Wikipedia Announces Their Most Viewed Articles Of 2016 (wikipedia.org) 65
Slashdot reader westand writes, "Wikipedia's 5000 most-visited articles of 2016 have been released, and Donald Trump leads the pack." (Though the site's second-most popular article was about a porn site.)
The top 5000 pages account for 21.6 billion views, with 42% of those being mobile traffic... After artificial traffic is discounted, election and celebrity deaths feature prominently.
Wikipedia's article about the U.S. presidential election of 2016 also came in at #11, while their articles about Melania Trump and Hillary Clinton came in at #16 and #19, respectively. Other top-20 articles covered deaths in 2016, as well as "Prince (musician)" and David Bowie, with four more articles that covered 2016 superhero movies also reaching the top 20. (Along with "List of Bollywood films of 2016".) The eighth most-popular article was about web scraping, while Wikipedia's 404.php page was actually more popular than any article on the site.
The original submission also points out that 323 million views were covered by The Wikipedia Zero project, in which mobile operators in the Global South ""'zero-rate' access to Wikimedia sites in their billing system, so their subscribers will not incur data charges while accessing Wikipedia and the sister projects on the mobile web or apps." And Wikipedia adds that their list is generated by Andrew G. West, a senior research scientist at Verisign Labs who "is particularly interested in academic collaboration regarding this English Wikipedia dataset."
Wikipedia's article about the U.S. presidential election of 2016 also came in at #11, while their articles about Melania Trump and Hillary Clinton came in at #16 and #19, respectively. Other top-20 articles covered deaths in 2016, as well as "Prince (musician)" and David Bowie, with four more articles that covered 2016 superhero movies also reaching the top 20. (Along with "List of Bollywood films of 2016".) The eighth most-popular article was about web scraping, while Wikipedia's 404.php page was actually more popular than any article on the site.
The original submission also points out that 323 million views were covered by The Wikipedia Zero project, in which mobile operators in the Global South ""'zero-rate' access to Wikimedia sites in their billing system, so their subscribers will not incur data charges while accessing Wikipedia and the sister projects on the mobile web or apps." And Wikipedia adds that their list is generated by Andrew G. West, a senior research scientist at Verisign Labs who "is particularly interested in academic collaboration regarding this English Wikipedia dataset."
Yes, a fine research tool! (Score:2)
So the line-up is like this: Main Page followed by "Hyphen-minus" and 404 Page Not Fount, then Donald Trump. And what's after Donald J. Trump, you may ask? Why, XHampster of course!
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It's "xhamster", you inspellsitive clod!
Even if it's dancing [youtube.com]? (SFW, unlike xhamster)
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To be fair, Carrie Fisher only died a few days ago and she's still near the top.
Who knows what would have happened if she'd died a week earlier?
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More like Donald Trump, looks at Melania Trump next stop xhamster.
Wikipeed hates Net Neutrality! (Score:1)
Kill Wikipeed Zero! Make the Global Brown pay for their Wikipeed data charges!
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- http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Can you please explain how "No charges for access" is different from this?
So Trump beat a porn site? (Score:2, Flamebait)
That's just yuggggge - Trump beating the top porn site as the most searched item. I'm guessing it's not regarding the size of his hands
Making Sex Great Again - since most millennials have stopped having sex
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But now Trump will come and give you all a new home. Or ... something like that.
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Because Trump is the top porn site. [youtube.com]
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I mean, Wikipedia is not exactly Google, you don't go there just to get to the site, and its history is not all that interesting either.
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Amazing (Score:2)
Amazing... Winston Churchill (7,517,385) ahead of Justin Bieber (7,376,207). How can that be? A flickering of intelligence? Nah, must be some other explanation.
Re:Amazing Churchil vs Bieber (Score:2)
Kids needing to do school assignments...
Re:Amazing Churchil vs Bieber (Score:4, Funny)
that, and Justin Bieber getting old.
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Having to do homework beats aging girly swoon material. What else is new?
