Wikipedia talk:2020 Top 50 Report

Summary text draft

@A lad insane, Benmite, Igordebraga, Mcrsftdog, Rebestalic, Serendipodous, and Soulbust: I'm trying to write a draft for the summary text that has some narrative thread. It's going to be a big one, so please completely edit it however you see fit! Kingsif (talk) 02:13, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

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. 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 2 billion 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, Naya, Chadwick, and RBG. The first three of those 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, one of several conspiracy theories, and Joe Exotic and Aaron Hernandez, whose appearances are tied to Netflix shows about them. 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 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.

Update

I'll try to update the numbers once a week, since the Royal Family and whatever Christmas movies come out are sure to keep rising, but if anyone wants to beat me to it, please do. Kingsif (talk) 04:19, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Kingsif That is a very detailed intro and I LOVE it! But I think it could do better with links! Other than that, it's great Rebestalic^{[leave a message....]} 10:06, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Added links Kingsif (talk) 11:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

10M+ views, and annual report on talk page banner

All of the top 50 now have over 10M views, and at the rate The Mandalorian is going, it will soon achieve this, too. Has this happened before - for all the top 50 to have over 10M in a year? We could note this, and it would be another incentive to include the spillover (all articles with over an arbitrary number of views, perhaps 8M?)

This would mean the other(?) annual reports, if they were made/have been archived, need to be dug back up. I have another related question: the talkpage template(s) were recently merged, and I am thinking about rewriting the code because now you can't have the template show both number 1 and total number of appearances (probably the point of the separate templates). In this update, I could add an option for appearances on the annual report, would that be useful? If we don't have archives, then at the moment it would just be this year's top articles, and no more for another year, so it might be of too limited use. (@Rebestalic:) Kingsif (talk) 13:52, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Kingsif You seem to have clear paths of execution for your ideas! I think the 10 million thing could be commented on, certainly--product of population growth? Perhaps? But more probably, people are stuck at home and needing the Internet to stay sane. Plus, this year was quite eventful 😂 This is my first Top 50 (i.e. my first yearly top whatever) so I think it might be perhaps better to ask Igordebraga for a more expert opinion. But I personally approve of all your ideas. Hey, thank you for asking! Rebestalic^{[leave a message....]} 23:43, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I believe the "clear paths" are really just overthinking. I'd also have to be brave enough to tackle a complex Lua module, I think. Kingsif (talk) 00:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

There have been three annual reports (plus a "dry run" that was the closest to this year's milestone, as only #50 missed 10 million), so digging up repeat appearances shouldn't be hard. Only ones that would be in all four (or to be more precise, all five) are Trump, the Queen, USA, India, and YouTube - plus the yearly death list, given this year derailed the film business and took out many movie-related entries. igordebraga ≠ 04:44, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

And spillover, maybe a collapsible with the 10 extra ones, specially as there are already two entries with write-ups below the cut-off point (which could be only in the Annual Report's main page, removing it from the Signpost transclusion). Throwing away write-ups has been nothing new since 2017, but in 2020, with Wikipedia getting more views, plus Andrew.g's tool dying off and forcing us to do all the heavy lifting regarding views all year long, we could keep a few. igordebraga ≠ 01:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Source

Can you please give a link to the source you used? I guess it is Andrew West 2020 giving 5000 popular pages but cannot trace it. Thank you.--Maxaxax (talk) 18:46, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Andrew.g's tools have been down since last January, we've been using the Toolforge one (there's an annual tally, but by also counting the views for redirects we know the COVID-19 pages are higher - though now I see there are some changes to do!) igordebraga ≠ 23:57, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

@Igordebraga: Thanks! I saw the Marvel films list and a few others creeping in the top 75 when we had the spillover go that far down, but since a lot of those articles didn't break the top 25 at all this year it looks like bot attacks (like the Bible's inexplicable views). Happy to see someone check them all out and make changes! Kingsif (talk) 13:17, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Igordebraga: Should I change the annual report talkpage tags or has that been done, too? Kingsif (talk) 13:19, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, George VI and the Democrats did break the top 25, while Bezos and Marvel are popular enough to have gotten all those views without bots, with a few above average days making the difference. You mean adding the template about entering the annual report in those four pages while removing the ones who fell out? Go ahead, do it. igordebraga ≠ 15:05, 7 January 2021 (UTC)