It is not unusual to see people complain that there is a lack of data here and the wonders they would do with it. The first step in that direction should be to perform a thorough search and see what data and analysis has already been made, by what means and based on what information. The will to complain on this issue and not search seems not to be a good starting point to someone willing to do data analysis.

What has been shown around here in terms of analysis and derived tools, are not a result of some privileged insider information, but of having a certain wit, and above all, will to find the data. The only exception to this are the official stats which are derived by the Forum and logically have tighter relation to the original database source. The forum itself will have it’s own inner ring on information, but a lot has been achieved from users on the forum with what is available or derivable.

To sum it up very simply:
- merit transactions are made public by the forum every Friday by means of a flat file (limited to last 120 days of txs).
- trust data is also published every Friday, although exploited less in analysis.
- anything else needed (user profile data, forum names, message names, etc.) needs to be scraped from the web, or wait for a Good Samaritan to publish it and work from there on.

I’ve deliberately omitted linking the official data files above mentioned, or detailing the file structure, as a minimum effort should be made by searching on the forum and understanding what is available, what is not, and how some additional data can be derived. Spoon feeding should not be necessary for people that are capable, just searching a bit should suffice as we often recriminarte the newbies for not using.

Valuable assets to this regard, whose threads should be looked into are, but not limited to: LoyceV, zentdex, Piggy, sncc, coinlocket$, Vod and perhaps myself.