Contributor count
The Contributor count signal indicates the number of volunteer editors who collaborated to create, improve, and maintain the quality of a specific Wikipedia article. In order to represent all editorial activities, the indicator refers to volunteer editors as "contributors" (e.g., "117 contributors").
This attribute reveals the presence of the community behind Wikipedia’s content to external audiences. Contributor count highlights the large-scale cooperative work that powers Wikipedia, emphasizing the human effort that makes it one of the most trusted sources of free knowledge.
Data sources
This section provides a list of the Wikimedia APIs that can be used to access the data behind this attribution signal.
MediaWiki REST API
The MediaWiki REST API offers a page history counts endpoint that allows requestors to get the total number of editors of an article.
See the MediaWiki REST API documentation →
MediaWiki Action API
Contributor information can be retrieved through the MediaWiki Action API using action=query&prop=contributors (see reference). The response returns a list of registered contributors to a page as an array (including temporary users) and the count of anonymous contributors as an anoncontributors number. To get the complete contributor count, users must continue to iterate through the array, which includes a maximum of 500 elements. Reusers can use this data to derive a contributor count for Wikipedia articles by adding the number of registered contributors in the array to the anonymous contributor count.
See the MediaWiki Action API documentation →
Wikimedia Attribution API Coming soon
A contributor_count property is planned for the Wikimedia Attribution API as part of the trust_and_relevance signal category. Callers will receive a null value for the signal until the implementation of this property is complete.
Implementation guidance
Minimum requirements
Use plain text to display the number of contributors who have edited the Wikipedia page being shared (e.g., “128 contributors”).
Keep it neutral: Avoid expressing, either textually or visually, that a higher contributor count equals higher content quality. Treat contributor count as an indicator of editorial collaboration, not a correctness rating.
Keep Contributor count signals secondary to essential attribution (such as Source, Link, and Title). Do not replace or obscure these essential elements.
Best practices
For greater impact, combine contributor count with Reference count and/or Last update to communicate the scale and recency of community collaboration.
Consider expanding on the meaning of this signal using complementary information (e.g., displaying a tooltip that clarifies that this is the “Number of volunteers who edited this article on Wikipedia”).
Reuse scenarios
The Contributor count signal can strengthen understanding and trust across contexts where audiences may not realize that Wikimedia content is human-made and community-curated.
Search
Recommended
Display the Contributor count signal next to result snippets to highlight human authorship and emphasize the scale of collaboration behind the source.
AI assistants
Recommended
Show contributor count in expandable or source-detail views. This signal can add a nice human contrast in machine-generated information environments.