like fixing typos. Each edit consumes disk space and other resources, so please don't edit in a manner intended to artificially increase your edit count, such as never using preview. Remember what we're all doing here is building an encyclopedia, not competing to see who makes the most edits.