Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/Traffic report

This traffic report is adapted from the 2021 Top 50 Report, prepared with commentary by:

2021 was mostly a year to finish what we couldn't have in 2020, between delayed sports events (football – the one actually involving feet and a ball, although gridiron also shows up thanks to a dominating quarterback – and the Olympics) and movies (broadly construed, there are twelve superhero media entries on this list, not counting future supervillain Dwayne Johnson; though there is also a place for the most famous fictional spy and giant monsters, plus a science fiction adaptation and a science fiction actor). We are not fully rid of COVID-19, but thankfully only the pandemic's overall article entered the list, as vaccination and conscious actions seem to finally slow down the disease (variants and irresponsible people aside). The political landscape saw the expected change in Donald Trump's exit, and the unexpected regression in Taliban's return and US states trying to block racial discussion in schools. Reflecting three subjects that are constantly on the news, there are entries for the two richest men in the world (who are also in their new space race), the British monarchy (which had a bad year between exposés and death), and the recently deceased. Completing it all are plenty of Netflix-related subjects (including Squid Game and Bridgerton), the three English-speaking countries that shape Wikipedia views the most, and two singers, a young one filling in for Billie Eilish's absence, and a dead one that somehow keeps himself alive.

• 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 both renames and how people actually reach the pages - more than 300k views to Ted Lasso were through redirects Ted Lasso (TV series) and List of Ted Lasso episodes.
  • 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.
    • One such case was YouTube, that while a mainstay of previous annual lists, ended up with a suspicious and unexplained rise of the number of daily views (from 60k to 80k). Parent company Google had a similar rise (from 20k to 40k daily) and is also excluded.