Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-01-31/Traffic report

This traffic report is adapted from the 2020 Top 50 Report, prepared with commentary by:

Holy cheese.

2020 in a nutshell? There's a reason "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" hit the charts again near the start of the year: so much happened that for the first time in the (short) history of this list, more than 50 articles got over 10 million unique views! But the top 50 most-viewed Wikipedia articles give an insight into what was going on in the world, as if there won't be countless history books devoted to each season. Unsurprisingly, the list is largely dominated by the pandemic, you know, that thing, and the election. The U.S. one. Two events that really hold the fate of the world in the balance, with over 200 million combined views for the major players: the pandemic, the outgoing president, deaths in 2020, and the incoming Pres and VP take the top 5 spots. Among the many other COVID-19 related articles on the list are those specific to the United States and India, where large numbers of Wikipedia readers are. And in a year when celebrity deaths have all but been knocked off the list thanks to pandemic and election, it's a few faces from these countries – and Scotland – that appear. Legendary Bond Sean Connery finds a place, as does the three-named Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput and some American icons better known by shortened names: Kobe, Chadwick, and RBG. The first two Yanks were young Black icons, and didn't die of coronavirus, nor from racial violence, something that exploded in the second quarter and led to other entries about police killing innocents. Not-so-innocent on the list are convicted criminals like Jeffrey Epstein, posthumously embroiled in one of several conspiracy theories, and Joe Exotic, star of a Netflix docuseries. It's the popularity of outgoing President Trump dragging up those other conspiracies, though, while streaming film and TV is also responsible for other entries like the Royal Family and Alexander Hamilton (an unlikely pairing!) getting a lot of views. Entertainment appears on the list in other ways. Remember going to the movies? Large events with lots of people? Well, this list will surely remind you as there's Parasite, the Oscar Best Picture winner from February, and Grammy-winner Billie Eilish taking spots. In sport, we also have LeBron becoming winning-est, though behind closed doors, and CR7 still scoring his goals. And finally, in a tiny glimmer of hope for this list becoming mainstream, YouTube gets a place for cancelling its Rewind. Maybe they thought summarizing this year would be too challenging, but no, not us.

Exclusions

• For those who saw the Pageviews' most seen articles and wonder about the differences:
  • That list does not include redirect views, which is an issue considering articles get renamed – COVID-19 pandemic was previously titled 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak and 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic – and so we rely on the tab that consults individual page views combined with alternate names.
  • Articles with mobile views over 90% (Tasuku Honjo) or under 10% (F5 Networks) are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue.
  • If the mobile views are not that high, but there is no reasonable explanation for so many views (Wikipedia, Microsoft Office, Kepler's Supernova), such anomalous entries are likely DDoS attacks or automated views and also get excluded.