Glossary of Terms

ROFLMAO.

I had been editing wikis for literally years before I did my first edit on wikipedia - as an IP. I'm quite certain I was competent before reaching 100 edits. I created an account only when I decided to create articles. I suspect I'm not unique, or even all that rare. (If you count multilingual wikipedia editors making their first edits in their second or third languages, I'm sure this is rather common.)

Also, the edit count method is inherently flawed. Some people tend to make dozens of minor changes with one edit; others do a separate edit for each one. Much depends on how often they get interrupted, and how reliable their computer may be. It's also a matter of proofreading style.

Am I an inactive editor if I create an article a month, using a single edit ;-)

You raise a bunch of important issues with measurement. We do need to account for anonymous editors as they comprise about 31% of all edits. Please see this reply on a related thread.

Edit count is imperfect (as are most metrics), but it does give us a basic understanding of the broad trends within our communities. We should use multiple metrics to make sure we're looking at these issues from different angles. Please see this section of the study (limitations of this study --> areas we should investigate in future work) and this post for some ideas that have been discussed.