Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-12-01/Traffic report

The Halloween holiday (#12) inspires the entertainment industry to release scary products in October, and this is reflected by Netflix topping the list with a show about a haunted house (#1, #5), adding in a series starring a teenage witch (#14) — and in an unintended case, there's the equally disturbing subject of miscarriage of the law (#10, #17), along with a fictional assassin (#13) — while Hollywood brings back the Halloween slasher movies (#3, #20, #22), and is still making money out of a questionable comic book movie that evokes more terror than justice (#23). Scares are also provided by terrorism attempts (#11), urban legends (#21), life-threatening disease (#4) and life-ending (#9) manhunts (#6). On less spooky notes, there's movies about musicians (#2, #8, #18) and actors (#19), some sports (#15, #25), video games (#5), Google Doodles (#15) and boneheaded TV moments (#24).

"Here we are, born to be kings, we're the Princes of the Universe!" Or at least of Wikipedia, as the late, great Freddie Mercury (#1) and his band Queen (#14) gather lots of views with the release of Bohemian Rhapsody (#13), starring Rami Malek (#15), in a great performance that to borrow from another musical hit, might lead to people saying "A Star Is Born" (#17). Readers are also celebrating Halloween (#2) – and on a lesser level, the Day of the Dead (#8), them who never leave this list (#12) and have two high entries (#3, #5) – by watching slasher movies (#16) and binging on Netflix shows about haunted houses (#11, #21) and teenage witches (#6, #18). The other prevalent topics are a record-breaking Indian statue (#4, #10), Western-themed video games (#9, #22), wrestling events (#7, #20), and politics, with the results of the elections in my country (#23), to borrow from that man still blaming everything wrong in the U.S. on immigrants (#24, #25), can be summed in just one word: "Sad!"

This week on Wikipedia, the King of Queen (#1) meets the King of Scots (#11), opera rock (#7) meets political theater (#5), and Google heroes (#12, #15) meet Indian greatness (#23), while rising stars (#2, #9, #10, #17) keep on fighting till the end. In a nod to the simulation hypothesis winking at us, a movie focusing on election fraud in India (#21) was released in the midst of U.S. elections (#24, #25), where accusations of fraud have become routine.

A very upsetting week for comic fans, as one of the pioneering champions of the medium died. Stan Lee was a legend, a perennial figure of respect and renown for nerds and dorks worldwide. Lee will be greatly missed. Aside from the passing of a hero, the week was evidently the domain of cinephiles, with films, film subjects, and actors galore reaching the top 25. This week's iteration of the report is strange yet intriguing, and was a joy to compile. Hopefully it is as fantastic to read as it was incredible to pen.

• These lists exclude 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.