Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-05-17/Traffic report
Oh behave, Beyhive / Underdogs
Your Traffic Reports for the weeks of April 24-30 and May 1-7.
Oh behave, Beyhive (April 24-30)
I would never pride myself on being unusual; however, I think it can be safely stated that I and my fellow native Wikipedians share few priorities with the general public. I have already mentioned in my previous post that I do not get spectator sports, and our viewers' unending obsession with the non-sport of professional wrestling remains to me an eternal source of mystification. But to those you could add any number of public obsessions completely outside my proverbial wheelhouse. Bikini bodies. Probiotic yoghurt. Singers and/or dancers below US drinking age. Pictures of genitalia posted on social media. Inexplicably popular Armenian-American families. But on the summit of that pile of mentally-erased files must perch the private lives of famous people. As an intensely private person myself, I do not believe that the lives of those who happen to attain a certain level of public regard are in the public domain, any more than their bodies are. So it always shocks me when a celebrity (like, say, Beyoncé) uses the travails of her private life as a means of viral marketing, as appears to have happened in the release of her latest album Lemonade. Her fans, known as the "Beyhive", have been sent into a predictable swarm, and are searching for blood. It is interesting to note that, while she supposedly used her album to castigate her husband Jay-Z for cheating on her, she still released it exclusively on his download service, Tidal.
For the full top-25 lists (and our 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.
For the week of April 24 to 30, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from WMF's TopViews, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Prince (musician) 
3,994,635 
Down nearly 80% in views from the previous week, when his death managed to garner a staggering 13 million views in just three days, the Purple One still managed to retain the top spot. It is sobering to realise that we are now seeing that generation of popular musicians pass away, in many cases before those in the previous generation, which was itself no stranger to tragic and premature death. One wonders if in 30 years, a centenarian Bob Dylan or Keith Richards will be the last one standing. 2 Claude Shannon
1,536,831 
The World War II cryptographer widely regarded as the father of information theory and the digital circuit got a Google Doodle to celebrate his 100th birthday on April 30th. 3 Captain America: Civil War 
1,384,304 
With the relative disappointment of Dawn of Justice, all eyes are turning to the next big comic blockbuster released this year which, despite the Captain America headline, is being marketed as another Avengers movie (with Spider-Man!). Whether this will see it over the $1 billion hurdle remains to be seen, but omens are good, with it having already earned $84 million internationally ahead of its US première. When that hits, expect view numbers to skyrocket. 4 Hertha Marks Ayrton
1,314,001 
The Hughes Medal-winning physicist and inventor, who investigated the mathematics behind electric arcs and sand ripples, and invented a fan for clearing trenches of poisoned gas, got a Google Doodle on her 162nd birthday on 28 April. 5 Game of Thrones (season 6) 
1,097,105 
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. There was a time when such an event would have crushed this list. But the movie world has reclaimed its place in the public's heart from TV and music in the last few years, and so now it is just one event among many. 6 Hillsborough disaster
1,094,036 
Topics of purely British interest almost never make the Top 25, let alone the Top 10, so when they do, you know they're significant. On the 15 April 1989, during a 1988–89 FA Cup semi-final match at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, a human crush caused the deaths of 96 people; the highest recorded toll in the history of British sport. More than the toll itself however, what has kept memories of the event alive for many was the reaction of the conservative press, many of which shifted the blame from the police to the fans themselves, despite an inquiry stating that the main cause of the disaster had been failure of police control and bad stadium design. On 26 April 2016, an inquest stated that the 96 victims had been unlawfully killed due to gross negligence on the part of the police, raising the possibility of new prosecutions. 7 Lemonade (Beyoncé album)
1,014,970 
The latest album from Beyoncé, released exclusively on her husband Jay-Z's streaming service, Tidal, has been something of a marketing masterstroke- drawing mainstream attention via an accompanying 60-minute film release on HBO (ala Michael Jackson's Thriller) but also triggering a viral storm with an insinuation that her husband had cheated on her with "a Becky with good hair" (supposed code for a white woman). 8 Rachel Roy
970,266 
The Indian American fashion designer and ex-wife of Jay-Z partner Damon Dash, who had long been suspected of being more than friends with the married-to-Beyoncé Jay-Z, made what can only be described as a catastrophically ill-judged post on Instagram in the wake of Beyoncé's cryptic "Becky with the good hair" lyric: "Good hair don’t care, but we will take good lighting, for selfies, or self truths, always. live in the light #nodramaqueens." You can imagine what happened next. Beyoncé's fans, known as the Beyhive, swarmed onto Roy's online identity, vandalising her Wikipedia page and flooding her Instagram with the usual poorly-spelled death threats. Casualties of this stinging attack included Roy's 11-year-old daughter, who received comments on social media like “Yo mom needs to drink bleach,” and even celebrity chef Rachael Ray, who has absolutely nothing in common with Roy save eight letters of her name. 9 Game of Thrones
827,670 See #5. 10 Beyoncé 
781,212 A mark of the uncontrollable force the Madonna of her generation unleashed when she included coded references to her husband's infidelity in her latest album was that people appear less interested in her than they are in the woman they decided she was referring to. See #7 and #8.
