<de-lurk = on> I don't know of any off-hand, but there is a mailing list for folks who are doing research in and around the various Wikimedia projects you can join, and they may have some resources for you. You can subscribe here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l/ The list has both researchers and Wikimedia Foundation employees, and could probably provide you with some additional resources! <de-lurk = off> -Christine Master's Candidate San Jose State University On 8/15/12 3:00 PM, air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote:
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:38:53 -0700 From: Monika Sengul-Jones <jones.monika@gmail.com> To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Wikipedia article edit history extraction tools? Message-ID: <CAD_EfP+5jdaG8MDPfGMSwMO=vCifMU_bR8+7MPvDUF5Yb2AVyQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Hello Air-L list:
This summer I'm doing research on Wikipedia entries in the field of Science and Technology Studies. A central question I'm asking is the extent to which this field, as it is now on Wikipedia, includes/features/references contributions made by women, feminist theorists, and feminist theory.
To answer this, I'm gathering data on existing pages using a variety of mixed methods. I would like to ask for recommendations on tools for extracting the history of editing on a page. I want to see how many times a given article has been edited, by whom, and what types of edits and content contributions are made over time. So far, I've found the "history" tool on the Wikipedia page limited. I cannot see how many edits have been made on a particular article and understanding what kinds of edits are made (e.g. grammatical, content) requires going into each historical page view. I'd love to find a way to download the history of an article and extract the data into a spreadsheet -- perhaps this is a tall order.
So far, I've found tools for extracting data on Wikipedia from the Digital Methods Initiative website (which was first introduced to me by this list serve! :)). Specifically, the program History Flow is useful to an extent for visualizing types of content contributions and edits over time. But there is no way to translate these visualizations into a spreadsheet format -- as far as I can tell -- so I've been doing that manually, somehow piecing together the history of edits on an article. Meanwhile, I was recommended a tool called WikiChecker ( http://en.wikichecker.com/article/?a=science_studies) but the summary format is limited and, at times, contradictory to data I get elsewhere.
If anyone has any other tools or methods to suggest for ways to collect data on content contributions and edits on Wikipedia I would be most grateful.
I'd also be happy to be in conversation with anymore interested in the concept of the project. I'm working on it as a part of the FemTechNet Initiative, spearheaded by Anne Balsamo and Alexandra Juhasz. I'm not sure if information on the initiative has circulated here, so I'll paste in a copy of the "call" which took place last spring. * http://aljean.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/femtechnet-long-form-invite-may-20... *
Thank you, Monika
-- Monika Sengul-Jones Graduate Student Communication & Science Studies University of California, San Diego msengul@ucsd.edu