Hackerspace Mail-2010-2019: A Temporal Network Dataset of Hackerspace Email Communications

This dataset captures email communications within a North American hackerspace community over a decade (2010-2019), accompanying a paper submitted to ICWSM 2025. It contains temporal network data derived from over 30,000 email interactions, processed to preserve both communication patterns and participant privacy. The dataset enables research into community formation, digital communication patterns, and volunteer organization sustainability.

This dataset is particularly valuable for:- Studying long-term community development through digital communications- Analyzing leadership emergence in volunteer communities- Examining temporal patterns in online-offline community interactions- Testing temporal network analysis methodologies

Dataset Statistics

- 942 nodes (unique users)

- 14,810 edges (interactions)

- Time period: 2010-2019

- Original format: Mailing list communications

- Processed format: Temporal network data (CSV)

Files

This dataset contains two CSV files:

nodes.csv (942 records)

Contains information about individual users:

`Id`: Unique user identifier

`total_messages`: Total number of messages sent by this account

`cohort`: Membership category (founder/early_adopter/regular_member)

`presence`: Time interval of user activity [first_message_date, last_message_date]

`size`: Log-scaled node size based on monthly message volume

Cohort definitions:

`founder`: Joined Jan 1 - June 30, 2010

`early_adopter`: Joined July 1 2010 - Aug 31, 2011

`regular_member`: Joined after Aug 31, 2011

temporal_edges.csv (14,810 records)

Contains interaction data between users:

`Id`: Unique edge identifier

`Source`: Message sender identifier

`Target`: Primary recipient identifier

`Weight_compressed`: Log-scale weight (ceiling: 50 interactions/month/year)

`Weight_original`: Log-scale weight (ceiling: 5 interactions/month/year)

`Weight_raw`: Raw number of interactions per month/year

`interval`: Monthly time window (e.g., <[2019-12-01, 2019-12-31]>)

`year`: Active year for this edge

Usage Notes- All data has been anonymized to protect privacy- Timestamps preserved at monthly granularity- Multiple weight calculations provided to support different analysis approaches- Temporal intervals formatted for direct import into Gephi

For detailed methodology and context, please see the accompanying ICWSM 2025 paper [paper DOI to be added upon publication].