Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-12-22/Traffic report

Traffic report

Post-election traffic blues

November 13–19

Waiting to exhale: We are still coming down from election, which saw the highest average numbers we've ever recorded, and numbers, while down from last week's ludicrous levels, are still not near normal. This list is very similar to last week's, with only a small number of new entries. It's almost as if last week's list breathed in a swarm of numbers and is slowly now breathing them out. – Serendipodous

For the week of November 13–19, the ten most-popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Donald Trump	3,321,262	Numbers are slowly returning to normal for America's 45th president. Would that his country could.
2	Steven Bannon	2,746,898	Apparently, the nation of America was shocked to the core when it learned that the head of the racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic Breitbart News, who had acted for months as Donald Trump's chief strategist, would continue to act as Donald Trump's chief strategist. What? You elect someone specifically to disrupt the status quo and you're surprised when the status quo is disrupted?
3	United States presidential election, 2016	1,693,874	Views peaked at 2.36 million on November 9.
4	Melania Trump	1,422,580	Mrs. Trump will be the first foreign-born First Lady of the United States since Louisa Adams in the 1820s. Louisa was British, so Melania will be the first non-native speaker of English to hold the title, which is a bit bizarre considering Trump's rhetoric on immigration. Though her English is not perfect, she does speak six languages – a feat few people, and fewer native English-speakers, can claim.
5	Elizabeth II	1,354,307	For the third consecutive week, the longest-reigning British monarch in history places on this list thanks to The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy.
6	UFC 205	1,215,708	The latest Ultimate Fighting Championship was held on November 12, 2016 at Madison Square Garden. The headline match was won by Conor McGregor who defeated Eddie Alvarez in a technical knockout in the second round.
7	Frederick Banting	1,203,940	The discoverer of insulin got a Google Doodle on his 125th birthday on November 14.
8	Ivanka Trump	1,148,947	No doubt the most liked Trump outside core Trump-fandom. Her views regularly exceeded those of her siblings. In the report for the July 2016 week of the Republican National Convention, Ivanka placed #4, ahead of her three adult siblings. (Trump's youngest child Barron Trump is only 10 years old and should not have his own article here, if the precedent set for Malia and Sasha Obama is applied. ETA: And he no longer does after an AfD closed. - MW)
9	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film)	1,137,420	This cinematic spinoff to the Harry Potter series, set in 1920s New York, and scripted by the books' author herself, JK Rowling (pictured), opened this week to decent notices (it currently has a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a solid, though unspectacular, $75 million US opening.
10	Conor McGregor	1,107,299	See #6.

November 20–26

A Holiday Week, and Some Oldies: The death of Fidel Castro (#1) was the most-viewed topic of the week, followed by the Harry Potter universe film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. And the popular British TV series The Crown continues to push British royalty into the chart. The American Thanksgiving holiday (#3) and consumer holiday of Black Friday (#5) returned for another annual appearance, as United States politics continues to recede a bit in popularity, and view counts return to more normal ranges.

In other news, The Top 25 report's archives are slowing expanding to include data on article popularity from long ago, to the extent we can track it down. See, for example, the most popular article list for October 2003. Wikipedia was a much smaller place 13 years ago. While Fidel Castro got 1.76 million views last week, in October 2003, the most viewed page (after the Main Page), was "Current events" with a mere 26,838 views for the entire month. Back then, however, traditional encyclopedic topics could compete for top spots, and Mathematics was #5 for the month with 13,796 views. Last week it only placed #3685 (31,637 views). – Milowent

