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.
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.
| 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 |
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.
| 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 |
These are the top 20 contributors mentioned in a byline.
| 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 |
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.
| 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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