WikiWho

Provenance meta-aggregator / Authorship and reuse

Authorship and reusealgorithm and APIactive

WikiWho is a algorithm and API from first developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and GESIS; since August 2021 maintained by Wikimedia Community Tech and the Wiki Education Foundation. The object it attaches provenance to: a single token (word) of a Wikipedia article.

Visit WikiWho ↗Run an erasure audit

The WikiWho API gives access to the provenance/changes of words (tokens) in Wikipedia articles.

In its own words: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gesiscss/wikiwho_api_public/master/README.md, read 2026-10-29

What it carries

What receives provenance	a single token (word) of a Wikipedia article
Relations carried	origin (the revision and editor that introduced the token); deletion; reintroduction op
Carrier	the article's full revision history, re-parsed
Expresses · records · tests	expressesrecordstests
Operations tested	every edit in an article's revision history
What survived	per token: when it entered, who wrote it, every removal and reinsertion; method evaluated at 95% on revision-rich articles op

op the operator's own statement · 3p a third-party account · obs our observation · rd our reading. Hover a tag for its quote; each opens below with its source.

Entity

Canonical name	WikiWho
Also known as	WhoColor, Who Wrote That?
Address	https://wikiwho.wmcloud.org/
Operator	first developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and GESIS; since August 2021 maintained by Wikimedia Community Tech and the Wiki Education Foundation op
Kind	algorithm and API
Unit	a token in an article revision
Lifecycle	active — moved to Wikimedia Cloud Services in August 2021; the GESIS host is to give way to Wikimedia op
Data access	the WikiWho and WhoColor APIs
Versions and dates	algorithm: WWW 2014; moved: 2021-08; read: 2026-10-29
Observation	2026-10-29: read

Relations

None recorded yet.

Evidenceevery field's quote, its source and the hash of the saved copy7

self description op
The WikiWho API gives access to the provenance/changes of words (tokens) in Wikipedia articles.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gesiscss/wikiwho_api_public/master/README.md · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 b93dc1cea1081954…
relation types op
find out who wrote and/or removed and/or reinserted which exact text at token level at what revision .
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiWho · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 97cd049ccef3a05b…
retention results op
The original algorithm working behind the scenes is described in a WWW 2014 paper , along with an extensive evaluation resulting in 95% accuracy on fairly revision-rich articles.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiWho · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 97cd049ccef3a05b…
operator op
In August 2021, it was moved to Wikimedia Cloud Services infrastructure and is now maintained and under further development by Community Tech and the Wiki Education Foundation .
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiWho · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 97cd049ccef3a05b…
lifecycle op
In the future, only Wikimedia will continue its support.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gesiscss/wikiwho_api_public/master/README.md · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 b93dc1cea1081954…
earlier state op
We currently offer the service in English, German, Turkish and Basque, with more languages planned.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikiwho_Provenance_Api · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 2055e9f1886d3385…
precision note op
the task of identifying the "correct" original author of a piece of text in a WP article is not trivial.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikiwho_Provenance_Api · read 2026-10-29 · saved copy sha256 2055e9f1886d3385…

Negative tagswhat it is not1

the Meta research page still describes a beta for four languages: an earlier state of the project

Sourcesevery source read, with its date and hash3

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gesiscss/wikiwho_api_public/master/README.md
read 2026-10-29 · HTTP 200 · sha256 b93dc1cea1081954…
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiWho
read 2026-10-29 · HTTP 200 · sha256 97cd049ccef3a05b…
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikiwho_Provenance_Api
read 2026-10-29 · HTTP 200 · sha256 2055e9f1886d3385…

Not yet checkedwhat remains to read2

the WWW 2014 paper itself
the list of supported wikis today

Cite this record

Lee Sharks, ed. "WikiWho." Provenance meta-aggregator, Provenance Erasure, compiled 2026-10-29. https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/wikiwho

Record https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/wikiwho · entity https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/wikiwho#entity · the census as data

@misc{pe-wikiwho2026,
  editor = {Sharks, Lee},
  title = {WikiWho},
  howpublished = {Provenance meta-aggregator, Provenance Erasure},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Compiled 2026-10-29; every field sourced and dated},
  url = {https://www.provenanceerasure.org/aggregators/wikiwho}
}

Editor: Lee Sharks (ORCID 0009-0000-1599-0703). This page is the provenance meta-aggregator's record of the resource above: its reading and fields are ours, and each field carries its source, its basis and the hash of the copy read. Compiled 2026-10-29. CC BY 4.0.