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In 2017 I asked to update the readme.txt of the data dump.

Today I revisited that read me due to Stack Exchange Data Dump — OwnerDisplayName and LastEditorDisplayName. I was surprised to find that the careful work done by Oded has been thoroughly destroyed.

Two requests:

  • Can you restore the Read Me to at least the state Oded left it in.
  • Can you add a link/reference in that Read Me to the canonical Meta post that describes the schema. In plain text that should probably be: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2678. This was also proposed by user busterroni.

Note that the canonical covers both SEDE and the Data-dump and we're happy to keep that post up-to-date, which is much harder for the readme.txt as that is solely under your control and can only be updated by reporting bugs on it.

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    They dumped Oded. :(
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Oct 28, 2022 at 9:43

1 Answer 1

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What happened

We don't know. The changes Oded talked about in 2017 predate any of us in DBRE. We're not confident those changes ever did make it into the data dump and, even if so, how to replicate them correctly now, or incorporate other changes that have happened in the meantime.

How we should fix it

Maintaining two independent copies of anything is a pain. My proposal is that the readme file we push to Archive.org simply tells the user to find schema documentation in the existing answer here on meta:

This way we can have a single canonical copy, and can all be involved in ownership / stewardship.

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    If the Archive.org accepts these kind of redirections in a readme then I agree this is the best solution going forward. So if all lights are on green then let's make this happen. It is appreciated you looked into this. I'm sorry you had to do some forensics.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Oct 28, 2022 at 17:04
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    @rene The readme is just a text file; it doesn't actively redirect the browser. I can see that "points to" implied redirect; I'll correct the wording.
    – Aaron Bertrand Staff
    Commented Oct 28, 2022 at 17:20

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