I am calculating the differences between graduated betas v.s. discontinued betas for an academic paper. In order to make a fair comparison - I need to compare the beta phase performance of the graduated site against the beta phase of the unsuccessful site.
When an unsuccessful beta is discontinued - e.g. Theoretical Physics - a data dump is made available for download ("you can download the data dump of all questions here").
For graduated beta sites and sites still in beta: data files can be downloaded from the Internet Archive or accessed via Data Explorer. One way to achieve my goal is simply to take the Internet Archive data dump, work out the graduation date and delete data after graduation.
I am hoping to have a cleaner solution: e.g. given graduated sites tend to have their Area 51 sites still accessible (e.g. The Workplace), I am wondering whether similar download functionality is available and how it can be accessed?