Devoted wiki gnomes are well familiar with the [[Stats(Username)]] macro that reports on a user's past contribution to the wiki. It lists (1) the number of pages edited, (2) pages created, and (3) the number of images contributed. These stats are no longer collectively displayed on the User Statistics page, so this page has lost most of it's use. Imagine, though, that one can objectively compare the contributions of different users... How? This is a question that has kept almost nobody awake at night—but here's an answer anyway.
The difficulty of such a comparison lies in the fact that the three statistics reported are not of like units. The first is in "pages", the second in "edits", and the third in "images". So the first step in comparison is to convert each to the same type of unit. Of course every wiki gnome's preference is to convert them all to units of happiness or some other form of utility, but the metaphysics of such a conversion is beyond the abilities of this author. Instead, we'll convert them to a more tangible form, words.
For "Pages edited" and "Pages created", this is a straightforward procedure. At the time of this page creation, the average words involved in the last 10 page edits and creations1 was respectively 16.27 and 126.36. So each page edit and created page will be worth this many words. Converting images to words, however, involves a bit of handwaving so you'll just have to trust me. An image is worth a thousand words, so we'll set it at that.
So, here we have the standard conversion chart for comparison of user statistics:
| Statistic | Word Value |
| Page Edits | 16.27 |
| Page Creations | 126.37 |
| Images Added | 1000 |
Now, returning to the original statistics. Take for example someone who has edited 4112 pages, created 256 pages, and contributed 326 images. Their score in terms of "words" would be (4,112 edits * 16.27 words) + (256 creations * 126.37 words) + (326 images * 1,000 words), which sums to 425,252.96 words—a commendable total. Any two users can thus be compared equally.
Using the stats available on the morning of May 9th, 2005 and a VERY subjective method of sorting users into classes the following table was created:
| Primary Role | Number | Percent |
| Editor | 56 | 6.1% |
| Page Creator | 92 | 10.0% |
| Photographer | 88 | 9.6% |
| Contributing User | 442 | 48.3% |
| Registered User | 239 | 26.0% |
Primary role was assigned based on the relationship between a user's three stats (edits, pages, photos).
Because number of reverts by a user is not currently given in the [[Stats(Username)]] macro, the dwrevert.csh script written by CraigBrozinsky may be used to calculate the number of edits, reverts and ratio of reverts to edits of a user by analyzing their edit history pages.
Footnotes
1. Redirects were ignored and only new new pages were counted.
