Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-11-26/Traffic report
President-elect Trump
Week of October 30 – November 5, 2016: Asleep at the wheel
Despite facing what could very well be the most important election since the civil rights era, Americans seem to want to think about anything but politics. Obviously the 2016 election is on people's minds, but not as much as macabre holidays, improbable wins by oft-ridiculed baseball teams, comic book sorcerers and, most tellingly of all perhaps, a melodrama about royalty. Given the responsibility they're about to take on, it's not surprising that democracy isn't a priority for readers at the moment. Still, get in gear guys. It's not like we're not all watching you or anything.
For the full top-25 lists (and archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most-edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of October 30 to November 5, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Day of the Dead 
1,889,902 
Mexico's carnival of the cadaverous, the living dream of any kid who ever wished Halloween could last three days, is the beneficiary of Wikipedia's incurable interest in those holidays not routinely celebrated in the US. It's the same reason Boxing Day always charts higher than Christmas on this list. Despite the list covering both these holidays' dates, and despite Halloween being boosted by that greatest of Wikipedia flypapers, an interactive Google Doodle, the Day of the Dead's grim fandango still beat latter's monster mash. It only just loses even if we had added in Halloween's numbers from last week to that holiday's total. 2 Halloween
1,558,776 
Whatever happened to the Transylvania Twist? 3 Doctor Strange (film) 
1,077,855 
Marvel Studios continue their roll. Their attempt to bring their unashamedly psychedelic superhero into the earthier realms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has apparently paid off, with a 90% RT rating and an $84 million opening, no doubt aided by the international star power of a certain Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured). 4 Chicago Cubs
1,030,619 
The American baseball team has not won a World Series since 1908, but managed it this year, beating the Cleveland Indians 8–7. Turns out Back to the Future II was only off by a year. 5 Huma Abedin
1,021,942 
A top adviser to Hillary Clinton, views started to rise on October 28, and remained high for most of the week. This probably is related to Clinton-related emails allegedly being found on the laptop of her estranged husband Anthony Weiner; a subject of much sound and fury, but ultimately signifying nothing. 6 Ae Dil Hai Mushkil 
994,767 
This Indian romantic film whose cast includes Aishwarya Rai (pictured) had its debut on October 28 (Diwali weekend). 7 Donald Trump
949,709 
For someone in imminent danger of becoming the next President of the United States, you'd think numbers would be higher. But they're not significantly up from last week, and significantly DOWN from two weeks ago. Is this a sign? I don't know. 8 Curse of the Billy Goat
949,092 
Apparently, legend has it that in 1945 the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern was asked to leave Wrigley Field because his pet goat's smell was bothering fans, and proclaimed that "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." And that's why the Cubs didn't win a World Series until this week. The moral of the story, children, is that people will make up any piece of boondoggle to rationalise a bad situation. 9 Meghan Markle
864,425 
The fact that this American mixed-race actress may be dating the fifth in line to the British throne has raised some fairly awkward questions in the British press, like whether the situation would be the same if she'd dated Prince William. Keep in mind this is the same Royal Family that nearly collapsed because the heir to the throne wanted to marry an American divorcee. Personally, I think the whole lot's an outdated anachronism anyway, so I couldn't care less. 10 Elizabeth II 
822,254 
The longest-reigning British monarch in history is bound to draw attention whenever the British Royal Family becomes a topic of interest, but this week she gets an additional boost from her portrayal in The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy.
Week of November 6–12, 2016: President-elect Trump
- See also our Special Traffic Report: The U.S. Presidential Election analyzing election related traffic from June 2015-November 2016
In the early morning of November 9, news reports announced that Donald Trump (#1) had won election as the 45th President of the United States, in one of the most oddball political victories of all time. And of course, he leads the chart this week with 12.3 million views, compared to only 2.64 million for his opponent, Hillary Clinton (#6). Trump's numbers are second-highest seen since we started the Top 25 in 2013 (the record was set in April 2016 when Prince died).
Clearly this is a momentous event in United States politics, at least in the Age of Wikipedia. In comparison, when Barack Obama was first elected in November 2008, his article received only 4.99 million views on the week of the election, compared to 1.08 million to his opponent John McCain. (Although mobile viewcounts were not captured then, mobile views were not a very large portion of traffic in 2008.) This 5-1 view ratio is similar to the Trump-Hillary ratio we see in this week's report. See also User:Andrew Gray/Election statistics for an in-depth analysis of 2008 statistics done shortly after that election. In 2012 (when mobile viewcounts were a larger portion of traffic than in 2008 but still not captured by stats.grok.se), Obama beat Mitt Romney in election week views by 2.04 million to 1.78 million.
Nine of the top 10 slots this week are election-related, with only Queen Elizabeth II (#8) breaking the run, based on the great success of The Crown television series. The Crown also propelled other British royal figures into the Top 25 with impressive view numbers. But nineteen of the Top 25 articles are election-related, a new record for single-topic related articles in a week.
The most notable death, which would have probably been #1 in any other week, was that of cult songwriter Leonard Cohen (#13). This week's chart is also astounding because every article in the Top 25 exceeded one million views -- we have never even come close to that level of traffic before among the top viewed articles. Usually a few of the top articles in a given week get to that level. And for the first time since we began this report in January 2013, Deaths in (Year) was knocked out of the Top 25, placing at #34. So we've provided an extended list for #26-35 this week at the bottom of the chart, many of which are also election-related.
Please note that this report refrains from making any strong editorial comments about Donald Trump; no conclusions should be drawn from that decision. The press in the United States and around the world is reporting heavily on the meaning and effect of Trump's election. Just don't get your news and commentary from fake news sites posted to Facebook.
Also, please see our SPECIAL REPORT on the U.S. Presidential election — tracking the popularity of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's articles for the whole campaign cycle, from June 2015 to November 2016. As detailed there, attention and enthusiasm for Donald Trump far exceeded that of Clinton across the board. Perhaps this was an overlooked indicator of Trump's chances of success.
For the full top-25 lists (and archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most-edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of November 6 to 12, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Donald Trump
12,331,880 Trump won the November 8 election to become President-Elect of the United States, and his article got the second-most views ever for this chart. 6.1 million of these views were on November 9. As our daily data from the WP:5000 is based on UTC hours, no doubt views increased in the early hours of November 9 as it became clear that Trump could, and then would, win the election. 2 United States presidential election, 2016
5,414,267 
Views peaked at 2.36 million on November 9. 3 Electoral College (United States)
4,496,355 In the United States, the president is not elected by the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton won, but by the "electoral college," which consists of 538 votes spread out over the 50 states and District of Columbia, and where the winner of the popular vote in each state (with the exception of two states which distribute electors by Congressional district) receives all the electoral votes for that state. This is the fifth time that the winner of the popular vote lost the election, the last being in 2000. When the counts are final, it is clear that the popular vote count between Clinton and Trump will be largest gap ever in this situation. Trump threaded the needle by winning in Rust Belt states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan even though losing the popular vote by a large margin in populous states like California and New York. 4 Melania Trump
4,198,183 
Mrs. Trump will be the first foreign-born First Lady of the United States since Louisa Adams in the 1820s. Louisa was born in Britain to an American father and a British mother, so Melania will be the first non-native speaker of English to hold the title, which is a bit bizarre considering Trump's rhetoric on immigration. Though her English is accented, she does speak six languages, which is very uncommon for Americans. 5 United States presidential election, 2012
2,854,744 No doubt this article was popular as readers tried to figure out how Obama won so handily in 2012 over Mitt Romney, and what changed. One thing that changed is that Donald Trump did not run a campaign that resembled that of prior Republican candidates. 6 Hillary Clinton
2,644,676 
Throughout the campaign, Clinton's article was less popular than Trump's. See our SPECIAL REPORT. Often we ascribed this to Trump's tendency to say outrageous things and dominate media coverage, but maybe this was also evidence of more enthusiasm among Americans for Trump than for Clinton. 7 Ivanka Trump
2,163,529 
No doubt the most liked Trump outside core Trump-fandom. Her views regularly exceeded those of her siblings. In the report for the July 2016 week of the Republican National Convention, Ivanka placed #4, ahead of her three adult siblings. (Trump's youngest child, Barron Trump, is only 10 years old and should not yet have his own article here, if the precedent set for Malia and Sasha Obama is applied.) 8 Elizabeth II
2,053,702 The longest-reigning British monarch in history is bound to draw attention whenever the British Royal Family becomes a topic of interest. For the second consecutive week she gets an additional boost from her appearance in The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy. 9 Barack Obama
2,014,336 
The outgoing president campaigned hard in favor of Hillary Clinton (#6) in the closing weeks of the campaign. Now he has to turn over power to the person who championed the awful lie of birtherism. There really is no way to sugarcoat this. 10 List of Presidents of the United States
1,868,016 Trump will be the first U.S. president not to hold a previous governmental office or military command.
- Extended list past the WP:TOP25: #26 United States presidential election, 2004 (958,042); #27 President of the United States (939,454); #28 Ronald Reagan (881,618); #29 Winston Churchill (864,053); #30 The Crown (TV series) (841,567); #31 Jesus nut (724,272, due to a Reddit thread); #31 United States presidential election (717,068); #32 Jared Kushner (husband of Ivanka) (701,653); #33 George W. Bush (688,722); #34 Deaths in 2016 (687,369); #35 Westworld (TV series) (681,020).
Discuss this story