Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-09-06/Traffic report

Godwin's Law states that any internet discussion that goes on too long will eventually have a Nazi comparison. Well, things have gotten so ugly in America that Godwin himself says there is a valid comparison to be found in the Unite the Right rally, led by white supremacists (#5) and featuring protesters carrying swastika flags and doing the Nazi salute. Understandably, anti-fascism groups (#7) appeared to counterprotest. And it all started because of a threat to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee (#2), showing the Civil War he fought is unfortunately resonant today.

Yet, the top entry on the list has the only place that somehow is worse, the world of Game of Thrones—say what you want about the political turmoil, at least there are no zombies or dragons involved—which also takes two other spots in the top 10. Back to Earth, given the Sun continues to shine in spite of so much barbarism, people were fascinated to see it eclipsed by the Moon during the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 (#6). India is worried about deaths caused by the Blue Whale game (#3), the UK mourned Bruce Forsyth (#9), and the ever-present deaths in 2017 list came in at #10.

Our list topper, one way or another, is Game of Thrones, the main page for the series replacing the season 7 article, which drops to second (but see the note at the bottom). Comedian Jerry Lewis is at #3 following his death.

Eclipse content tended to dominate the list, with some surprising entries. Obviously the article for this week's eclipse (#4) makes it onto the list, and not really a surprise to see the main solar eclipse article (#8) here, and both the lists on eclipses this century and eclipses visible from the United States (#9 & #10).

Also sweeping the world up in -mania was boxing, with both Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (#5 & #6) making good placings. Controversial Indian guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh (#7) was convicted of rape this week, a conviction that led to riots in which more than thirty people were killed.

For the week of August 20 to 26, 2017, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Note:

• The article for Game of Thrones has increased by roughly a million viewers from last week, with no equivalent boost for the season article, which looks suspicious. Considering the mobile percentages from the raw list, it can be estimated that last week had 507,454 mobile & 578,474 computer views, with this week having 543,364 mobile & 1,418,948 computer views, indicating a potential issue. However, it is difficult to say how many of those views should be branded "illegitimate", as the article certainly belongs on the list, even if it maybe should be slightly lower. It should be considered that the #2 page is the season article, so the #1 slot has not been "stolen" from something unrelated that deserves it more. If the view counts for Game of Thrones were the same as last week, the article would be down at #8 (from #4), which is, perhaps, an indicator of how many big articles there were this week.

• These lists excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.