Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-13/Traffic report
Pattern recognition: Third annual Traffic Report
"Once", wrote Ian Fleming in Goldfinger, "is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern" (actually he wrote, "Three times is enemy action", but let's not antagonise our viewers here). If Fleming's assertion is correct that one requires three instances of the same occurrence to identify a pattern, then now would be a pretty good time to try, as this is the third appearance of Wikipedia's annual Traffic Report. And while the dogged stalwarts of the list (Deaths in [insert year here], [insert year here] in film, [Insert Your Home Country Here], World War II) stand firm against all weather, what really reveals itself across the last three years is a shift in usage patterns from recreation to information.
That is not to say, mind you, that recreation is and perhaps will always be the prime motivator of our viewership, whatever our intentions as editors may be. Rather, Wikipedia viewers are becoming cannier in how they use Wikipedia to augment their recreation. The presence of Chris Kyle, for instance, could only be due to the popularity of the film American Sniper, but that film is nowhere to be seen. Instead, viewers were drawn to the man himself, the tragedy of his death, and the myriad controversies surrounding his legacy. Ditto Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar; viewers of the hit Netflix series Narcos turned for information not to the article on the show, but to that of the man whose violent wheel-dealings it portrayed. The Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything may have been a modest hit, but that was not what brought viewers to Wikipedia, who were more interested in the film's subject than the film itself.
The patterns of colour reveal a stark change in usage, though it is still too early to know if it marks a longterm trend. 2013 was dominated by the red of television, but both 2014 and 2015 have increasingly embraced the orange of film. 2015 is clearly the year film took over; 11 articles on the Top 25 list, nearly half the total, are either on films or are film-related, compared with five last year and two in 2013. In my first annual report I speculated that television would dominate over film because its longform structure meant it could maintain our interest for longer periods. I have apparently reckoned without the Event Movie.
In 2015, Hollywood rediscovered the magic of marketing. Movies this year were so huge (the four on the list released this year are all in the top ten highest-grossing films of all time) that they exerted their presence over months; watching the commercials and then the discussions on the news became as much a part of the experience as the film itself. Other patterns can also be seen; the bright yellow of websites has gradually lost ground, while the electric blue of current events has grown.
Given that a sizeable portion of traffic to website articles is doubtless due to people searching for the sites themselves and clicking the wrong Google hit, it shows, perhaps, that our viewers are becoming more Internet savvy, and are consciously employing it as an information tool, rather than as a means to chat or watch cat videos. One colour I am very happy to see the end of is beige. IPv6, with the benefit of hindsight, probably would have been excluded today, but sex has a far more storied and venerable past. Time was when this report would have been pointless; in the last decade, Wikipedia was still seen as something of a toy, and its only regular viewers were school children looking up naughty words. Sex, that most universal of human preoccupations, was the last to go. I do not expect to see it again.
For a list of the raw Top 5000 most viewed Wikipedia articles of 2015 (but be careful to exclude articles with almost 100% or 0% mobile views, which are afflicted by bots like the longstanding Angelsberg), see here. For the most recently weekly Top 25 reports, see Dec 20-26 Report and Dec 27 - Jan 2 Report.
The Top 25 most viewed articles of 2015 were:
Top 25 Articles of 2015 Rank Article Class Views 1 Deaths in 2015 
27,885,484 2 Chris Kyle 
27,765,570 3 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
23,523,985 4 Facebook 
22,330,302 5 Stephen Hawking
20,060,944 6 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
19,335,481 7 List of Bollywood films of 2014
18,171,094 8 Google 
18,107,283 9 Avengers: Age of Ultron
17,409,029 10 United States
16,855,064 11 Kanye West
16,478,369 12 Game of Thrones
16,135,993 13 Star Wars
15,580,814 14 Wikipedia
15,157,792 15 Furious 7
14,740,823 16 Jurassic World
14,283,010 17 Donald Trump
14,052,391 18 Fifty Shades of Grey
13,362,580 19 Pablo Escobar
13,190,232 20 India 
12,864,393 21 2014 in film
12,542,233 22 Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
12,436,450 23 Ronda Rousey
12,298,765 24 Paul Walker
12,201,471 25 World War II
12,149,875
Key Website Person TV show Film Country Current event Historical event Novel Other
Discuss this story
This really indicates what readers come to Wikipedia to read up on the most: Deaths, entertainment (movies, TV, sports) and politics (including nation states). Even Stephen Hawking's listing is probably due to the film about his life. I've read criticism that too much attention has been given by editors to popular culture but it looks like these are subjects that readers frequently come to Wikipedia to read about. Perhaps few people will want to read about Chris Kyle 10 years from now compared to more academic topics. But while Wikipedia is not the news, readers are seeking the latest, verifiable information on subjects in the news. Liz Read! Talk! 16:47, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]