Bowled over

Wikipedia presents itself as a repository for the world, and while that is a noble sentiment, it is still true that, as far as viewers are concerned, the English language Wikipedia is very often the American Wikipedia, and never has that been more apparent than this week. The Super Bowl, a sporting event of negligible importance to most of the world, so uplifted the people of America that they flooded the Top 10 with six articles on the subject. With the addition of Chris Kyle, the subject of yet another trivial media storm over American values, and Bruce Jenner, an American reality TV star, it's clear that American obsessions are paramount this week.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of February 1 to 7, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Tom Brady	2,144,681	Prior to this week, the New England Patriots quarterback with the all-American name had led his team to the Super Bowl six times in the last thirteen years, and won thrice. This week adds a seventh Super Bowl and fourth win to his credit, after being named MVP for Super Bowl XLIX for scoring four passing touchdowns.
2	Chris Kyle	1,585,185	If there's one thing America loves, it's a good, old fashioned culture war. Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort American Sniper may not be wowing the critics (Rotten Tomatoes places it 13th among the films he has directed), nor drawing the crowds overseas (its international box office take is currently less than a third its domestic take) but it has played spectacularly well in America's conservative heartland, leading politicians on the left and right to, well, snipe at each other about what the film and its popularity say about America, its people, and in particular its subject, the now deceased sniper Chris Kyle. While interest seems to be winding down (viewing figures for this article peaked at 5.3 million two weeks ago) the topic still has enough oxygen to keep it near the top of this list.
3	List of Super Bowl champions	1,480,853	This list invariably pops up once a year, as Americans first scramble for facts to determine which team will win, then rush back to see if their dream/nightmare came true.
4	Super Bowl XLIX	1,396,896	I loathe American football, but even I would have been captivated by this game; with the teams tied at half time, the Seahawks built up a ten-point lead in the 3rd quarter, but the Patriots pulled into the lead in the final two minutes. Almost inevitably, this was the highest rated Super Bowl in history, with viewership peaking at 120 million, nearly two fifths of the entire US population.
5	Juan Cuadrado	974,691	The Colombian winger was signed to Chelsea on 2 February for £26.8 million ($40.8 million), but the negotiations went down to the wire, leading to a spike of interest the day before.
6	Katy Perry	935,844	Super Bowl viewership rose substantially during the singer's performance at the halftime show.
7	New England Patriots	930,455	The winners of this year's Super Bowl are happily ensconced in the top 25. The losers aren't, which is sad. They're the Seattle Seahawks. Very nice team apparently. Popular in Canada. Its fans set the Guinness World Record for loudest crowd noise. Twice. They've won nine division titles and three conference championships. They won last year's Super Bowl. The Patriots didn't. Seriously, they're a great team.
8	Fifty Shades of Grey	713,992	The onetime Twilight fanfic that introduced 100 million bored housewives to the questionable joys of BDSM shot back into the list thanks to the imminent release of the film adaptation.
9	Bruce Jenner	897,891	The former track and field Olympian and current honorary Kardashian got into the news this week.
10	Super Bowl	842,313	This is clearly becoming a trend.

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11 February 2015 (all comments)

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Saying, "the English language Wikipedia is very often the American Wikipedia" is misleading here. Although it is not (I think) what is meant) this wording could be interpreted by some Signpost readers to mean that there's an American bias in the encyclopedia article's text. Logically speaking the neutrality of the encyclopedia need not be connected in any way to the traffic report, even if the report shows high traffic among articles with particular national interests. (Easy to see if you consider a 100% perfectly neutral encyclopedia would still show national trends in the article traffic so long as some countries have different numbers of people online.) Our editors are doing a decent job at staying neutral nationally in their writing. There *is* American bias in the encyclopedia (in topics, in depth of coverage, and even in language and interpretation) but I cannot get worked up over the first two and consider them non-issues. That kind of bias will always be proportional to the national ratios of our readership so long as we keep the encyclopedia open. (People write and read about what interests them.) The latter two are of much more concern and overall we do a decent if imperfect job at staying neutral with them so I really wouldn't want anybody to falsely believe we outright fail there. Jason Quinn (talk) 12:04, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how the original text was misleading, it is an opinion, but not an unknown or radical one. He could have gone as far to say its the American Male wikipedia.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 13:48, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Jason Quinn: You do notice that Milowent says "as far as viewers are concerned," right? He's not talking about the editors or coverage, just what gets the most views! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:17, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not too "American" if we use "quaterback" as a noun. <g>. Collect (talk) 17:03, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, how did it take ten days for the Super Bowl article to be updated to reflect that this year's was the most-watched in TV history? I meant to do it myself and got really busy, finally remembering it when I saw this. And since I don't know where they got those really large numbers for List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States, someone needs to go fix that one too. I have it formatted but don't know what number to put there.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here is this week's top-20 by edits and editors. This week different IP address editors are counted as different editors instead of the same one.

article	edits	editors	weighted_rank
TransAsia Airways Flight 235	469	116	37.85
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water	319	119	35.62
Deaths in 2015	346	103	35.28
Bob Simon	215	107	32.61
Brian Williams	350	56	31.78
2015 Chapel Hill shooting	317	60	31.64
Better Call Saul	182	90	30.7
Kayla Mueller	233	68	30.63
Jupiter Ascending	174	84	30.08
57th Annual Grammy Awards	207	60	29.3
Muath al-Kasasbeh	186	53	28.06
Kingsman: The Secret Service	140	63	27.39
Fifty Shades of Grey (film)	188	44	27.15
Beck	120	70	27.04
Shamitabh	134	60	26.91
When Will You Marry?	122	56	26.06
Dean Smith	121	56	26.02
2015 Africa Cup of Nations	136	49	26
RadioShack	212	31	25.89
2015 Cricket World Cup	157	38	25.47

If you want to see this regularly, please support my bot request to automate its production. Thank you. EllenCT (talk) 01:49, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is the American Wikipedia. The Hindi-language WIkipedia is an Indian Wikipedia. The Hebrew-language Wikipedia is an Israeli Wikipedia. If you're not a white male American, take pride in bringing something unique to Wikipedia; we need you, too. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:00, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Chris troutman: It is not only a question of adding more (less popular) content. It is also a question of having to fight much harder to keep this content, at least from my anecdotal observation. But don’t take my word for it, check these 2014 Signpost comments from those who try to save content daily. Ottawahitech (talk) 02:56, 20 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Then of course there is also the matter of how the subjects are portrayed. Ottawahitech (talk) 21:43, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]