Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-01/Traffic report

Traffic report

Come on Oppie, let's go party

By Igordebraga, Ollieisanerd, TheJoebro64

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, Ollieisanerd, and TheJoebro64.

Give me time to reason, give me time to think it through (July 9 to 15)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Huw Edwards	2,240,811	This Welsh news reader for the BBC was revealed to be the man behind The Sun's allegations that a well-known BBC presenter had paid a 17-year old tens of thousands of British pounds for sexually explicit images, which they then allegedly used to fund their cocaine addiction. The police said that they found no evidence of criminal conduct. Edwards was suspended and was reported to be in hospital with depression.
2	Oppenheimer (film)	1,629,598	Christopher Nolan's latest film, bound to get critics raving because of its production values and get their ears bleeding because of Nolan's obsession with terrible sound mixing. I'm likely going to watch it as a double feature.
3	J. Robert Oppenheimer	1,580,213	You guessed it, the subject of #2. I don't have anything of note to say about him, so I'll let Harry S. Truman do the talking.
4	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	1,491,335	Secret agent Ethan Hunt returns for his seventh go in trying to save the world - with the threat this time being a rogue AI (a fairly relevant topic!) - while driving dangerously, jumping off incredibly high things, and wearing masks that downright turn him into other people. Only this time, as the "Part One" in the title makes clear, it's not a complete story so moviegoers will have to wait until next June to see the conclusion - though in the movie's favor, it at least cuts at a reasonable point instead of doing like Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse and closing in the middle of a scene. Delivering the same spy intrigue and unbelievable stunts of the previous movies, Dead Reckoning was acclaimed by critics and had a strong opening week earning over $200 million worldwide, and it's bound to keep making money if last year's Top Gun: Maverick shows how much of a draw Tom Cruise remains.
5	Sound of Freedom (film)	1,439,425	An action movie based (very, very loosely) on Timothy Ballard's (pictured) Operation Underground Railroad. It's gotten decent reviews and exceeded expectations at the box office, though it's attracted controversy over whether it promotes QAnon conspiracy theories (not helped by Ballard and star Jim Caviezel having publicly endorsed some of QAnon's more extreme beliefs).
6	Mission: Impossible (film series)	1,013,011	In 1996, Tom Cruise co-produced an adaptation of an old TV series about spies. It's still running strong nearly three decades later while providing many ways for Cruise to defy death, be it scaling a mountain with his bare hands, being thrown around cars in a freeway, climbing the tallest building in the world, hanging from a plane door as the thing takes off, a HALO jump in the middle of a storm and in the latest one (#4) using a motorcycle to jump off a huge cliff.
7	Chandrayaan-3	1,012,436	India launched one more lunar mission, expected to land in the Moon next month.
8	Facebook	987,743	Websites among Wikipedia's most viewed articles didn't seem like something that could still reappear. But Elon Musk just had to mishandle Twitter enough^[1] for Meta Platforms to retaliate with their equivalent Threads and bring plentiful views for the company's better known social networks.
9	Instagram	979,774
10	Carlos Alcaraz	941,375	Tennis grand slams have a tendency to bring in articles here, so in comes the current #1 in the ATP rankings as he reached the Wimbledon final. Considering the Spaniard won the match, expect even more views next week.

^ Note that this was before the baffling decision to drop both the name "Twitter" and the bird logo for an X!

