MediaWiki API Project: Watcher/Attention Symmetry

Overview

Quantify watcher/attention asymmetry on sensitive Wikipedia pages by comparing demand signals (pageviews) to supply/oversight signals (watchers*, edits, unique editors, talk-page activity). Deliver a reproducible dataset and dashboard that spotlight pages with high demand but low oversight—and vice versa.
*Watcher counts are sometimes restricted; we’ll fall back to proxy metrics when unavailable.

Action Items

If this is the beginning (research & design)

• Scope: 100–300 English Wikipedia pages across elections, policing, migration, public health, human rights, climate. Save as seed_pages.csv (title,pageid,qid,topic).
• Metrics & windows (suggested): monthly from 2019 → present.
• Attention metrics: pageviews (REST API), external referrals (optional), trending spikes.
• Oversight metrics: watchers* (if available), edits/month, unique editors/month, revert ratio, talk-page edits/month.
• Define an Attention Gap Index (AGI): demand ÷ oversight (normalized ranks or z-scores).
• Libraries (pick pairs): requests or httpx; pandas or polars; duckdb or sqlite; altair or plotly.

If researched and ready (implementation steps)

1. Seed & resolve

   • Resolve pageid via action=query&titles=<title>, track redirects; store (title,pageid,qid,topic).

2. Demand (attention) pulls

   • Pageviews: Wikimedia REST pageviews/per-article monthly series for each page; compute level, volatility, and spikes (e.g., 95th pct).

3. Oversight pulls

   • Try prop=info&inprop=watchers|visitingwatchers (note: may be restricted/not returned).
   • Always compute proxies: monthly edits (prop=revisions), unique editors, revert ratio (comment/tag heuristics), and talk-page edits (Talk:<title>).

4. Features & index

   • Normalize each metric per-month (z-scores or percentile ranks within topic).
   • AGI = demand_norm / oversight_norm (guard against div-by-zero; add ε).
   • Label pages with persistent high AGI (e.g., top decile for ≥3 months).

5. Deliver

   • Artifacts: pageviews.parquet, rev_monthly.parquet, talk_monthly.parquet, watchers_snapshot.parquet (when available), agi_monthly.parquet, metrics.csv.
   • Dashboard: per-page timelines (views vs edits), AGI heatmap (pages × months), top-pages table with filters (topic, month).
   • Methods README: data gaps, watcher restrictions, formulas, and caveats.

6. Quality & Ops

   • Caching and retries with exponential backoff; honor maxlag.
   • Tests: continuation handling, talk-page mapping, AGI stability (no NaNs), revert heuristics.
   • Error handling: try/except + helpful print() on I/O; terminate with a trace on dtype mismatches; log warnings for recoverables.
   • Optional: monthly refresh via GitHub Actions.

Resources/Instructions

API docs to pin in repo

MediaWiki Action API (overview): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Action_API
Query & continuation: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query
Revisions (timestamps, users, tags, comments): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Revisions
Page info (watchers*, protection): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Info

Wikimedia REST (pageviews)

Pageviews per-article: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/AQS/Pageviews

Suggested libraries (choose pairs)

• HTTP: requests | httpx
• DataFrames: pandas | polars
• Storage: duckdb | sqlite
• Viz: altair | plotly

Sample queries (copy to notes)

# Resolve pageids
action=query&titles=<TITLE>

# Latest/oldest revisions in a window (monthly aggregation from timestamps)
action=query&prop=revisions&titles=<TITLE>&rvprop=timestamp|user|comment|tags&rvlimit=max&rvstart=<ISO_END>&rvend=<ISO_START>

# Talk page revisions (oversight proxy)
action=query&prop=revisions&titles=Talk:<TITLE>&rvprop=timestamp|user|comment|tags&rvlimit=max&rvstart=<ISO_END>&rvend=<ISO_START>

# Page info (watchers*, may be restricted)
action=query&prop=info&inprop=watchers|visitingwatchers&titles=<TITLE>

# Pageviews (REST): monthly
/metrics/pageviews/per-article/en.wikipedia/all-access/user/<URL_ENCODED_TITLE>/monthly/<START>/<END>

Notes & ethics

• Watcher counts may be unavailable or redacted; treat them as optional and prefer proxies (edits, unique editors, talk activity).

• Aggregate reporting only; no editor-level profiling.

• Spikes in attention don’t imply low quality or controversy—interpret in context.

• If this issue requires access to 311 data, please answer the following questions:

  • Not applicable.
  • N/A
  • N/A
  • N/A

Project Outline (detailed plan for this idea) in details: