Submissions:2014/Using the MediaWiki web API to get (only) the data you need


 * Title of the submission: "Computer, Tell Me All About This Data": using the MediaWiki web API to get (only) the data you need (Part 1)


 * Themes (Proposal Themes - Community, Tech, Outreach, GLAM, Education): Technology and Infrastructure


 * Type of submission (Presentation Types - Panel, Workshop, Presentation, etc): Curated talk


 * Author of the submission: Frances Hocutt


 * E-mail address: frances.hocutt AT gmail dot com


 * Username: Fhocutt


 * US state or country of origin: Washington, USA


 * Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.): Seattle Attic Community Workshop


 * Personal homepage or blog: http://franceshocutt.com; http://twitter.com/franceshocutt


 * Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal):

Have you ever wanted to add to the existing collection of Wikipedia-based visualizations, go digging in wiki-related metadata in search of pattern, or just grab one piece of information from each page in a category, but weren't sure where to start? This talk will take us beyond the in-browser wikipages that we know and love and will introduce the MediaWiki web API: a powerful tool that lets users interact with Wikimedia's immense and intricately connected collections of data and that lets us take advantage of the programmable web to monitor usage, categorize trends, and learn more about how users tend to work.

We'll discuss how APIs facilitate computer-to-computer communication, introduce MediaWiki's web API and exploratory tools such as API:Sandbox, and explore some of the uses of web API client libraries. Finally, we'll take a look at some of the fascinating data visualizations that have been created with data fetched with the Wikipedia API. Whether or not you write your own code, you'll learn more about MediaWiki's capabilities and ways you can get data beyond the pages you normally see. If you want to learn more, come to the companion workshop, and we'll dig into the API ourselves!


 * Length of presentation/talk (see Presentation Types for lengths of different presentation types): 15-30 min


 * Will you attend WikiConference USA if your submission is not accepted?: Yes, if I receive a scholarship


 * Slides or further information (optional): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWikiAPITalk-franceshocutt.pdf


 * Special request as to time of presentations: should be scheduled before the Submissions:Using web API client libraries to play with and learn from our (meta)data workshop (Part 2), not necessarily immediately before

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 * 1) --Frank Schulenburg (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:54, 1 April 2014 (EDT)
 * 2) Sumanah (talk) 12:25, 2 April 2014 (EDT)
 * 3) Kosboot (talk) 20:08, 14 May 2014 (EDT)
 * 4) Faolin42 (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2014 (EDT)
 * 5) Add your username here.