Out of the darkness, brighter than a thousand suns (July 16 to 22)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	J. Robert Oppenheimer	4,921,587	Christopher Nolan tackled a biopic for the first time, and the result has the expected epic results with impeccable production values and an outstanding cast. Unfortunately, Oppenheimer also focuses less on the Manhattan Project, where physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer helped develop the atomic bomb, than on the Oppenheimer security hearing where the Congress tried to determine if he was a communist, making much of the three hour runtime (particularly once Trinity explodes by the two hour mark) be boring politics that can certainly drive viewers to wash it off by immediately following things with the diametrically opposed other big release of the week (#4). Still, it had an overall approval of audiences and reviewers and is expected to make much money, specially from IMAX screens.
2	Oppenheimer (film)	4,779,203
3	Carlos Alcaraz	2,781,884	At Wimbledon, this Spanish tennis player reminded us why he's the current leader of the ATP rankings by beating the living legend at #5 at just 20, his second Grand Slam while breaking a sequence since 2003 where only the same four guys won on the English lawn.
4	Barbie (film)	2,609,472	If you're seeing an unusual amount of people wearing pink, blame this movie that takes Mattel's famed doll and adds a satirical approach reminiscent of The Lego Movie, albeit in a way that is certainly not aimed at children (be it discussing the patriarchy or mentioning Barbie's below waist anatomy...). Much praise was given to how Greta Gerwig made Barbie such a funny and subversive flick, and given being more recognizable while having lower content ratings compared to #2 it will certainly beat it at the box office, with the opening weekend alone nearly doubling the already impressive $80 million of Oppenheimer.
5	Novak Djokovic	1,697,593	After winning the first two Grand Slams of the year, 'Djoko' was stopped by #3 in the Wimbledon final, preventing him from both matching the 8 titles of Roger Federer and taking back the top of the ATP rankings.
6	Jane Birkin	1,506,323	Died this week aged 76. Birkin was a British actress and singer who was known for her romantic relationship with French musician and actor Serge Gainsbourg. She later acquired French citizenship and achieved a successful career in French cinema.
7	Tony Bennett	1,466,736	One of the last-surviving jazz crooners of the 1950s and 60s, Bennett passed away from Alzheimer's disease this week at age 96. Bennett worked in the music industry for over 80 years, during which time he earned 20 Grammys and sold more than 50 million records worldwide, his songs becoming part of the Great American Songbook. His family said that he kept singing till the end, the last song he ever sung being "Because of You".
8	Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One	1,407,946	Tom Cruise complained that #1 would be taking IMAX screens away from his movie, the seventh in a series that has been running strong since 1996, but nonetheless was already shown holding tickets to both it and #4, wanting to support the film industry he so loves and like Ethan Hunt in the movie, is not dealing well with the threat of artificial intelligence. Dead Reckoning Part One was hailed as one of the best in the franchise and is nearing $400 million worldwide, a great indicator that many can't wait for Part Two next June.
9	Christopher Nolan	1,129,085	The writer-director of #2, who has a pechant for creating incredible imagery without computer graphics - which in the case of Oppenheimer included the climactic detonation!
10	Sound of Freedom (film)	1,099,731	Compared to #1, #4, and #8 this thriller is a much more modest deal, priced at only $15 million when all the others have budgets in the nine digits. Yet it has kept itself steady at the box office, never falling below third while already breaking the $100 million mark. Maybe now its makers can find international distribution deals so overseas moviegoers can find out if Sound of Freedom earned all this success.

But nothing, I said nothing can take away these blues (July 23 to 29)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Sinéad O'Connor	8,096,961	An Irish singer known primarily for making a Prince song her own, a distinctive shaved look, and tearing a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. Last year was taxing for her once her son committed suicide at just 17, leading to an hospitalization due to depression, and now O'Connor herself has died at 56, leaving behind ten studio albums, three other children and a grandson.
2	J. Robert Oppenheimer	6,073,436	Out of the universe A strange love is born Unholy union Trinity reborn...
3	Oppenheimer (film)	5,767,988
4	Barbie (film)	3,898,258	Pink, it's my new obsession Pink, it's not even a question...
5	Cillian Murphy	1,384,434	#2's portrayer, working with Christopher Nolan again, a collaboration dating back to the Scarecrow in Batman Begins and its sequels. Jokes were raised on how the marketing to #4 was all those highly visible pink things while #3 simply revealed new pictures of Murphy looking very disheveled.
6	Lewis Strauss	1,224,066	The commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission who would then lead the security hearing against #2, played in #3 by Robert Downey Jr. wearing heavy make-up.
7	Margot Robbie	1,303,351	The star of #4 who, fun fact, is reportedly going to be co-starring alongside her Ken Ryan Gosling in another movie.
8	Greta Gerwig	1,144,227	Once this actress turned into writing-directing, the result were two Best Picture nominees, the semi-autobiographical Lady Bird and an adaptation of Little Women. Now movie fans wonder if she'll again be an awards competitor for #4, given Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach pulled a surprisingly smart movie out of Barbie dolls.
9	Katherine Oppenheimer	1,050,908	#2's wife, played in #3 by Emily Blunt (meaning that the German-American couple were portrayed by two actors from the British Isles, an Irishman and an Englishwoman).
10	Deaths in 2023	1,002,566	For #1: All the flowers that you planted mama In the back yard All died when you went away...

