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 :)