For the week of November 20–26, the ten most-popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Fidel Castro	1,760,389	Somebody had to knock Donald Trump (#4) out of the top spot. The strongman ruler of Cuba, though out of the spotlight the last few years due to his poor health, died on November 25 at age 90.
2	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film)	1,617,874	Up from #9 last week, with almost 500,000 more views. This cinematic spinoff to the Harry Potter series, set in 1920s New York, and scripted by the books' author herself, JK Rowling (pictured), opened this week to decent notices (a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a solid, though unspectacular, $75 million US opening.
3	Thanksgiving	1,279,737	Off about 100,000 views from last year, but that's fairly consistent. This beloved North American holiday has, in the past, been very ill-used by Wikipedia viewers. Every year, when it came around, immediately money-spinning spammers started flooding Wikipedia with fake views for this article, thus forcing us to remove what should have been a perfectly acceptable annual addition to this list. For the second year, however, it appears that the article has been included entirely on its own merits without any, ahem, stuffing.
4	Donald Trump	1,249,878	Numbers continue to drop since the November 8 United States presidential election, 2016 (#8), but they can be expected to rebound in January. Also, Trump continues to tweet.
5	Black Friday (shopping)	1,149,155	The day after Thanksgiving is also the day that retailers have earned enough to cover their debts from the previous year, and are thus "in the black" (at least, that's what they say; in truth it probably originated as a reaction to the traffic). In recent years it has become a major day on the shopping calendar and the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season, though Cyber Monday is increasing in popularity every year, allowing the spirit of consumerism to continue to expand.
6	Survivor Series (2016)	1,096,605	Pay-per-view wrestling event held on November 20. Goldberg (#22) was among the match winners.
7	Elizabeth II	1,050,072	For the fourth consecutive week, the longest-reigning British monarch in history places on this list thanks to The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy.
8	United States presidential election, 2016	940,657	Still popular as people refresh their screens occasionally to make sure Wikipedia was not vandalized.
9	Betsy DeVos	901,852	The billionaire and education activist for school voucher programs has been nominated to be president Trump's secretary of education.
10	Westworld (TV series)	806,567	To be clear: this is not based on a novel by Michael Crichton: Crichton was a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and Westworld was a film he both wrote and directed back in the 1970s. But whereas that was a straightforward "monsters on the loose" movie, about a Western-themed amusement park staffed by hyperrealistic robots who go insane and start murdering the guests (sound familiar?), this series looks like it will be taking a more thoughtful, hard scifi approach, with the robots' gradual evolution from programming to quasi-consciousness forming the main plot thread. With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings of just under 2 million (roughly what Game of Thrones received when it began), it's off to a solid start, though whether it will be the show to carry HBO past Game of Thrones's end remains to be seen.

November 27 – December 3

Breathe steady: What's this? A two-million view cap? A ~400,000 entry? Television shows? Movies? Reddit threads? Google Doodles? Recently dead people? Could it be that Wikipedia has finally returned to normal? Well not exactly. There's a remarkably shallow curve at the top, meaning viewership is still up on previous weeks, mostly due to news events such as the appointment of James Mattis as US Secretary of Defense, or the tragic crash of LaMia Airlines Flight 2933. But if things keep going the way they are, this job might just get boring again. – Serendipodous

For the week of November 27 to December 3, the ten most-popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Fidel Castro	2,401,418	Numbers are up by nearly a million on last week, so obviously people still cry for la revolucion to vivir, even though el revolucionario está muerto.
2	Associação Chapecoense de Futebol	1,406,474	The football team that tragically lost most of its members in the crash of LaMia Airlines Flight 2933 (see #11)
3	Jagadish Chandra Bose	1,385,705	The Indian biologist who invented the crescograph received a Google Doodle on his 158th birthday on November 30.
4	James Mattis	1,059,661	Amid a string of controversial Trump appointments, the former general's appointment as secretary of defense feels almost normal. About the only thing controversial about him is a mildly hawkish stance on Iran.
5	Louisa May Alcott	1,047,171	The author of Little Women and Little Men got a Google Doodle on her 184th birthday on November 29.
6	Westworld (TV series)	920,398	Numbers are up for the penultimate episode of the season, which saw the realisation of a number of long-held fan theories and bodes well for next week's 90-minute season finale. A second season has been greenlit, so expect even more water cooler moments next year.
7	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film)	830,774	Down from #2 last week. This cinematic spinoff to the Harry Potter series, set in 1920s New York, and scripted by the books' author herself, JK Rowling (pictured), opened this week to decent notices (a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a solid, though unspectacular, $75 million US opening.
8	Elizabeth II	825,747	For the fifth consecutive week, the longest-reigning British monarch in history places on this list thanks to The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy.
9	Deaths in 2016	773,350	The deaths list has always acted as this list's lodestone; it is so consistent on a day to day basis that where it appears is an indication of the weekly traffic levels. That said, we may have to recalibrate our mathematics, since its numbers have been slowly going up over the last few weeks.
10	Donald Trump	717,438	Numbers continue to drop since the November 8 United States presidential election, 2016 (#11), but they can be expected to rebound in January. Also, Trump continues to tweet.