Exclusions

These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

Most edited articles

For the June 24 – July 24 period, per this database report.

Title	Revisions	Notes
Legalism (Chinese philosophy)	1909	FourLights is really devoted in improving this article.
Wagner Group rebellion	1844	The fallout of a paramilitary group that used to support Putin deciding to mutiny against him for a day is yet to be concluded, with the Wagner Group leaving for Belarus, announcing they wouldn't fight again in Ukraine, and delivering heavy military equipment back to Russia, but are still training Belarusians and taking part in African conflicts.
Deaths in 2023	1783	Our version of the obituary. Along with Tony Bennett and Jane Birkin, mentioned above, the period also had the departures of Alan Arkin and Coco Lee, who entered the last Traffic Report, plus among others writer Milan Kundera and hacker-turned-security consultant Kevin Mitnick.
Leonardo Torres Quevedo	1449	Still here a month later, a Spanish engineer with one dedicated editor trying to clean up his article.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	1410	Indiana Jones came back to fight Nazis in 1969 accompanied by his goddaughter (whose portrayer will always earn this here writer's contempt for creating Fleabag), and the fifth movie has not been the same runaway success of its predecessors, splitting fans while only barely surpassing its enormous budget and the earnings of the lowest-grossing one. Still, here's to him.
2023 Wimbledon Championships – Men's singles	1149	Novak Djokovic could have matched two records, Margaret Court's Grand Slam titles (24) and Roger Federer's Wimbledon ones (8), while taking back the top of the ATP rankings. But Carlos Alcaraz stood in the way and defeated him in the final.
Barbie (film)	980	For everyone who is having "Barbie Girl" stuck in their heads (even if the movie itself doesn't feature the song aside from a rap sampling it - like me, Mattel disapproves the song!), mind I remind that Aqua made this infinitely better track?
Bigg Boss OTT (Hindi season 2)	862	India started a new season of their version of Big Brother with celebrities.
2023 Wimbledon Championships – Women's singles	858	Markéta Vondroušová, just two years after winning the Olympic silver, got her first Grand Slam title, defeating in the final Ons Jabeur, who also lost last year's Wimbledon final.
Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance	788	An alliance of 24 Indian parties hoping to take down the current government in next year's elections.
Oppenheimer (film)	762	The Wolf of Wall Street peaked two hours in and still had one more hour to go. Another biopic went the same way, only this time the remaining running time is mostly talking. And did you know some editors were trying to delete Barbenheimer? (once the dust settles, they might try again!)
2023 Championship League (ranking)	742	A snooker event held in Leicester and won by Shaun Murphy.
Killing of Nahel Merzouk	705	A 17 year old French of North African descent was shot at point blank in a suburb of Paris, the latest in a series of occurrences (this year alone there were three) of fatal shootings during a traffic stop in France, mostly happening to people of color. As an entry below shows, the death was a turning point for those against police brutality with implied racial profiling, not helped by the responsible policemen lying in their testimony.
Great Britain at the 2023 European Games	695	The third edition of the European Games were held in Poland, and Great Britain finished seventh with 49 medals.
Nahel Merzouk protests	681	The article is actually now Nahel Merzouk riots, showing that in comparison to Black Lives Matter across the ocean, the French escalated their protests in the 19 days after Merzouk's death in a violent way, leading to over €650 million in damages.

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In this issue

1 August 2023

News and notes

In the media

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Likey the addition of a "most edited articles" chart. A nice new dimension to the Traffic Report, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:04, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed! —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:34, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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