Pattern recognition: Third annual Traffic Report

"Once", wroteIan Fleming inGoldfinger, "is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern" (actually he wrote, "Three times is enemy action", but let's not antagonise our viewers here). If Fleming's assertion is correct that one requires three instances of the same occurrence to identify a pattern, then now would be a pretty good time to try, as this is the third appearance of Wikipedia's annual Traffic Report. And while the dogged stalwarts of the list (Deaths in [insert year here],[insert year here] in film,[Insert Your Home Country Here],World War II) stand firm against all weather, what really reveals itself across the last three years is a shift in usage patterns from recreation to information.

That is not to say, mind you, that recreation is and perhaps will always be the prime motivator of our viewership, whatever our intentions as editors may be. Rather, Wikipedia viewers are becoming cannier in how they use Wikipedia to augment their recreation. The presence ofChris Kyle, for instance, could only be due to the popularity of the filmAmerican Sniper, but that film is nowhere to be seen. Instead, viewers were drawn to the man himself, the tragedy of his death, and the myriad controversies surrounding his legacy. Ditto Colombian drug kingpinPablo Escobar; viewers of the hitNetflix seriesNarcos turned for information not to the article on the show, but to that of the man whose violent wheel-dealings it portrayed. TheStephen Hawking biopicThe Theory of Everything may have been a modest hit, but that was not what brought viewers to Wikipedia, who were more interested in the film's subject than the film itself.

The patterns of colour reveal a stark change in usage, though it is still too early to know if it marks a longterm trend. 2013 was dominated by the red of television, but both 2014 and 2015 have increasingly embraced the orange of film. 2015 is clearly the year film took over; 11 articles on the Top 25 list, nearly half the total, are either on films or are film-related, compared with five last year and two in 2013. In my first annual report I speculated that television would dominate over film because its longform structure meant it could maintain our interest for longer periods. I have apparently reckoned without the Event Movie.

In 2015, Hollywood rediscovered the magic of marketing. Movies this year were so huge (the four on the list released this year are all in the top tenhighest-grossing films of all time) that they exerted their presence over months; watching the commercials and then the discussions on the news became as much a part of the experience as the film itself. Other patterns can also be seen; the bright yellow of websites has gradually lost ground, while the electric blue of current events has grown.

Given that a sizeable portion of traffic to website articles is doubtless due to people searching for the sites themselves and clicking the wrong Google hit, it shows, perhaps, that our viewers are becoming more Internet savvy, and are consciously employing it as an information tool, rather than as a means to chat or watch cat videos. One colour I am very happy to see the end of is beige.IPv6, with the benefit of hindsight, probably would have been excluded today, butsex has a far more storied and venerable past. Time was when this report would have been pointless; in the last decade, Wikipedia was still seen as something of a toy, and its only regular viewers were school children looking up naughty words. Sex, that most universal of human preoccupations, was the last to go. I do not expect to see it again.

For a list of the raw Top 5000 most viewed Wikipedia articles of 2015 (but be careful to exclude articles with almost 100% or 0% mobile views, which are afflicted by bots like the longstandingAngelsberg), seehere. For the most recently weekly Top 25 reports, seeDec 20-26 Report andDec 27 - Jan 2 Report.

The Top 25 most viewed articles of 2015 were:

Top 25 Articles of 2015

Rank	Article	Class	Views
1	Deaths in 2015		27,885,484
2	Chris Kyle		27,765,570
3	Star Wars: The Force Awakens		23,523,985
4	Facebook		22,330,302
5	Stephen Hawking		20,060,944
6	Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant		19,335,481
7	List of Bollywood films of 2014		18,171,094
8	Google		18,107,283
9	Avengers: Age of Ultron		17,409,029
10	United States		16,855,064
11	Kanye West		16,478,369
12	Game of Thrones		16,135,993
13	Star Wars		15,580,814
14	Wikipedia		15,157,792
15	Furious 7		14,740,823
16	Jurassic World		14,283,010
17	Donald Trump		14,052,391
18	Fifty Shades of Grey		13,362,580
19	Pablo Escobar		13,190,232
20	India		12,864,393
21	2014 in film		12,542,233
22	Floyd Mayweather, Jr.		12,436,450
23	Ronda Rousey		12,298,765
24	Paul Walker		12,201,471
25	World War II		12,149,875

Key
Website
Person
TV show
Film
Country
Current event
Historical event
Novel
Other