December 4–10

India rising: Topics from India, usually films, often make this chart. But the death of Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, is notable for rising to #1 and over 4 million views, though never before appearing on the chart. Former minister M. G. Ramachandran also placed #5. It took 678K views to hit the Top 10, the lowest threshold since the slow week of October 16-22. – Milowent

For the week of December 4–10, the 10 most-popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Jayalalithaa	4,067,619	Jayalalithaa Jayaram was an Indian actress and politician who served five terms as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, for over 14 years between 1991 and 2016. She fell ill in September 2016, and died on December 5 after a long hospitalization. India declared a day of national mourning, while the state of Tamil Nadu declared seven days of mourning.
2	John Glenn	1,280,797	The first American astronaut to orbit Earth in 1962, and later a United States Senator. With all the notable deaths this year, it makes me think that the 20th century itself really died in 2016. Yes, the icons of every century linger into the next, but if you want to draw a line, this year seems like a good one.
3	Westworld (TV series)	1,272,033	The season finale episode, The Bicameral Mind, aired on December 4.
4	Rømer's determination of the speed of light	997,296	Has to be Reddit. Also an interesting article on a topic I knew nothing about.
5	M. G. Ramachandran	861,766	Indian actor who was Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu from 1977-87, so no doubt popular due to #1.
6	Junaid Jamshed	861,766	This popular Pakistani recording artist died on December 7 in the crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 661.
7	Deaths in 2016	761,247	The deaths list has always acted as this list's lodestone; it is so consistent on a day to day basis that where it appears is an indication of the weekly traffic levels. That said, we may have to recalibrate our mathematics, since its numbers have been slowly going up over the past few weeks, and continued this week.
8	Kirk Douglas	759,816	This American actor turned 100 on December 9.
9	Attack on Pearl Harbor	694,555	The 75th anniversary of Japan's attack on the United States, which led to the entry of the U.S. into World War II, occurred on December 7. The memorial services held for the event will likely be the last major gathering of living survivors of the attack.
10	Last Tango in Paris	678,802	Details about the infamous rape scene in this 1972 movie caused controversy this week.

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Commentary is a bit over the top