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Science topics (Score:3)
STEM topics notably missing from top 5,000. Plate tectonics squeezes in at #4994, transistor at #4839. Probably a few more up higher, but they get vanishingly rare. At least "global warming" is ahead of Play Station 4.
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STEM topics notably missing from top 5,000.
I know this may come as a shock, but the majority of people in the world are not all that interested in STEM, and those that are do research on specific STEM interests elsewhere.
Wikipedia is a great resource for writing high school and undergraduate "term papers", though...
Shows Mobile users are crap (Score:2)
Compare poplarity with % mobile users
60% Trump
94% xHamster
55% Suicide Squad film
54% David Bowie
67% Elizabeth II
i.e. All above and similar are the result of recent TV, or about the rich and famous.
Now look at vaguely technical popular articles not about people, films, specific places. (Have to look way down the list to find these.)
9% Earth
3% Java (programming language)
4% HTTPS
33% Syrian civil war (#277)
42% Apple corp (probably just looking for the web site)
45% United Nations #634
And mobile is the futur
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I didn't realize so many people look at porn on there phone.
Trivia (Score:3)
What this tells me is that most people use Wikipedia to look up "trivia", a term that has been banished from Wikipedia in favor of "In Popular Culture"...
wikipedia = pov of entrenched editors (Score:1)
currently wikipedia has a extreme bias toward western secular globalist "liberal" elitist interventionist pov, due to power of entrenched editors.
prime example is article on british empire; a regime that engaged in all types of atrocities (to greater degree than any other regime in history) to exploit resources of others. genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, preventable famines killing millions, torture, brutal suppressions of widespread resistance, etc., etc., well in to 1970s.
but modern secular globalis
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currently wikipedia has a extreme bias toward western secular globalist "liberal" elitist interventionist pov, due to power of entrenched editors.
Ah yes, the required SJW comment!
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Having your own opinion is a great thing. Having a different opinion may be a brave thing.
Having a different opinion from the rest just for the sake of nonconformity is stupid, though. It leads to people thinking bleach is a cure for something just because everyone else thinks it's poisonous.
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Could you name a specific fact missing from Wikipedia?
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a regime that engaged in all types of atrocities (to greater degree than any other regime in history) to exploit resources of others
Is your point that British Empire was committing atrocities to gain some tangible benefits, while many other regimes, committed a lot of worse things, but just for sake of politics/religion/fun, not to 'exploit resources of others', so they don't count?
You can just directly say that 'British Empire was engaged in more atrocities than any other British Empire in history' and it will be also true, even more provably.
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Yeah, conservapedia is where we get all the right answers from. Their article on relativity is much more informative than Wikipedia's.
Highest tech topic: web scraping (Score:2)
The tech-related topic highest up on the list, on number 8: web scraping.
I find it utterly strange that this particular corner of the tech world is so high up there. I would have expected new computer languages to be up there, like Swift or Rust.
So I look down the list and on number 42 no less: Java!
Re:Highest tech topic: web scraping (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia searches are now dominated by the general population, not by computer people. Java is much more well known than Rust pretty much overall: Java crops up in all sorts of places Also, Oracle keeps popping in the the business news every now and again sometimes with Java related stuff.
Swift is really only relevant to iOS developers, and Rust is still young and just getting started. Neither is being pushed hard by a large corporation---Swift sort of is, but not as a general system like Java, more as something to write iOS apps for, which limits wider interest.
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Is Rust really used/gaining traction?
Compared to what? It's a very young language, and it isn't used for all that much right now. Mostly people are fiddling with it, to see what it can do. The one major exception is Mozilla of course who are actually building are actually building a very large, complex project in it which really plays to its strengths.
Anyway, it's only been stable for less than 2 years. It's started from nothing and it actually making its way into firefox bit by bit, which is pretty major a
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Proyecto 40 and AMGTV (Score:2)
I predict (Score:1)
Web Scraping is likely Google... (Score:1)
I wonder what Google's 'most's are for 2016.