Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Technical/@comment-5558012-20140603170819/@comment-452-20140604004711

No, the page states that that variable is no longer used.

$wgArticleCountMethod appears to be set to "comma" on Wikia, because I just created a test article with one wikilink and no commas and it was not counted towards NUMBEROFARTICLES. Then I edited it and added a comma, and NUMBEROFARTICLES went up. I then removed everything except the comma, and NUMBEROFARTICLES didn't change.

When in doubt, always test.

edit: also: null: the value will be set at run time depending on $wgUseCommaCount: if $wgUseCommaCount is false, it will be 'link', if it is true it will be 'comma' So, I believe that $wgArticleCountMethod is null, $wgUseCommaCount is true. $wgUseCommaCount is deprecated, but if $wgArticleCountMethod is not set, $wgUseCommaCount is still used.

Either way, experimentation has shown that: (Tested on a wiki created in 2007, and a wiki created last month.)
 * Link and no comma = not counted.
 * Comma and no Link = counted.