@Mayakp.wiki @nshahquinn-wmf Do you have thoughts on this task? Basically temp accounts are currently being included in the user-related counts on Special:Statistics: https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics.
Relevant previous discussion: T337103#9143741

I would say that temp users should not be counted in these statistics.

The main reason is continuity: temp users would have previously been IP users and would not have been counted. This is the same reason that we are not including temp users in the active editors metric. (It seems like @kostajh and @jhsoby had the same reasoning as well.)

Not necessary for this task, but other ideas that I like:

• Renaming "registered users" to "permanent users"
• Changing the description of active users to "permanent users who have..." (changing the title from "active users" to "active permanent users" would be even more precise, but that might be excessive)
• Adding an "active temporary users" row (this would make it more beneficial to change "active users" to "active permanent users"—otherwise it would seem like "active temporary users" would be included in "active users")

FWIW, English Wikipedia already customizes "active users" to "active registered users".

@Niharika which team would this need input from? I don't see another team tag on this task and I think the page is unowned (so we may need to handle updating it).

This was brought up in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#c-Xeroctic-20251107083500-Active_users_jump cc @Niharika

@kzimmerman do you have an input on this task? Or if you know who does please include them.

@Niharika what kind of input are you looking for?

In case you missed it, I already provided a Movement Insights opinion in T339291#10455982. That opinion (temp users shouldn't be counted) seems to align with what most people are thinking, so it seems reasonable at this point just to move to implementation.

Obviously, if you want broader consultation about what the definition should be, that's fine, but from your comment it's not clear that that's what you're looking for 😊

In T339291#11352877, @Niharika wrote:

@kzimmerman do you have an input on this task? Or if you know who does please include them.

Hey @Niharika, I don't have good context on this. What kind of input are you looking for? Is this in addition to the input Neil previously provided?

Also - I don't always see Phab comments, so please ping me on Slack if you need something and I haven't responded.

@kzimmerman @nshahquinn-wmf My apologies I completely missed Neil's original comment in T339291#10455982 before I wrote mine. I think that comment answers what we need to do here:

I would say that temp users should not be counted in these statistics.
The main reason is continuity: temp users would have previously been IP users and would not have been counted. This is the same reason that we are not including temp users in the active editors metric.

I will update the task description to reflect this. Thanks for your help!

This came up in multiple community discussions and should have higher priority in my opinion. Special:Statistics should at least indicate that it now includes logged out editors as well (which greatly inflates the numbers, especially when users delete their cookies...). Ideally TA should be excluded, just like IPs used to be.

• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Active user stats
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 226#Statistics error?
• Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)/Archive 13#Active users jump
• Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 85#Weird increase in active users?

@Madalina I'm adding this to Next since this feels important in light of the threads Johannes shared above.