Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-07-23/Traffic report

The World Cup hangs on, though tragedies seek to replace it

Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over—but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on the 13th of July, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, five of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics.

However, this week also focuses on much more serious news including the crash of

For the week of 13 to 19 July 2014, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	2014 FIFA World Cup		916,405		Down from 1,179,986 views last week, but still enough to lead the list. And since we've also determined that the views which Amazon.com has recently been getting (and put that article #1 last week) seem to be bot-influenced, it's been taken out of the running .
2	Malaysia Airlines Flight 17	NA	887,329		The tragic shooting down of this passenger aircraft over Eastern Russian-backed insurgents, who had recently downed some Ukrainian planes in the same area, mistook the Boeing 777 for a Ukrainian military plane (though Ukraine would like to call it a "terrorist act" like U.S. President Ronald Reagan did regarding Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983). We can all agree it was a tragedy, however. A full investigation will need to take place, though that is being hampered by the lack of government authority and ongoing fighting in the region .
3	Buk missile system		840,636		A missile fired from this Russian-developed surface to air missile system is the suspected cause of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. View counts of this article spiked very understandably on the 17th, and remain well above normal. Interesting, though the normal daily view counts for this article were in in 200s-300s range in the two months prior to the crash, they did rise to the 600-900 view range in the three days before the crash, likely as a result of reporting that the insurgents in eastern Ukraine had recently obtained and were using this weapon.
4	FIFA World Cup		831,347		The broader article on the history of the World Cup competition continued to be accessed by people looking for World Cup information.
5	Germany national football team		641,544		Germany has now won four World Cups (1954, 1974, 1990, and 2014).
6	Lionel Messi		587,197		The 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13. Somewhat as a consolation, he was controversially given the Golden Ball award for being the best player of the tournament.
7	Gaza Strip		505,588		The latest round of fighting between Operation Protective Edge by Israel. Hamas probably has a different term, I expect; indeed the Arabic wikipedia version of the Operation Protective Edge article is called "The War on Gaza (2014)".
8	Nelson Mandela		504,588		July 18 was Google doodle .
9	Mario Götze		500,377		This German footballer with the stylish 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13. This was good enough to make the Top 10 this week.
10	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes		467,674		This American science fiction film, the sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, was released in Australia on July 9 and the United States on July 11, with largely positive reviews from critics. It is up from #13 last week.

If you've read this far, here are some additional notes of interest from the raw

It took 467,674 views to make the Top 10 this week, and 271,026 views to make the Top 25. That's rarefied air among our 4.5 million articles, of course. 193 articles received over 100,000 views this week, with Masters of Sex (#193) the last to do so. Gotham (TV series) (#640) was the last to break 50,000 views; Backstreet Boys (#2277) last to hit 25,000 (no jump in views caused this position, apparently the Backstreet Boys are steadily around the 2277th most important thing in the world these days); and the 2013 film G.I. Joe: Retaliation (#5000) was last to make the WP:5000, with 16,603 views.

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• After weeks in the top 5, Amazon.com has mysteriously disappeared from the top 25 and after comments last week about possible manipulation :) --
  C 22:25, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Well, its disappeared because I've removed it based on the prior discussions and additional investigation. (Its noted on the
  WP:TOP25 and under the discussion of entry #1). I'm glad you asked about it, so my response here gives another heads up. The views did do down a lot in the next 7 day period that will be covered in the next report, but I doubt the drop is because of our sleuthing.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 01:59, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Extra note, I mentioned
  Talk:2014_Israel–Gaza_conflict#Move_request_1. A number of other language wikis retain protective edge based names.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 17:56, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]