Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-01-27/Traffic report

Traffic report

Death and taxes

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Notable deaths continue to draw high notice on Wikipedia for another week. And though Glenn Frey's (#1) passing didn't generate nearly as much attention as David Bowie (#1 last week, #4 this week), it is yet another high profile death leading the chart. And even the pop culture entries are serious, with convict Steven Avery (#3), the subject of the documentary Making a Murderer (#7), riding high for yet another week, and survival epic The Revenant at #2. Isn't it time for another vacuous chart topper we can simply get a laugh from, like twerking?

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

For the week of January 17 to 23, 2016, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Glenn Frey	1,861,483	The founding member of American rock band the Eagles (#8) died on January 18. Though only about 15% of the whopping 11.7 million views David Bowie got on last week's chart, Frey was a highly successful artist on a much more human scale.
2	The Revenant (2015 film)	1,283,947	Alejandro González Iñárritu's Western survival epic starring Leonardo di Caprio (#23, pictured) continues to be popular.
3	Steven Avery	1,062,963	Avery is an American prisoner who is the subject of the popular new Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer which was released on December 18. (Episode 1 is available free on YouTube.) Avery served 18 years in prison, from 1985 to 2003, after being framed by the local police for a sexual assault he plainly did not commit. During his subsequent civil lawsuit for compensation, during a period of explosive depositions, he was charged with the murder of a local photographer, and later convicted. The documentary is compelling to watch, and it causing a fair amount of controversy, and thus bringing continuing attention to this article.
4	David Bowie	1,052,526	Contrary to popular belief, chameleons do not change colour to match their surroundings; they change colour to reflect their mood and their relationships with others. From the moment that David Robert Jones changed his name to David Bowie, he proved himself chameleonic in the true sense. His career was a kaleidoscope of reinventions; not just of music and appearance but of persona, profession and gender identity, each time anticipating the reactions of his audience, and usually forcing them to catch up with him. Fiercely intelligent and unafraid to show it, he also anticipated the effects of technological change, releasing Space Oddity five days before the launch of Apollo 11, and using the Internet to interact with fans years before the age of social media. His work as an actor also frequently ran leaps ahead of audiences, whether as an alien in Nicolas Roeg's initially ill-regarded but now lauded The Man Who Fell To Earth, or as Jareth the Goblin King in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, a critical bomb that would go on to become a fixture of children's video libraries, and earn him an entire new generation of fans. But his death earlier this month at the age of 69 may prove his greatest leap ahead yet; while ill with cancer for the preceding 18 months, he refused to publicise his condition and instead used his last time on Earth to compose Blackstar, one of his best reviewed albums in decades. Just as Bowie lived as art, he died as art, and the video for "Lazarus", the second single from Blackstar, which featured a suddenly aged Bowie blindfolded on a hospital bed, would become an epitaph to the world. Once again, we had to catch up with him, and the shock of his unexpected death shivered across his pan-generational fanbase, pushing Blackstar to #1 in the US album chart, astoundingly for the first time, and giving him not only the highest single-day tally of YouTube VEVO views ever recorded, but also, incidentally, the first ever eight-figure weekly Wikipedia viewcount, with over 11.7 million views on last week's chart.
5	Martin Luther King, Jr.	945,522	The American holiday dedicated to him fell on January 18 this year.
6	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	884,009	The reignition of the Star Wars remains in the Top 10 for another week.
7	Making a Murderer	801,724	See #3.
8	Eagles (band)	782,648	See #1. The Eagles of Death Metal were on the chart in November, and they got their name from this band, as a sarcastic reference. Do people in their 20s listen to the Eagles today? I have no idea. Though wildly popular in their time, their music is also clearly of their time, and did not pretend to be otherwise.
9	Deaths in 2016	684,964	The annual list of deaths is usually fairly consistent in weekly views, but is up again for second week.
10	Suicide Squad (film)	681,863	A superhero film slated for release on August 5 in the United States.

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Are the numbers for #7 (Making a Murderer) correct? If so, then it should be at the #5 spot. Kudos to the entire Signpost team on getting this issue out on Wednesday night. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:58, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank for the heads up Liz, I had the number from last week's chart and updated it. The #7 spot is correct.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 19:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an interesting NYTimes op-ed on how we treat the dead, arising out of the death of Glenn Frey (#1 in this chart). I was never particularly a fan of the music of Frey or the Eagles, but I didn't want my commentary in #1 and #8 to be derogatory. I was struck by how the death of Bowie created so much more attention, when my sense is that the Eagles were for a time far more commercially successful.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 19:20, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While the Eagles were undoubtedly more popular in the United States in terms of album sales, I'd argue that Bowie was more culturally influential, especially his impact on other artists. He also had a remarkably long career, there are a few times in his life where he could have said, "Enough, I'm retiring to my mansion" but he continued to make music up until the time of his death. As for Frey, he had some independent success in the 1980s and I imagined he toured a lot but he didn't have the consistent output of music that people cared about. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:03, 31 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What taxes?

Why is the title here "Death and taxs"? I don't see anything about taxes. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:16, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good question! - tucoxn\^talk 17:01, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is perhaps not a perfect fit, עוד מישהו and tucoxn, but I was referencing Death and taxes (idiom), the only certain things in the world.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 17:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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