tpryor(a)media.mit.edu wrote:
Hello,
Apologies for this being a repeat; I was just informed that the original ended
up being read as part of an existing thread.
I'd like to make a request to obtain access to anonymized apache logs for
wikipedia user data.
I am creating a browsing interface for wikipedia that requires clustered user
data
(in that sense it is akin to finding articles using the amazon recommendation
system or the earlier movielens recommendation system).
For this I need access to user page requests over time- preferably stored in a
database. I can provide a script that will translate users' ip addresses to a
unique signature so that the users themselves remain anonymous, stuff the data
into a reasonably size efficient mysql table, etc.
I was told that I might need to talk to Kate about the feasibility of doing
this. Are there any existing objections to retaining anonymized apache log data
for research purposes?
Using publicly-available data you can find out the set of pages edited
by each username. Then it is possible, with some degree of uncertainty,
to link some usernames to one or more "unique signature"s (from your
quoted text above), by matching sets of user page requests to sets of
pages edited. Thus some of the data we would release to you is
bordering on, if not definitely, personally identifiable data which is
not already publicly available. The privacy policy [1] says that
"personally identifiable data collected in the server logs will not be
released by the developers who have access to it," except under certain
circumstances, none of which cover this case.
[1]
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
Tony Pryor
---
en:user:jeronim
---
Send instant messages to your online friends
http://au.messenger.yahoo.com