The edit count numbers that we store in the user_editcount column in the user table (which are used in lots of different contexts) are only approximate. For example:
My edit counts for English Wikipedia:
- user_editcount: 58,268
- Actual live edit count (per xtools): 57,790 (confirmed via sql query)
- Actual total edit count (per xtools): 59,870
This is due to a variety of circumstances (see T163966#3216789), but mainly because user_editcount isn't incremented by page moves. When a page is moved, we should call $user->incEditCount() for both the move itself and any redirect that is created.