Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-12-24/Traffic report

Traffic report

Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga (November 18 to 24, December 2 to 8 and December 9 to 15) and OZOO (November 25 to December 1).

I wish I was in Tijuana, eating barbecued iguana (November 18 to 24)

Narcos is back, only this time in Mexico (#13), and this means Netflix users are sorely tempted to pause their binge-watching and learn more about the drug lords (#1, #10, #23) and their victims (#12). The streaming service even got the latest Coen brothers film (#15), although on Wikipedia it did not garner as many viewers as films in theaters, about Queen (#2, #16, #25), A Kind of Magic (#5, #18), and someone who will Spread Your Wings and Gonna Fly Now (#21). Regular TV also leads to extra entries regarding a British reality show (#9, #19, #22) and the latest WWE event (#11). And in spite of being Thanksgiving (#6, #17) — followed by the usual shopping sprees (#8) — some people instead had a week where they were hardly thankful for: a rapper got arrested (#3), a missionary joined the never-leaving death list (#14) for trying to convert an hostile and isolated tribe (#4, #7), some European footballers fell short in their latest tournament (#20), and Trump got into the usual problems (#24).

Hail to the Chief (November 25 to December 1)

The top story of the week of November 25 to December was the death of former President of the United States George H. W. Bush. Second place was the release of new Indian film 2.0, and third was the death of SpongeBob SquarePants creator, Stephen Hillenburg. Further down the list, a number of the subjects of Netflix's Narcos: Mexico were in the list, as were the lead pugilists of Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury and a motley crew of musicians, TV personalities, and Baroque painters.

Reading Around the Bush (December 2 to 8)

George H. W. Bush died on a Saturday, so the following week still had lots of people searching for what the former U.S. President did, and led him to repeat as the top article while inspiring half the articles on this Top 25 (13, because counting the never-leaving death list as the 14th is a stretch), including George's dead wife, all his offspring (including another White House occupant and a daughter who died in her infancy), a daughter in-law, and the guy who he was VP for. Otherwise, we have India giving lots of money (#25) to 2.0 (#3) and seeing celebrities also spending a similar fortune to get married (#4, #5), the UK searching for a celebrity in the jungle (#18) with a famous mom (#20), three guys who returned from last week (#10, #11, #19), and another who'll probably take a while to leave (#22).

For the week of December 2 to 8, 2018, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

India controls report (December 9 to 15)

The second most populous country on Earth has more than 10% of its 1 billion people speaking English, so no wonder sometimes the Top 25 Report gets extremely Indian. Local blockbusters (#3, #14), marriages of local rich people (#10), local important people (#7)... and if you wanna get technical, there's a Parsi-descendant rock legend at #8. Still, the list is topped by YouTube's "hall of dishonor", now led by the video service's own YouTube Spotlight channel as millions of people showed their disdain for the latest YouTube Rewind. Some superheroes are also present: DC Comics has an Aquaman movie (#5, portrayed by #2, married to #4), while Marvel gives an animated Spider-Man (#9). That obituary that just won't leave (#6) completes the top 10.

Exclusions

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.
Exo (band) and BTS (band): the Billboard Social 50 might accept the EXO-Ls and the BTS Army checking the pages of these K-pop groups many times daily for their rankings, but we won't condone this gaming of the system.

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24 December 2018 (all comments)

Traffic report

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Under the Jason Momoa box, it claims that the film Aquaman is a "critical and commercial hit." Metacritic: 55; Rotten Tomatoes: 63. That's a critical hit? - kosboot (talk) 18:37, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Defensible. Variety said it got "decent reviews". ☆ Bri (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd thought for a while that the Yellow Jackets page might hit a million views this month. Nope, even 800K might be a push, now. Such small, pesky fry! Dead presidents! Bollywood! That's what we the Signpost readers want to read about, right?

I think this page could be more interesting if you looked through the Top 5000 from time to time. We could have inter-city popularity battles that might tell us something interesting, e.g.

Last Week on Wikipedia: Paris v. Washington
source: Top 5000

Trump v. Clinton finishes 13-4 in reader interest, but I'm far too lazy to mark that one up. ~ 🐝 ~ SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:52, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So you're saying we should include things that don't make the list criteria (traffic/pageviews) but we judge to be important nonetheless? ☆ Bri (talk) 21:10, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'm saying it's a traffic report. I notice that the format of this humor page ("Top-25 report: This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Please do not take it too seriously.") hasn't changed in a long time. That's reassuring for the morning commute, of course, and is being done valiantly well. But, sure, there could be *all* sorts of zaniness based on the top 5000. Trivia: who was the reading public more curious about this week: Dick Cheney or Dr. Seuss? ~ 🐝 ~ SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:25, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We're simply posting whatever gets popular during the week (it is the purpose of the WP:TOP25!), with added comments to make things fun to read. Next edition might have a change, given we're preparing the yearly report. Otherwise, only huge occasions might break the format (such as that breakdown following the 2016 election). But your suggestion is great for the actual Humor section (@Barbara (WVS): do you agree?). igordebraga ≠ 00:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What do you me to agree with? Best Regards, Barbara ✐✉ 20:34, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also worth noting that this Traffic Report is not penned specifically for the Signpost. Rather, it is written on its own merits to catelogue the 25 articles to receive the most views in a week on Wikipedia. This helps to further explain the difference between a pure traffic report (which could operate as you suggest) and the Top 25, which operates independently and is adapted for the purpose of the Signpost, and so paves its own path (and as Igordebraga points out, the name broadly dictates what we do there). Hope this helps, Stormy clouds (talk) 21:34, 30 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! The short-fingered vulgarian squatting in the White House failed to make any of the three Top 25 Lists! Here's hoping he stays off these lists until his removal from office. -- llywrch (talk) 09:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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