Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-07-04/Traffic report

Goalposts; Oy vexit

Your Traffic Reports for the weeks of June 12-18 and June 19-25, 2016.

Goalposts (June 12-18, 2016): It is football time in Europe, with UEFA Euro 2016 rising to #1 this week, and also in the New World, with Copa América Centenario (#6) being hosted in the United States. The killing of Christina Grimmie continued near the top of the chart for another week, this time at #2, and the theme of death continued with the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (#6) (though the weapon used was not an AR-15 (#8)), as well as Jo Cox (#7). Well outside the Top 10, the new movie Finding Dory is a blockbuster in movie theatres, but only #19 on our chart, because young kids don't visit Wikipedia about movies as much as adults do. Their older siblings do, however, putting The Conjuring 2 at #3, and two other topics related to the film in the WP:TOP25 this week.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.

For the week of June 12 to 19, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	UEFA Euro 2016		2,332,785		Up from #4 last week, with almost 900,000 more views. For the latest go-round, held in France, the European international football tournament has been expanded from 16 to 24 teams, which means that most of the British Isles (bar Scotland) are competing together for the first time in decades. Of course, England's fans marked the occasion with a bit of hooliganism, as if the "Brexit" referendum weren't enough of a snub to Europe.
2	Christina Grimmie		2,264,084		Up 700,000 views from last week. Some things are difficult to talk about. It is a sad fact of American life that, just as people's lives can rise on a dime, so too can they end. That a minor singing celebrity who had built her entire career on her relationship with her fans could be brought down by a single, random member of her fandom who happened to have a gun is both tragic and infuriating. That it happened in Orlando, Florida, now feels like a strange prelude to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.
3	The Conjuring 2		1,474,929		Up from #7 last week with twice as many views. Fans of the supernatural may take some issue with the veracity of demonologist ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren (#13), but there's no denying that The Conjuring (#22), the first film based on their case files, was a highly effective (and highly successful) spookfest. The sequel, which reunites stars Vera Farmiga (pictured) and Patrick Wilson, has proven just as popular, with a solid 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and $91 million worldwide grossed in just three days—and $186 million through June 19.
4	Karl Landsteiner		1,310,447		A Google Doodle celebrated the 148th birthday of the biologist and physician who discovered the ABO blood group system in 1901. For this discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930.
5	2016 Orlando nightclub shooting		1,216,345		On June 12, 29-year-old Omar Mateen went to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed 49 people. It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history. It seems pretty apparent these mass killings will continue occur unless the United States takes strong action of some sort, but no unified solution seems possible in the current political climate.
6	Copa América Centenario		1,175,857		The exhibition tournament between all ten members of CONMEBOL (the South American football federation) and six members of CONCACAF (the North American football federation) to celebrate 100 years of the South American international cup, the Copa America, kicked off on June 3.
7	Jo Cox		1,065,668		Cox was a British Labour Party politician, a rising star in British politics, and Member of Parliament (MP). On June 16, Cox was shot and stabbed to death in Birstall by a 52-year-old man who self-identified as a British nationalist. So much hate.
8	AR-15		921,319		Apparently this was not the weapon used in the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (#5), though it was initially reported to be. That weapon was actually a SIG Sauer MCX. The use of AR-15s in mass shootings used to have a section at AR-15, but at the moment it appears to have been removed—is its effectiveness in mass shootings not notable?[1].
9	O. J. Simpson		909,514		At first I assumed that American Crime Story, which put Simpson on this chart a few months ago, had restarted. Apparently not. Instead it was the network debut of O.J.: Made in America, a five part miniseries. It seems O.J. Simpson stories could soon rival the status World War II movies once had as a television time-filler.
10	Game of Thrones (season 6)		861,883		The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. With only a few episodes left in this season, we can expect it stay up on the chart.

