Olympics readership depended on language

The past few weeks of theTraffic Report have been dominated by the2016 Summer Olympics. Since the Olympics are one of the world's biggest international events, you might guess that it dominated the most-viewed articles of other language Wikipedias. And you would be right. But thetopics of interest around the world show interesting variations. We love the Olympics, but also love ourown Olympics and Olympians.

Using the WMF data available throughTopViews*, we compiled charts of the 15 most popular Olympic-related articles for the period of August 5–21, the official period of the Olympics, for seven different language Wikipedias: English, Spanish, German, Portuguese (the language of Brazil, the host country), Russian, French, and Japanese. We considered, but declined, to include the Chinese Wikipedia due to itsblockage in China greatly affecting its viewership.**

First of all,Michael Phelps really is popular worldwide. His biography was far and away #1 in English, #2 in Russian and Spanish, #3 in Portuguese, #4 in French, and #5 in German. Similarly,Usain Bolt was generally behind Phelps, and solidly the second most popular athlete of the Games. He ranked #3 in English, #4 in Spanish, #5 in Russian, #6 in Portuguese and French, #8 in Japanese, and #11 in German.

But the old saying "big in Japan" did not apply to Phelps, where he placed 12th, the only place where Bolt was about 25% more popular. To be big in Japan, though, you really had to be Japanese—the topseven Olympic-related articles were filled by Japanese medalists, not even interrupted by general articles like2016 Summer Olympics (#1 on five lists) or theAll-time Olympic Games medal table which were usually popular across the board. Japan's list was led bySaori Yoshida, who won wrestling silver, and had 240% the views of Phelps. She was followed by many others, presumably now household names in Japan, including gymnastKōhei Uchimura (#2) and table tennis whizAi Fukuhara (#3).

Though the Japanese Wikipedia is the most extreme case, it is not fair to single it out; the data reveals that every language edition tends to favor its own. French judo practitioner and gold medalistTeddy Riner beat Phelps and Bolt on the French Wikipedia. Elsewhere, local favorites were not far behind Phelps and Bolt. In Spanish, Argentine tennis playerJuan Martín del Potro, who won silver, was #5, and SpaniardRafael Nadal was #9. In German, horizontal bar gold medalistFabian Hambüchen (#8) was the top local hero. And in English, American gymnasts includingSimone Biles (#4) andAly Raisman (#9), and swimmersKatie Ledecky (#8) andRyan Lochte (#11), were prominent, though India'sP.V. Sindhu, who won silver in badminton, drew an impressive #6 showing on the otherwise American-dominated list. Sindhu and the top Americans, other than Phelps, do not appear on the other charts. And vice-versa: English speakers, for instance, were not focused on the three medals won by Russian gymnastAliya Mustafina (#6 in Russia); she doesn't appear anywhere on the English (or other) charts.

Everybody wants to know how everyone else is doing; medal table charts were also popular articles, including theAll-time Olympic Games medal table and the2012 table. But people especially want to know howtheir country is doing. Thus the Spanish Wikipedia sawMexico at the Olympics at #10,Colombia at the Olympics at #11, andArgentina at the Olympics at #13.Brazil at the Olympics was #5 on the Portuguese Wikipedia, and in their respective domains,Russia at the 2016 Summer Olympics was #3, andFrance at the 2016 Summer Olympics was at #10.

Not popular in English, but rather popular elsewhere, wasFootball at the 2016 Summer Olympics. Perhaps because the American women's team floundered, no football-related articles are in the English Top 15, but such articles hit #3 in Germany (who won medals in both men's and women's), #7 in Spanish, #8 in Portuguese, and #14 in Russian. But if your country is good in a sport, like Germany was in football, or France was in themodern pentathlon (women's silver, #5), that's what you're most likely going to watch.

Our data collection showed that the Olympics were very popular everywhere. Other non-Olympic topics do appear in their general charts (remember the charts below are Olympic-only articles), just as we see on theTraffic Report, but to about the same extent. The lone exception may be Russian, where the popularity of other articles such as the filmSuicide Squad seemed a bit higher—perhaps a reflection of thedisqualification of many Russian athletes.

So, just like theAncient Olympic Games brought together all of Greece, the modern Olympics does seem to bring us all together. We may celebrate our own victories a bit more, but that is part of a human nature we all share and treasure.

• *One caveat on TopViews: TopViews compiles data on the 1,000 most viewed articles on a Wikipedia for each day. Running charts for longer periods compiles from those daily charts. Thus, when an article drops out of the top 1,000, those views for a day will not be included in the compiled data. Generally speaking, we have found that this gap is not a significant problem when looking at the most popular articles. The EnglishTraffic Report andWP:TOP25 are usually derived from theWP:5000, which includes all viewcount data, but there is no similar source for other-language Wikipedias. On the currentWP:5000, the 1,000th most viewed article has under 59,000 views for one day. This number should be significantly lower on other language Wikipedias, which receive less traffic.
• **We also reviewed statistics[1] for theBengali Wikipedia (7th on thelist of languages by total number of speakers), but traffic and usage there was too low to yield usable information. Though their page on the 2016 Summer Olympics was in their top 10 (#5), many of the more viewed articles on that project are traditional encyclopedic topics, e.g., #1 wasSheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh. Only 21 articles (on any topic) had more 5,000 views during the Olympics on that project.

TheArabic Wikipedia was also considered.[2] Though it has more traffic than the Bengali project (their2016 Summer Olympics article was #1, showing users go there for topical information, the generalOlympics Games article was #2, and Phelps was #10 among all articles), but only about 50 articles on that project broke 50,000 views during the Olympics, and primary encyclopedic articles (likeEgypt andSaudi Arabia) were among them. Ultimately, space and time limitations led to the selection of seven languages to sample.