Dear all,

I am trying to gather some data for a new paper, but I wonder if there 
is a more efficient way of doing so than by using Wikipedia Special:Contribs
I have a list of editors, whose edits I'd like to analyze and get 
numbers on their contributions by mainspace, and to specific groups of 
pages (such as Wikipedia:Arbitration and its subpages, for example). In 
other words, for a defined group of users, I would like to know if they 
have ever contributed to an arbitration page, and if they did, how many 
edits did they make.

I am assuming this wouldn't be that difficult for somebody who knows how 
to run the queries on the Wikipedia database, but I have never been able 
to develop enough of a coding skill to do so. Still, if people could 
direct me to a page with instructions on how to run a database query, 
perhaps I can try to learn. THat is, if they have been made more non-CS

person friendly, as two or so years ago when I last research this topic 
they were, IMHO, still beyond the means of a non-coder to deal with.

Alternatively, I can consider paying someone to run a number of such 
queries for me, since I now even have a real research budget :)