Underdogs (May 1-7)
The triumph of Captain America: Civil War at the box office and #1 on the chart this week is not surprising, but otherwise our top 10 has a number of improbable entries, all things considered. Donald Trump (#3) returns to the Top 10 (though he's remained solidly in the Top 25 in the past few weeks), having now essentially clinched the Republican nomination for U.S. President. Anyone who says they honestly predicted this when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower last June to announce his candidacy is simply lying. Even more improbable and happy news, however, comes from the world of English football, where Leicester City F.C. (#4) won the Premier League after starting the season with 5000 to 1 odds. Meanwhile, citizens of London may not see their new mayor Sadiq Khan (#9) as an underdog, but becoming the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital is not something much of the world would have predicted.
For the full top-25 lists (and our 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 here.
For the week of May 1 to 7, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages (WP:5000), were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Captain America: Civil War
2,303,444 The United States premiere of this movie finally came on May 6, and had the fifth-largest opening weekened all-time in that country. With the relative disappointment of Dawn of Justice, the film industry's eyes are turned to this big comic blockbuster which, despite the Captain America headline, is being marketed as another Avengers movie (with Spider-Man!). Whether this will see it over the $1 billion hurdle remains to be seen, but its box office has now already exceeded $678 million. 2 Cinco de Mayo
2,114,216 
One of our annual most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia returns, a celebration of Mexican-American culture originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French. Among those taking advantage of the holiday was this Report's dear friend and constant companion Donald Trump (#3), who stirred controversy by tweeting a photograph of himself eating a taco bowl with the exclamation "I love Hispanics!" 3 Donald Trump
992,406 
On Tuesday May 3, Trump handily scored a big win in the Indiana primary, leading his last opponents for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, to suspend their campaigns. This means that the real-estate mogul and reality-show star is really now slated to go head-to-head against Hillary Clinton in November (though technically Bernie Sanders has not yet conceded to Clinton) in the election for the Presidency of the United States. What a time to be alive. 4 Leicester City F.C.
930,859 
The world loves a good underdog sports story, and this week may have seen the most improbable triumph in all of sports history. Coming from 5,000 to 1 odds at the start of the season, this club won the Premier League on May 2, bringing global attention to the team. Jamie Vardy (pictured), one of team's stars, was also named FWA Footballer of the Year. When it comes to rising up against the odds, the promotion and relegation rules of the English football league system has a lot going for it. And speaking of underdog stories, though I don't watch a lot of English football, many are also rooting for AFC Wimbledon (which started in the ninth tier of English football in 2002) to get promoted to Football League One (the third tier) this year, which they can do if they prevail in their playoffs. 5 Sigmund Freud
856,399 
A Google Doogle celebrated the birthday of the famous father of psychoanalysis. 6 Prince (musician)
799,673 After two weeks in the top slot, Prince's recent death remains a subject of news coverage. 7 Payback (2016)
733,920 This wrestling event was held on May 1. 8 Jane Jacobs
713,542 
A Google Doogle celebrated the 100th birthday of the urban studies activist and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 9 Sadiq Khan
705,457 
In the long history of London, it is now a fact that one-third of all its mayors have been Muslim. That's because Khan is only the third mayor of London (a position created in 2000), and he's Muslim. And just when you think a subject couldn't be infected by Donald Trump (#3), some of the coverage of the election in England suggested that Khan wouldn't be able to travel to the United States if Trump is elected, a reference to Trump's suggestion that Muslims should be barred from entry. 10 Game of Thrones (season 6)
675,351 The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April.
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