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Traffic report

Canada, the most popular nation on Earth

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By Milowent
Everybody Knows Canada!
With the triumph of Justin Trudeau (#1) in the Canadian federal election (#13), he also placed top in our chart this week, though some of this Internet popularity appears to be due to his "hotness". This also placed his father and former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau at #4. And with "Back to the Future Day" falling on October 21, Canadian-American actor Michael J. Fox landed at #3. Thus, three of the top five spots this week, and seven of the Top 25 (beating the five placed by India in July), are Canada-related. As the 37th most populated country in the world, this seems a feat unlikely to soon be repeated.

Elsewhere on the chart, the coming of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which still doesn't happen until December, took up two slots in the Top 10. A new age-titled album from singer Adele placed #7, and the Top 10 was rounded out by a Reddit thread about a rare disease, and the stalwart Deaths in 2015.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

For the week of October 18 to 24, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Justin Trudeau C-class 2,709,956
Trudeau is expected to soon take over as Prime Minister of Canada following the success of his Liberal Party in the recent Canadian federal election. Trudeau's father Pierre Trudeau (#4) served in that role from 1968-1984 (with a brief break in 1979-80). With over 2.7 million views for the week, this was quite a popular event. To some unknown extent, the article's views were inflated by widespread press coverage about the subject's attractiveness, both pro and con.
2 Star Wars: The Force Awakens C-class 1,271,270
If you've caught the press coverage about this upcoming movie here and there, you may be asking yourself, is this thing ever coming out? A poster and new trailer was released last week, which apparently caused a frenzy on the part of the internet not ogling the force of Justin Trudeau. And for those us not that closely involved, the answer is that it rolls out in parts of Europe on December 16, the U.K. on December 17, and North America on December 18.
3 Michael J. Fox Good Article 933,448
October 21, 2015 was "Back to the Future Day" – the day in the future that Marty McFly (played by Fox) traveled to in the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II. And though we don't have true hoverboards or a Jaws 19 movie, and the Chicago Cubs just missed their chance to make it to the World Series, the Internet nostalgia engine was running out of control. And with fathers and son Trudeau, the appearance of the Canadian born Fox means that Canada, the 37th most populated country in the world, has placed three of the top five articles this week, a feat unlikely to ever be repeated.
4 Pierre Trudeau B-class 860,884
Ranked by scholars as one of the greatest Canadian prime minsters, and also the slightly less attractive forebear of this week's #1.
5 Back to the Future Good Article 767,683
See #3, # 11, and #15.
6 Black hole Good Article 612,175
Up from #13 last week, but a debatable entry. The first entry without 1970/80s roots, as the 1979 Disney film The Black Hole simply does not generate that much warm nostalgia. Though a Reddit thread could lift an article like this into the Top 10 on any given week, we do not see any such thread. Stats.grok.se shows a jump in views starting on October 13 from a few thousand per day to over 40,000 per day. It has 25% mobile views (not the either 0% or 99% typical of bot-view popularity), but we may drop this from the list if these steady views continue and a human-based explanation cannot be found.
7 Adele C-class 581,472
The popular singer's new album 25 will be released on November 20. The first single, "Hello", debuted on October 23. As of this writing, the video for "Hello" already has 73 million views.
8 Star Wars Good Article 567,518
See #2.
9 Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva Start-class 545,423 October 24 saw the most interest in this article, generated by a Reddit thread that stated "[today I learned] that there is a disease that makes the body repair injuries using bone, over the course of many years, this leads to the victim becoming more and more like a statue." Non-sensational headlines like this actually can get attention on Reddit; they don't need to use clickbait thread titles like "Feeling lethargic today? Find out if rare disease may be turning you into stone!"
10 Deaths in 2015 List 535,526
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550 thousand on average, apparently heedless of who actually died. Deaths this week included NASA specialist Robert W. Farquhar whose projects included the first probe to intercept a comet in 1985 (October 18); Miss Austria 2013 Ena Kadić, who died from injuries sustained from falling off a mountain (October 19); Polish-Austrian economist Kazimierz Łaski, a leading proponent of Post-Keynesian economics (October 20, pictured); Pakistani cricket manager Yawar Saeed (October 21); Former Mexican senator Tomás Torres Mercado, who died in a plane crash (October 22); Croatian chess grandmaster Krunoslav Hulak (October 23); and 20-year-old British charity fundraiser Kirsty Howard (October 24).
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  • Canada, so hot right now -- Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 18:35, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've often thought about moving to Canada. If only it were further South, I'd do it. The cities are great to visit in the summer but the winters can be pretty brutal. Liz Read! Talk! 00:53, 2 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding number 6, black hole, perhaps the explanation for the high page views can be found on CNN, which has published a higher-than-usual number of black-hole-related stories recently. Other media outlets may have done the same, leading to a higher number of page views. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  19:11, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Etamni, thanks for giving this some thought. Unfortunately, the sustained jump in views is not consistent with the spikes and tail-offs we see with press coverage. It just went from a few thousand views a day to around 60,000. Then it jumped to closer to 120K a day around Oct 27. I think someone is messing with us!--Milowent • hasspoken 21:10, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
When I look at the chart you linked to, I see that there is a very abrupt start in this traffic that does not coincide with any of the press coverage I found for black holes -- indeed, in some cases, it was weeks after some of those stories ran. I'm inclined to agree that it appears to be an automated system of some sort. Meanwhile, is there a technological solution to this? Does anyone (other than those who are interested in the true readership of articles) care about this anomaly? Is this a prelude to some form of a DoS attack on the servers? I don't know the answers to these questions. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  22:02, 4 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Typo, sorry, but helpfully it was a redirect. And wow, Jobs' birth story is incredible.--Milowent • hasspoken 21:15, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I thought about correcting it mself but for some reason thought people might actually have looked for "Steven" meaning that it was correct. Which is ridiculous. No one would.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:35, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]


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