When someone changes a Wikipedia page, you can do two things about it. You can delete what they did. Or you can do this.
Press thank. It's safe. Nothing gets sent.
Last month people pressed it 68,948 times. Right now it happens about once every 38 seconds. That's 0 since you opened this page.
Wikipedia saves every change anyone has ever made. Here is one. Someone fixed two words at 2:42 in the morning.
This is the list of changes. Each line is one change. Now look at the end of each line.
You can undo it. That is the only thing you can do.
Now log in and look again. There is a new word. It has been there since 2013.
Press it and the other person gets a little note. That is all it does. They cannot write back. You cannot take it back. And it is saved forever, where anyone can look it up.
You have probably never seen it. It only shows up if you are logged in. Most people never log in. So almost nobody knows it is there.
In one month, across sixteen languages, how many times do you think someone pressed it?
Below is one month of it. Every dot is one real thank you.
times in thirty days, in sixteen languages. That is one every 38 seconds. All day. All night.
Each dot up there is about 43 of them.
Most of it happens in the afternoon in Europe and America. Least of it happens while they sleep.
But it never stops. Even in the quietest hour, it still happens 56 times.
Tuesday and Wednesday are the busiest. Saturday is the quietest.
The weekend is about 17% lower than a weekday. People do this at work.
English does it the most. German Wikipedia is much smaller than English, but it does it almost as much.
Hindi did it 55 times in the whole month.
Not famous people. People who fix small things. A comma. A dead link. A date that is wrong.
The one at the top has made 4.6 million changes. Mostly spelling.
Number six is Einhard283. He has made 2,000 changes. That is not many. Last month 142 people thanked him.
You do not need to do a lot for someone to notice.
The people who built it said it was for new editors, to help them keep going.
But most thanks go to people who have been there a long time. The middle person here has made 4,866 changes and has been on Wikipedia 7 years.
Only 16 in 100 go to someone with under 100 changes. That is who it was for.
Almost half of the people who pressed it pressed it one time. For one person. Then they stopped.
That is 6,099 people who said thank you once and never again.
The same thing happens on the other side. 9,055 people were thanked one time and never again.
So both ends of this are mostly one-off. Someone noticed. Someone got noticed. Once.
Not everyone gets the same. The top 1 in 100 people collect 17% of all the thanks. The top 10 collect more than half.
The bottom half of people share what is left, which is about 12%.
Last month, 2,517 pairs of people thanked each other. They fixed each other's work, and both of them said thank you.
Everything above is counted. Here are some of the actual ones. Real names, real times, pulled from the log.
Each line happened. Somebody fixed something, and somebody else noticed.
Three people built it in 2013: Ryan Kaldari, Benjamin Chen and Wctaiwan. It went live on 30 May that year. They said they wanted it to be
as easy to show appreciation for each other's work as it is to express disagreement or disapproval. Extension:Thanks, design notes
Wikipedia has a lot of rules. People write about the rules. Nobody writes about this button. It just keeps going, every 38 seconds, and it has done that for thirteen years.
If you have a Wikipedia account, type the username. This checks the real log, right now.
It takes about a minute. You have to be logged in. That is the only reason you have never seen it.
Half the people who do this only ever do it once. If you want to be unusual, do it twice.
Data: Wikipedia's public thanks log via the MediaWiki Action API (list=logevents&letype=thanks), 16 language editions, 7 July to 6 August 2026. Lifetime edit counts from each editor's home wiki, pulled 6 August 2026. Feature history from Extension:Thanks. Every figure is reproducible from those endpoints.
Not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. This page borrows Wikipedia's colours and typography to tell a story about one of its features. No Wikimedia trademark or logo is used.
The Data Drop · sheets.works