Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Newsletter/011/Story 1
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
December 2019 | January 2020 | Rank change | |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Gastroenteritis | Coronavirus | +104 |
2 | HIV/AIDS | 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak
|
NA |
3 | Norovirus | 2019 novel coronavirus
|
NA |
4 | Smallpox | Severe acute respiratory syndrome
|
+47 |
5 | Shingles | Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
|
NA |
6 | Measles | Spanish flu | +3 |
7 | HIV | Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus
|
+124 |
8 | Influenza | List of epidemics
|
+54 |
9 | Spanish flu | Timeline of the 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak
|
NA |
10 | Dengue fever | Coronaviridae | +490 |
Total views | 1,466,143 | 19,845,246 |
From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months:
While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100-300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day.
With an increase in viewers come an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren’t familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with
Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles:
- Began as Wuhan coronaviruson 9 January
- moved to 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)(16 January)
- Moved to Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)on 19 January
- Moved to 2019 novel coronaviruson 9 February
- Moved to Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2on 18 February (current name)
- Started as 2019-2020 China pneumonia outbreakon 5 January
- Moved to 2019–20 China pneumonia outbreakon 5 January
- Moved to 2019-20 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan, Chinaon 15 January
- Moved to 2019-20 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)on 15 January
- Moved to 2019–20 outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)on 15 January
- Moved to 2019–20 outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019-nCoVon 23 January
- Moved to 2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreakon 23 January
- Moved to 2019–20 coronavirus outbreakon 18 February (current name)
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities,