Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-11-26/Traffic report

President-elect Trump

Despite facing what could very well be the most important election since the civil rights era, Americans seem to want to think about anything but politics. Obviously the 2016 election is on people's minds, but not as much as macabre holidays, improbable wins by oft-ridiculed baseball teams, comic book sorcerers and, most tellingly of all perhaps, a melodrama about royalty. Given the responsibility they're about to take on, it's not surprising that democracy isn't a priority for readers at the moment. Still, get in gear guys. It's not like we're not all watching you or anything.

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.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of October 30 to November 5, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

See also our Special Traffic Report: The U.S. Presidential Election analyzing election related traffic from June 2015-November 2016

In the early morning of November 9, news reports announced that Donald Trump (#1) had won election as the 45th President of the United States, in one of the most oddball political victories of all time. And of course, he leads the chart this week with 12.3 million views, compared to only 2.64 million for his opponent, Hillary Clinton (#6). Trump's numbers are second-highest seen since we started the Top 25 in 2013 (the record was set in April 2016 when Prince died).

Clearly this is a momentous event in United States politics, at least in the Age of Wikipedia. In comparison, when Barack Obama was first elected in November 2008, his article received only 4.99 million views on the week of the election, compared to 1.08 million to his opponent John McCain. (Although mobile viewcounts were not captured then, mobile views were not a very large portion of traffic in 2008.) This 5-1 view ratio is similar to the Trump-Hillary ratio we see in this week's report. See also User:Andrew Gray/Election statistics for an in-depth analysis of 2008 statistics done shortly after that election. In 2012 (when mobile viewcounts were a larger portion of traffic than in 2008 but still not captured by stats.grok.se), Obama beat Mitt Romney in election week views by 2.04 million to 1.78 million.

Nine of the top 10 slots this week are election-related, with only Queen Elizabeth II (#8) breaking the run, based on the great success of The Crown television series. The Crown also propelled other British royal figures into the Top 25 with impressive view numbers. But nineteen of the Top 25 articles are election-related, a new record for single-topic related articles in a week.

The most notable death, which would have probably been #1 in any other week, was that of cult songwriter Leonard Cohen (#13). This week's chart is also astounding because every article in the Top 25 exceeded one million views -- we have never even come close to that level of traffic before among the top viewed articles. Usually a few of the top articles in a given week get to that level. And for the first time since we began this report in January 2013, Deaths in (Year) was knocked out of the Top 25, placing at #34. So we've provided an extended list for #26-35 this week at the bottom of the chart, many of which are also election-related.

Please note that this report refrains from making any strong editorial comments about Donald Trump; no conclusions should be drawn from that decision. The press in the United States and around the world is reporting heavily on the meaning and effect of Trump's election. Just don't get your news and commentary from fake news sites posted to Facebook.

Also, please see our SPECIAL REPORT on the U.S. Presidential election — tracking the popularity of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's articles for the whole campaign cycle, from June 2015 to November 2016. As detailed there, attention and enthusiasm for Donald Trump far exceeded that of Clinton across the board. Perhaps this was an overlooked indicator of Trump's chances of success.

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.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of November 6 to 12, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

• Extended list past the WP:TOP25: #26 United States presidential election, 2004 (958,042); #27 President of the United States (939,454); #28 Ronald Reagan (881,618); #29 Winston Churchill (864,053); #30 The Crown (TV series) (841,567); #31 Jesus nut (724,272, due to a Reddit thread); #31 United States presidential election (717,068); #32 Jared Kushner (husband of Ivanka) (701,653); #33 George W. Bush (688,722); #34 Deaths in 2016 (687,369); #35 Westworld (TV series) (681,020).