Surprised to see myself as first commenter here, but here goes. I found the political commentary a bit over the top in this issue. Including the one that seems to imply that Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barron Trump (2nd nomination) never happened. I really came for a traffic report, not for a condemnation of America being "not normal". - Brianhe (talk) 01:38, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Brianhe, thanks for your comment. The Traffic Report is derived from the the Top 10 of the weekly WP:TOP25 reports. When the Nov 13-19 report was first published at the Top 25 Report pages, the Barron Trump AfD was ongoing and the future outcome was unclear. If that was canvassing at the time that we mentioned it, I didn't care, because a ten year old doesn't need a BLP because his dad got elected President, just as we concluded for Barrack Obama. I have updated that entry to note the AfD was closed. As for political commentary, we welcome all opinions here in comments. The stats are the stats; the opinion is commentary as part of analyzing popularity, and when people wish to record additional points or disagreements in comments, they are welcome. My theory has always been that in 100 years or whenever, someone can read our commentary and discern something more about what humans were thinking in our times.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 04:12, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- As editor in chief, I concur with what Milowent said. I did note, when reviewing this edition's traffic report, that it gets a bit more into political commentary than usual; I thought about it and read carefully, and found nothing "over the top" in my view. That doesn't mean I personally agree with everything said; but when volunteers go to the trouble, every edition, of compiling and contextualizing this data, in my view they have some license to put some of themselves into it, and the reading is more entertaining (at least for some) that way. The raw lists, as Milo pointed out, exist for those who prefer to skip the commentary. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 05:13, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Brianhe here, I was surprised to read it and was about to create a new comment myself. Entertainment can be achieved without being scathing. $ɱ$ (talk) · vbm · coi) 06:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I find the notes instructive and incisive, one of the reasons I follow the traffic reports. SeoMac (talk) 18:24, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Like Brianhe, I want the traffic report without absurd and self-indulgent fringe-element in-crowd snarking. Rhetorical question: has whoever wrote the mischaracterization of Breitbart News in the notes on the Bannon entry been forbidden to notice the "racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic" aspects of other news outlets such as the NYT, WashPo, CNN, and MSNBC? I don't care about Signpost contributors' political views and I'd respect the process and the result more if obviously biased commentaries were decontaminated before publication. – Athaenara ✉ 18:31, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's useful to me, as editor, to hear the kind of feedback here -- I appreciate you all sharing your thoughts, and it will inform future discussions. But ultimately, the influence of opinions that are accompanied by a willingness to roll up your sleeves and work with us from one edition to the next is the kind of influence that really counts. Please do contact us (user talk, email, or WT:Wikipedia Signpost) if you'd like to get involved. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 18:39, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So all this hub-bub is about the Bannon comments, isn't it? Those comments are supported by reporting (Serendipodous authored that report so I mention it here in case he wants to comment), e.g., it was reported by many sources that Bannon has made anti-Semitic comments in the past. As a middle aged white American male, I'll mention this doesn't shock me. A certain portion of us do rag on women, black people, and Jews , though we aren't all future Hitlers. But in my opinion I call out that bullshit whenever I hear it; being ethical is not always tidy. In no way am I saying I have special knowledge of all white American middle aged males or Stephen Bannon, though I was acquainted with Andrew Breitbart (a Jew!) in online discourse. I don't know how we can satisfy everyone here, as some articles are popular for the untidy reasons we are commenting on. Bannon wasn't such a popular article that week because he's universally seen as a groovy guy.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 19:41, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Let me just state, for the record and hopefully for all time, my reasoning on this oft-recycled topic. My job as a compiler of the Top 25 Report/Traffic Report is to discover how and why some articles are popular in any specific week. If I have determined, as far as I can tell, that an article on a specific person is popular because a large number of people have been shocked by his racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic views, I will say so. If you do not believe that Mr or Ms So and So is in fact racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic, then fine. You are free to believe that. But that is not relevant to the discussion. Conversely, I do not include facts that I deem irrelevant to an article's popularity. For instance, I happen to believe that Mel Gibson is racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic, and, for the curious, can cite many of his own personal quotes. However, if he appears in the Top 25 and the reason behind his appearance is, as far as I can determine, utterly mundane (say if he has a movie out) then I will not mention them, because they are not relevant. Serendi ^pod ous 20:02, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your comment here generally, however you should state the Bannon description in a more neutral fashion (e.g. describe that a newspaper considers him a...). Though I know news is supposed to be entertaining, as I said above it can be entertaining without being scathing. I also thought the Trump comment was a bit over the top, given the pretty biased photo that in no way would make it onto a Wikipedia article, and the statement that this country hasn't returned to normal? That's extremely pushing the importance and effects of this election.

ɱ

(talk) · vbm · coi) 20:52, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) For me, it wasn't that at all. It was this: "[Article view] numbers are slowly returning to normal ...Would that his country could." Elections with results that upset about 50% of the population are quite normal in America. IMHO the country was normal both before and after this traffic report, and the words chosen are either incredibly inapt and non-descriptive, or gratuitously inflammatory. Either way, insensitive to the community as a whole. Brianhe (talk) 20:57, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Order

Why isn't the most recent week at the top? Doesn't make any sense to read what was popular a month ago first. The-Pope (talk) 13:38, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Milowent, thoughts on this? Seems reasonable to me, especially if/when less frequent publication makes for longer lists. -Pete Forsyth (talk) 19:43, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Make sense. Certainly would have helped this time, Bannon would have been buried well below my witty comments on UFC or other vacuous subjects of popularity!--Milowent • ^hasspoken 19:46, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ivanka's son

NO longer has an article. I didn't want to edit something that was signed.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:04, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speed of Light

Romer's determination of the speed of light got a Google Doodle on 7 December. BakingNerd (talk) 16:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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