[Air-L] Reddit Downvotes

[Kelly Bergstrom]

The API depth limit CAN be circumvented, but it is quite tedious to collect
the full range of postings.  It is probably easier/faster to make friends
with someone who already has done the scraping who can run a query on their
behalf.

My own archive spans from Reddit's launch to about a month ago.  I did
collect upvotes and downvotes, but those numbers are always a bit fuzzy. I
can query the top X most downvoted submissions for them if they want, but
they should make it a reasonable number, as there are over a million
submissions to r/politics.

Happy to chat further off the list,

Kelly


On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 2:40 PM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt at gmail.com> wrote:

> To follow up with Kyle's comment, you can also use the API to get profile
> information (though in my attempts I've also set up a web scraper to get
> user profile info like karma scores, date joined, and awarded shields).
> Still, the API only allows you to see the user's most recent 1000
> posts/comments.
>
> Alexander Leavitt
> PhD Student
> USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
> http://alexleavitt.com
> Twitter: @alexleavitt <http://twitter.com/alexleavitt>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Kyle Kontour <kkontour at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Alex is spot on.  Also I would suggest that in /r/politics it may be
> > fruitful to check the individual histories of the "controversial" posts
> > and/or any downvoted posts within any of those threads:  unpopular
> > views/posts seem likely to me to be posted either by people who hold
> > consistently unpopular views, or who are trolling (the difference may not
> > be clear).  That might give you some metadata to go on.
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 12:29 PM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > I've done a lot of work recently with reddit data. It's actually a
> > > difficult issue of sampling unless you have access to their backend
> > (which
> > > I believe nobody has ever gotten). Unfortunately what you're asking is
> > near
> > > impossible.
> > >
> > > One thing you can do is sort by "controversial" (though this isn't
> "most
> > > downvoted," it's only the most-even up-to-downvote ratio). Then you can
> > > collect via the API the "top 1000" posts (or here, most controversial
> > 1000)
> > > by various date lengths (all time, past year, past month, today, etc.).
> > >
> > > As far as "near" impossible, if you're interested in a sub other than
> > > /r/politics, you can start scraping every single post from a newly
> > created
> > > subreddit, so you have a population sample of the posts and their
> voting
> > > scores. But with a long-time, active sub like /r/politics, you can't
> get
> > > past the API limitations.
> > >
> > > Alex
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > Alexander Leavitt
> > > PhD Student
> > > USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
> > > http://alexleavitt.com
> > > Twitter: @alexleavitt <http://twitter.com/alexleavitt>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:23 AM, jose marichal <
> > marichal at callutheran.edu
> > > >wrote:
> > >
> > > > Colleagues,
> > > >
> > > > A student of mine is doing a project looking at the most downvoted
> > > articles
> > > > in the sub-reddit "r/politics."  Does anyone know of a way to
> identify
> > > the
> > > > most "downvoted" links on the site?
> > > >
> > > > Many thanks,
> > > > Jose
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> _______________________________________________________________________________________
> > > >
> > > > josé marichal, ph.d. | associate professor | political science
> > > > <http://about.me/marichal>
> > > > department | california lutheran university
> > > > 60 w. olsen road | #3800 | thousand oaks, ca  91360
> > > > 805-493-3328
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