Recently, the stated number of total active editors on all projects (TAE, which is [[ http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors | featured in the report card ]] and the previous [[ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_reports#Monthly_reports | WMF monthly reports ]]) appears to have considerably increased retroactively for past months:
|Month| TAE as given today [1] | TAE as given on October 12, 2014 [2]| TAE as given on July 5, 2014 [3]
| Aug 2014 | 78645 | 77173| -
|Jul 2014 | 78025| 76594| -
|Jun 2014 |76046 |74598|-
|May 2014|81787|80176 |80402
|Apr 2014|76859|75342|75413
|Mar 2014|78615|77072 |77153
Any explanation? Assuming that there wasn't some massive undeletion of pages (i.e. the opposite of the usual "deletion dwindle" that can explain the slight decrease between July 5 and October 12), either an unannounced definition change or a bug seem to be the only possibilities. (It also happened long after [[ http://infodisiac.com/blog/2014/06/reassessment-of-active-editors/ | this bug fix ]].)
[1] https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikimediaAllProjects.htm = https://web.archive.org/web/20150128064549/https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikimediaAllProjects.htm
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20141012040955/http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikimediaAllProjects.htm
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20140705052031/http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikimediaAllProjects.htm