[Wikipedia-l] List of authors for each article

[Brion Vibber]

Robert Bamler wrote:
> I'm working on a Wikipedia reader for the Apple iPod.

Out of curiosity, is this to run under the regular iPod OS or an alternative
like iPod Linux? If it'll run on a stock iPod, let me know if you need a beta
tester for the fifth-generation models.

> To minimize the data 
> size occupied on the iPod I will only store the current articles on the 
> device (no "old"-table). However, the GFDL requires to mention the authors of 
> an article. Thus, each article on the iPod should contain a list of all 
> Wikipedia-users that appear in the revision history.
> 
> So, finally, my question is: Is there a way to get a list of the authors of 
> each article without having to download the (extremely large) xmldump of all 
> wikipedia-articles ever written since the beginning of time? I've already 
> tried the online SQL querying mechanism, but it seems to limit queries to 
> 1000 results and to not support queries on the "old"-table.

Currently no, sorry. :(

You could screen-scrape the history pages, but that's ugly. ;)

> By the way, another question comes to my mind: If a contributor to an article 
> wasn't logged in, do I have to mention his IP-number in the list of authors? 
> I don't think this would make much sense, but perhaps it's legally required 
> by the GFDL. Or is it sufficient to make the reader application display the 
> string "There might be other (anonymous) contributors to this article"?

The Wiki Press books being published in Germany don't appear to be including IP
addresses in their author lists, but YMMV, IANAL, consult your lawyer if in
doubt, blah blah.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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