Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-09-29/Traffic report

From Gene Wilder to JonBenét: Four weeks of traffic

Your Top 10 most-viewed Wikipedia articles for the weeks of August 28 – September 3, September 4–10, September 11–17, and September 18-24, 2016.

For the full top-25 lists (and archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED.

Lull: The end of the Olympics has brought a bit of a lull this week. Actor Gene Wilder's death (#1) received significant attention and 3.5 million views, also lifting his second wife Gilda Radner (#8), who died of ovarian cancer in 1989, into the Top 10. Netflix's Stranger Things continues to show strange staying power, at #3 this week. The 2016 MTV Video Music Awards also propelled a number of performers into the Top 25, and Rihanna to #9. Oddly though, after our commentary on Reddit last week, a full six articles apparently fueled by Reddit made it into the Top 25 (all outside the Top 10). This includes slots 22–25, which wouldn't have made it last week when the threshold to make the Top 25 was a bit higher. And though I happen to know that #25, Thomas Day, was actually the subject of the "Stuff You Misssed in History Class" podcast the day before its Reddit thread, so that was no doubt the original inspiration for the post.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of August 28 to September 3, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly revamped WP:5000 report were:

Plata y mas plata: Wikipedia's viewers seem determined to tune the real world out this week, with pop culture in overwhelming dominance once again. And leading the charge is, of course, Netflix's series Narcos, which was similarly dominant during its first season last year. A close runner up is Clint Eastwood's hero hagiography Sully, which, like his previous American Sniper, came with a spicy touch of controversy to turn eyeballs its way. Even the real world seemed focused on the departed, since two of the non-media generated entries were both dead icons: Mother Teresa and Steve Irwin. The only genuine bit of real world horror was the troubling early release of Brock Turner, over which many of our users likely felt a very personal fear.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of September 4 to 10, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly revamped WP:5000 report were:

Anniversaries: The anniversaries of historic events are frequent visitors to this Report, but instead of being led by the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks (#4) this week, as we expected, we have the 11th anniversary of the Corrupted Blood incident (#1) video game event, which occurred in World of Warcraft and in which literally no one died, even the game's characters which can be reincarnated. We can all scratch our head over that one, but the ways of the internet are complex. See the chart comments for more on that. And the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Murder of JonBenét Ramsey comes in at #10 because of a new miniseries.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of September 11 to 17, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly revamped WP:5000 report were:

J'Accuse! pour pauvre petit JonBenét: In the United States, hundreds of children are murdered every year, and, thanks to an average homicide clearance rate of 64%, will likely have their deaths unanswered. But we as a culture, and perhaps as a species, can't handle that. So instead we shine lights on specific examples particularly deviant or prurient in their details, dubbed "media friendly", allowing us to shelter in our moral outrage. And boy did the murder of poor JonBenét Ramsey give us the chance to do that. JonBenét was a product of that strangely American industry, child beauty pageants, which, with their overly made up contestants made to look like living Barbie dolls, gave her murder a slightly paedophilic cast despite having no proven connection to her murder. And with the media having anointed her as their icon of shattered innocence du jour, it is unsurprising that, with the approaching 20th anniversary of her death, the media have again chosen to anoint themselves the sole arbiters of truth and justice in her murder. Several television specials accounting the details of her death or offering new "evidence" have been shown or are in development, but the clear driver of views for this list is The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, a CBS "documentary" that aired on Monday and Tuesday this week. Unlike the more cautious (rational) approaches taken by other networks, CBS decided to flat out name their chosen suspect, JonBenét's then nine-year-old brother, Burke. Needless to say, they're now getting threatened with defamation suits, and in the ensuing lahar of speculation, people turned to Wikipedia for clarity. He're hoping we provided it.

Speaking of unfounded accusations, rumours are again flying around the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, with echoes of Brad Pitt's previous divorce coaxing the media to turn on poor Marion Cotillard, who still managed to get her own back online. Celebrity presence on this list was also due to actual accomplishment, however; the Emmys also featured.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of September 18 to 24, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were: