Wikipedia talk:2018 Top 50 Report

Year's end approaching

Will there be a full-year report again this year? It's December, so probably time to begin drafting if so. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 20:36, 4 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously we need the data first, but I'd be willing to give another crack at it. Serendi ^podous 21:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A number of candidate articles are sure to be included: Deaths in 2019, Freddie Mercury, Black Panther (film) as well as the unsinkable Elizabeth II and Donald Trump. @Igordebraga: you seemed to be maintaining a list of articles with traffic peaks or sustained high traffic throughout the year. Correct? — JFG ^talk 00:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've been tallying them in my sandbox for a while. Maybe I'll already create a page so we can prepare our write-ups. @West.andrew.g: will the yearly 5000 find a way to combine the views for Harry & Meghan, given the fact that the rename to add the Duke\Duchess of Sussex title creates a noticeable split so far in the WMF tool? igordebraga ≠ 00:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's easy enough to manually add the figures for both versions of the title. No need for Andrew to code for a special case. — JFG ^talk 09:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Used the sandbox created by @Stormy clouds: for last year and pasted what I gathered so far. igordebraga ≠ 05:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Wonderful job. Once again I'll pick the politics and science entries. Have fun with the movies and royal gossip! — JFG ^talk 09:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Stormy clouds, Serendipodous, Igordebraga, Soulbust, A lad insane, and OZOO: Feel free to take your early picks from the draft list by marking them with your personal colour. Other volunteers welcome, of course. — JFG ^talk 10:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I took some preliminary picks, but an not pushed on what entries I write, so feel free to nab them off me if there are ones you particularly want. Stormy clouds (talk) 11:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Tagging newer authors for visibility. Stormy clouds (talk) 11:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As the token Brit, I have taken the Royals. And I am a Youtuber, so... Serendi ^podous 13:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seems everyone else has taken most of the good ones. I've claimed a few of the leftovers. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 14:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hey if you want I can trade some royals with you. Serendi ^podous 14:05, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

~~Sure, do you mind if I take Queen Victoria? You can have whichever of mine you like, I've got a bit of a morbid selection as it is.~~ -A lad insane (Channel 2) 17:41, 5 December 2018 (UTC) On second thought, never mind. Thanks though! -A lad insane (Channel 2) 18:15, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Minor formatting suggestion. Could the author list/color legend be made horizontal, so more of the list is initially visible? West.andrew.g (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Soulbust: must be busy with school, and just because having an Indian always available would be a plus, Rogerknots has never resurfaced again. @Ahecht:, @Pythoncoder: are you willing to contribute? (and just made some updates yesterday; Aretha Franklin is out, Nick Jonas is in :( while Stallone enters, mostly because some people on the internet tried to kill him) igordebraga ≠ 17:45, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I grabbed a couple. When are we aiming to have the entries written by? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:43, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

^ my comment is the same as ahecht's — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:51, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Christmas, maybe? That way there's time to replace entries in the last-minute shuffle, and some wiggle room in case. Obviously they should all be done by Jan. 1 though. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 19:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Preferrably earlier. Last year, we were encouraged to be faster off the mark to get the publicity vehicle rolling in full stream. Stormy clouds (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes: we should aim to have drafts done by the Christmas holidays, including for the next 3–4 articles below the list cutoff. Aim for Sunday 23 December? — JFG ^talk 19:54, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 20:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Soulbust:, @OZOO:, @JFG:, @Pythoncoder:, @Ahecht: whenever you can, do the pending write-ups, and maybe get one of the three unclaimed ones. igordebraga ≠ 06:31, 22 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Planning to deliver mine tomorrow. Won't be able to pick an extra one. — JFG ^talk 18:46, 23 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Millenials

I'm a bit suspicious of the Millenials entry. It had a pretty large fake peak last year in the last week of January,[1] and its upward trend over the last three years deserves scrutiny. How can article get as much steady interest throughout the year as a staple of education like World War II? Are millenials now standard study practice in high school curricula somewhere big? (India? USA?) I'd love to see an analysis of page views by country and by device comparing those two articles. Check the numbers from mid-2015 to end 2016,[2] compared to the 2017–2018 period (exclufing the January peak).[3] — JFG ^talk 19:52, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's a buzzword which has had quite the impact (mostly pejorative, i.e. "Millennials blamed for killing these businesses"), so the 30k average daily views - one third of what the death list achieves - seems reasonable. The views are never too high\low on mobile, and I even found an excuse for the 140k peak of this year (which is only one tenth of the fishy number that just had to be excluded last year). But let's see what everyone else thinks. igordebraga ≠ 04:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures

FYI I have updated some of the pictures and requested some image editing to have more impactful pictures at such a small scale. Given that several of the prominent 2018 deaths already had black-and-white portraits, I have asked for conversions to B&W of all of them. Hope you all like the idea. — JFG ^talk 11:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have to admit it's an interesting look. And to think it only happened because I decided that the 1970s b&w Hawking pic was still better\more flattering than the most recent ones. igordebraga ≠ 12:43, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I also am a fan of the pictures. They look very well. Just one nit, not exclusively related to the pictures - Mercury seems to be getting grouped in with the 2018 deaths. I am all for the black and white photo of the statue, as it looks very nice, but should we be grouping Mercury in with the fallen in lines like a gallery (#1) of dearly departed humans (#6, #8, xx, yy, zz). He is, of course, dead, but would that not lead us to classifying Margaret and Victoria in a similar vein? Like a said, just a little nit, but perhaps worth discussing. Stormy clouds (talk) 13:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch. I must admit I pondered the question when I wrote the initial version of the intro blurb. Technically, he did not die this year, although we all must come to terms with the fact that Freddie's Dead. it does feel a bit like he just died, doesn't it? Our 2018 gallery of the macabre includes Hawking and Stan Lee, Bush Sr. and McCain, XXXTentacion and Avicii, Bourdain and Sridevi, and not-quite-dead-Stallone with not-quite-enough-views-Mac Miller. I guess it's just my personal taste that led me to list our mercurial angel on top position within the parenthetical count of the dearly departed. I'd be fine either way. — JFG ^talk 15:21, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Data

I wrote the queries and began processing today, but it takes a while on my ancient machine. I will post preliminaries within the next week as they become available, and incrementally as we approach the new year. This also prepares the process for a very quick completion computationally on JAN-01. I will aggregate all my data posting/updates in this section. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:22, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds great, many thanks. Any extra scrutiny on Millenials would be welcome (see above). — JFG ^talk 08:21, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

All I have is the daily view totals broken down by desktop/mobile/zero, so I'm afraid I can't provide any additional color. For a while, we were friendly with someone inside the WMF who could access more privacy-sensitive but revealing data about a particular case, but I can't recall the details there. West.andrew.g (talk) 13:45, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

DATA! These numbers exclude the week that just concluded:

User:West.andrew.g/2018_Popular_pages -- what you'd expect
User:West.andrew.g/2018_Maximum_Daily_Views -- someone will probably want to copy this data from the "edit" view (where there are line breaks) and begin making judgement calls on the article that actually won each day. Dates/articles with mobile percentages less than 10% were automatically excluded. Let me know if you need deeper data on any particular day due to all the noise. West.andrew.g (talk) 20:25, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Copied and pasted last year's and starting inputting the data here. Stormy clouds (talk) 22:16, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@West.andrew.g: Thanks for reminding me of stuff I forgot to include in my year-long progressions, now Wolverine's Circus, It's a Marvel World After All and We Shall Fight on the Beaches are on the 50 too. Though if the second link is any indicator, the data cuts off just as December begins. Just the numbers from last week make a huge difference for some articles! igordebraga ≠ 05:18, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There's a pretty large discrepancy in the figures from Andrew and from the stats lab concerning the recently married Priyanka Chopra (8.6 M vs 10.7 M) and Nick Jonas (7.7 M vs 9.5 M). According to Andrew's data, both will be excluded from the Top 50. Any clue as to the reason for this gap? — JFG ^talk 09:49, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, possibly Andrew's data is a few days off, and the couple is busy raking up views. Let's see how it evolves when we get the next update. (next week, Andrew?) — JFG ^talk 11:17, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Both sources just updated with data from the first 342 days of the year; one more week than the initial posting. Updates will now come weekly. West.andrew.g (talk) 21:02, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Now updated through day 349 on both reports. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 01:52, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Now updated through day 356 on both reports. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 13:00, 27 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Now updated through day 363 on both reports. I anticipate I'll have things processed less than 12 hours after the GMT new year, depending on how my evening goes. We should be prepared to quickly wrap after that and start trying to garner publicity -- with some coordination to ensure we aren't all spamming the tip boxes at the same publications. West.andrew.g (talk) 19:38, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

