That's right.  I use the API and the XML dumps if I need text content.  If you let me know about the type of analysis you are performing, I can advise about the best strategies. 

On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 6:14 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes@wikimedia.org> wrote:

If we're talking Wikimedia Mediawiki instances, yes, the API is your
only way forward - for performance reasons the text content is stored
in a totally different set of servers that (to my knowledge) even paid
researchers don't get to mess around with. Alternately you could take
a look at https://dumps.wikimedia.org if slightly outdated information
is okay to you.

On 29 July 2015 at 18:58, Srijan Kumar <srijankedia@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I want to read the text stored in the text tables[1], but the old_text field
> stores it as what seems to be the path to the blob. How can I get the
> content of the blob?
>
> Alternately, is there any other way to access all text content (including
> deleted content) without requiring global rights to the API?
>
> Thanks!
> Srijan
>
> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Text_table
>
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> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>



--
Oliver Keyes
Research Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation

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