We all know that while we have over a million, actually over 1.2 million now, user accounts, the number of actual contributors is quite a bit lower. Often you will see a number of 200’000 quoted, however that only considers the last editor of an object and not all the editors.

Analysing the mid May 2013 changeset dump gives a total of 335’000 unique user ids that have created a changeset. We can see this number increasing more or less linearly in recent years:

Over the last 12 months we have averaged roughly 7’000 new contributors per month, in total a good 80’000 per year:

The numbers only take half of May in to account so it is too early to see if the announcement of the iD editor will already have a noticeable effect. In the long run we hope for a clear increase in the number of account holders actually contributing.

Update:

May 2013 numbers now for the whole month, based on the early June changeset dump. Total number of contributors 340’311, new in May: 9357 While this isn’t a new record it is a good 2nd place.