YEAR END DATA COMPLETE ON BOTH REPORTS. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:44, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, West.andrew.g. I have updated both lists with the data. Couldn't have been done without you, thanks a million. Stormy clouds (talk) 18:50, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Box office heroes

@Igordebraga: In the Black Panther entry you wrote: Curiously, for all the money made by Infinity War (#3), it did not become the highest-grossing superhero movie ever in the U.S. I found this confusing, and it took me a while to realize that you were looking at the U.S. figures only, whereas we have an entry below referring to the List of highest-grossing films worldwide. This entry's peak traffic day is linked to Infinity War reaching #1 for 2018, overtaking Black Panther which was released earlier. Indeed, the worldwide figures place Infinity War with 2.0 billion well ahead of Black Panther at 1.3 billion, and the U.S. figures have both movies much closer with 699 million for Black Panther and 677 million for Infinity War. In light of these facts, I would recommend removing the part of your text that compares box office receipts for both movies. I found the rest of your text more interesting anyway. — JFG ^talk 09:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@JFG: Fixed it. And given Winston Churchill will probably enter the list instead of WWII, gave you that, it's OK? igordebraga ≠ 05:18, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, I'm happy to fight on the beaches. — JFG ^talk 09:43, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Moving to WP space

I have created Wikipedia:2018 Top 50 Report, and set it aside for when the report is complete and ready to move. I have also created Wikipedia:2018 to redirect towards the finalised report. We need to publish as soon as possible, preferably today. Once JFG inputs their entries, we should be go to go. Further entries in the round table discussion are not a priority, but are of course welcome. ~~We need to fix the final numbers later today, to account for the last two days of the year.~~ ( Done) We also need to move on the publicising train, and can follow the precedent of last year by informing various news publications, as well as Wikimedia Commons, to get eyes on the report. We should also consider the best avenues to have this seen on Wikipedia itself, rather than relying exclusively on third-party publications. - Stormy clouds (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also, now feels the apt time to congratulate and thank everyone on their great work on the report. Hopefully it gets traction, and we will have something to be very proud of. Thanks of course to West.andrew.g, without whom the report would be impossible. Stormy clouds (talk) 16:08, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- YEAR END DATE NOW COMPLETE. West.andrew.g (talk) 17:44, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Topviews now has yearly data

I know you've already gotten the data you need, but just to let you know, yearly totals are now available in Topviews Analysis. For example: https://tools.wmflabs.org/topviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&date=2018. Due to storage concerns the data available is limited to the top 500 pages, only for the mainspace and the "All" platform (mobile + desktop combined). There may also be some interface bugs too, but the data should all be correct. Regards, — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:51, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thanks. This is useful for the "top viewed pages of the month" rank I update on the Portuguese wiki. igordebraga ≠ 01:34, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Churchill

JFG - just to get the report as a whole to a point where we can publish and begin belatedly promoting it, I have taken the liberty to write a quick entry on Churchill. I know that you have one in the works yourself, so feel absolutely free to replace mine, which is merely intended as a stop-gap. Stormy clouds (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- And finishing too late so far only got one report in Ireland (which even namedrops Stormy clouds), one in Australia (though they decided to ignore my warning that Kpop fans artificially inflate views and returned the two exclusions) and one in India... still, great work, everyone! igordebraga ≠ 22:58, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]