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stackexchange-api

Finding out when someone voted for your question on Stack Exchange

Here is a question I posted on a Stack Exchange website: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4404052/why-is-the-traveling-salesperson-problem-difficult

Is it possible to see a complete history of when (timestamp) each upvote and downvote occurred?

For example:

  score           timestamp cumulative_score
    10 2024-07-31 17:21:33               10
   -10 2024-08-01 02:55:01                0
   -10 2024-08-01 05:11:04              -10
   -10 2024-08-01 06:28:40              -20
    10 2024-08-01 07:15:45              -10
   -10 2024-08-01 13:21:15              -20

Can this be done with the Stack Overflow API?

The closest thing I found was this: https://math.stackexchange.com/posts/4404052/timeline

enter image description here

But this does not contain the full voting history. I do not need to know which users voted - just the times at which the score changed.

References:

Note: The reason I am asking - I am interested in knowing if the intensity at which scores change on a question can be modelled using a random walk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk)

Solution

  • Is it possible to see a complete history of when (timestamp) each upvote and downvote occurred?

    No, that is not possible, for security/privacy reasons. The best you get is a vote tally on a date. That goes for the API /question/timeline endpoint

    const ApiUrl = 'https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions/4404052/timeline?site=math&filter=!bbZvl7Y9jHviql'

const providers = {
   'creation_date': getDateTime
}

function getValue(v) {
  return v;
}

function getFieldNames(items) {
     const hdrs = items.reduce( (a, c) => { 
      for(const f in c) {
          a[f] = providers[f] ?? getValue
      }
      return a
   }, {})
   return hdrs;
}

function addHeaders(hdrs) {
     const head = document.getElementById('head')
     const tr = document.createElement('tr')
     for(const h in hdrs) {
        const th = document.createElement('th')
        th.textContent = h
        tr.appendChild(th)
     }
     head.appendChild(tr)
     return hdrs
}

function zero(v) {
  return v<10?`0${v}`:v.toString()
}

function getDate(dt) {
  return `${dt.getUTCFullYear()}-${zero(dt.getUTCMonth()+1)}-${zero(dt.getUTCDay())}`
}

function getTime(dt) {
  return `${zero(dt.getUTCHours())}:${zero(dt.getUTCMinutes())}:${zero(dt.getUTCSeconds())}`
}

function getDateTime(v) {
  const d = new Date(v * 1000)
  return `${getDate(d)} ${getTime(d)} `
}

function addRowForItem(item, hdrs) {
  const tr = document.createElement('tr')
  for(const f in hdrs) {
     const td = document.createElement('td')
     td.textContent = hdrs[f](item[f])
     tr.appendChild(td)
  }
  return tr
}

function addRows(items, tbody) {
   const hdrs = addHeaders(getFieldNames(items))
   items
     .map(i => addRowForItem(i,hdrs))
     .forEach(i => tbody.appendChild(i))
}

function addError(err) {
  addRows([err], document.getElementById('list'))
}

fetch(ApiUrl)
  .then( r => r.json())
  .then( j => j.items ?? [j])
  .then( items => addRows(items, document.getElementById('list')))
  .catch( e => addError(e))
    * {
  font-family: sans-serif;
}

th, td {
  text-align:right;
  border: solid black 1px;
  padding: 3px;
}
    <table>
<thead id='head'>
</thead>
<tbody id='list'>
</tbody>
</table>

    as well as for the Stack Exchange Data Explorer or data dump for that matter:

    select *
from votes
where postid=4404052
and votetypeid in (1,2,3) -- accept, up, down

    By having timestamps with seconds precision would make it too easy to link activity of users to their voting. For the record: not even moderators have access to these timestamps. Even for them voting is anonymous.