Oy vexit* (June 19-25, 2016): I would get this week. I have been told many times that I should be more politically impartial. Well if you want that from me this week, tough. I am a British citizen and a Londoner, and as such have borne witness to the venomous campaign that the EU referendum has created. I voted to remain, and I still believe that was the right choice. But the British people saw differently, and now we must live with the consequences. Already the politicians, like Boris Johnson, who spearheaded this vile spectacle and fed off the fumes, are now backtracking much of the grandiose promises and claims that they made, so it will be interesting to see if any of the hate they dredged up gets thrown back on them.

For the full top-25 lists (and our archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED. For the most popular articles that ORES models predict are low quality, see WP:POPULARLOWQUALITY.

For the week of June 19 to 26, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the TopViews, were:

(*"Oy vey" is a Yiddish expression of dismay and Milo apologizes in advance to anyone who wants to rightfully kvetch at his adding this title to Serendipodous's fine commentary.)

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	UEFA Euro 2016		3,406,686		Holding steady for a second week, with a jump of 700,000 views. This has been a wild week, with all the laws of the sport seemingly upended. Tiny Wales beat giant Russia 3-0, while Ireland beat former World Cup winners Italy. Iceland, a country with a population smaller than Coventry, England, beat Austria 2-1, while Hungary held imploding former giants Portugal to a 3-3 draw, and Croatia beat cup holders Spain.
2	Anton Yelchin		1,997,309		As if the list of tragic deaths this year wasn't long enough, 2016 had to take yet another talent before his time. Perhaps best known for playing Pavel Chekov in the revamped Star Trek film series, Anton Yelchin was a fixture in the independent film scene before a car accident ended what stood to be a stellar career.
3	European Union		1,974,203		The world's largest trading bloc got hit with an axe this week when the UK decided to leave in a referendum. No one knows where we go from here; perhaps the EU will be able to contain the damage, or it may lead to ever more referendums, and the Union's ultimate disintegration. Some may cheer this, Vladimir Putin in particular. But the potential undermining of the post-World War II global order has put many on edge.
4	LeBron James		1,764,059		LeBron, as everyone calls him, led the Cleveland Cavaliers to their first ever NBA championship on June 20, scoring 27 of his team's 93 points and securing the MVP.
5	United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union		1,193,830		To be clear, this hasn't actually happened yet; the Referendum was only advisory and Parliament could still overturn it, though that is admittedly unlikely. Even if it does pass, however, it is unlikely to accomplish what those who voted for it wanted: immigrants are still likely to come in, and most of the EU's rules will still apply, since the UK wants to trade with Europe. But the shockwave its mere suggestion has sent through the markets has had many Brexiteers rethinking their vote.
6	Game of Thrones (season 6)		1,038,832		Numbers are up by over 100,000 this week, and it's not hard to see why. Silly title aside, this week's episode, The Battle of the Bastards, was a full-on Braveheart-style mediaeval war epic with cinematic production values.
7	Finding Dory		970,801		When it was released in 2003, Finding Nemo quickly became Pixar's most financially successful film up to that time, launching the cinemagoing careers of millions of children. 13 years later, most of those kids are in college, and they are rushing back to relive their childhoods with this long-awaited sequel which, with the help of a new generation of children, will likely soon be Pixar's most financially successful film ever.
8	United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016		906,451		What's fascinating about that map is how little overlap it reveals: Scotland voted to stay; England and Wales (outside the London commuter belt) voted to leave. Catholic Northern Ireland voted to stay; Protestant Northern Ireland voted to leave. This referendum wasn't about politics; it was about identity. It was about who you were, where you were and which society you belonged to. Which is why I don't think the wounds will easily heal.
9	Money in the Bank (2016)		855,492		WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held at the T-Mobile Arena (pictured) on 19 June.
10	The Conjuring 2		833,756		Fans of the supernatural may take some issue with the veracity of demonologist ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but there's no denying that The Conjuring, the first film based on their case files, was a highly effective (and highly successful) spookfest. The sequel, which reunites stars Vera Farmiga (pictured) and Patrick Wilson, has proven just as popular, with a solid 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and $242 million grossed worldwide through June 25.