Strange highs and strange lows

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, YttriumShrew, Benmite, SSSB, and a helpful IP.

Most viewed articles

Aaja jariwale nile aasman ke tale, Jai ho! (April 17 to 23)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	K.G.F: Chapter 2	3,443,321	India's latest box-office hit remains at the top spot. It follows the leader of an Indian crime syndicate operating out of the Kolar Gold Fields fighting rivals for supremacy as well as the Indian government. It has received mixed reviews but did very well at the box office and became the highest-grossing Kannada film of all time. It is also quickly ascending #5, currently positioned at lucky number 7. Unsurprisingly, a sequel is in development.
2	Amber Heard	2,964,855	Depp is currently suing Heard over an op-ed she wrote in the Washington Post in which she detailed her experience with the culture around victims of abuse. In the op-ed, Heard alleged Depp had been abusive throughout their relationship; Depp then sued Heard, alleging he was actually the victim of abuse. Given Heard's accusations were ruled to be "substantially true" in a previous libel case, I don't particularly fancy his chances. Whatever happens, it's in the news (and the Report), and will probably continue to be until the verdict comes out.
3	Johnny Depp	2,824,692
4	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	1,336,881	Russia has launched a slow offensive through eastern Ukraine. The situation in Mariupol continues to worsen. The war continues to be awful.
5	List of highest-grossing Indian films	1,296,418	With both #1 and RRR taking runs at the record books, it's hardly surprising this list is here.
6	The Batman (film)	1,167,044	HBO Max released the biggest hit of 2022 so far, with a box office of $758 million worldwide. It has the Riddler and lasts three hours, but thankfully not by taking a page from Batman: Arkham and having Batman collect question mark-shaped trophies around Gotham.
7	Cristiano Ronaldo	1,058,195	An adequate number, there. One of football's biggest names became a father again, and for the second time of twins – but in a sad note one died in childbirth. Still he was back on the pitch on Saturday and scored his 100th Premier League goal, leading even the opposing team's supporters to applaud CR7.
8	Elon Musk	979,969	His bid for Twitter is still in the news. Also in the news over leaked text messages where he argues with Bill Gates who reportedly holds a large short position against Tesla stock.
9	John Wayne Gacy	896,843	This prolific serial murderer was the original killer clown, murdering at least 33 people in Chicago in the 1970s. Why is such a horrific individual who was executed 28 years ago on the list, you say? Why, because of Netflix of course! Or, more specifically, Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes. Incidentally, this photo is a crop of him with Rosalynn Carter.
10	Deaths in 2022	852,550	There is one thing that I would die for It's when you say: "My life is in your hands"

You hit me once, I hit you back, you gave a kick, I gave a slap (April 24 to 30)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Amber Heard	3,502,940	The world continues to pay attention to the big lawsuit. I think it's a shame this has turned into a courtroom drama instead of what it should be; a judicial process to determine if serious allegations of domestic abuse were true.
2	Elon Musk	3,372,198	After two weeks of incessant speculation, the world's richest man bought Twitter this week for $54.20 a share (yes, he managed to sneak a meme into even this), approximately $40 billion. A lot of people are worried that he will axe Twitter's moderation policies while doing little to counter government censorship. The announcement spawned an exodus of users, caused Tesla stock to drop, and has been all over the news. One thing is for certain; I will now refer to him as ******. (Or maybe I'll stop being petty and drop it.) And his placement splitting the feuding couple is adequate, given he dated #1 for a while.
3	Johnny Depp	2,934,834	To be fair, this lawsuit was arguably more about Depp trying to discredit Heard and gain public support than any interest in judicial settlement.
4	K.G.F: Chapter 2	2,101,961	This Kannada production is now fourth on (both this list and) #5, quickly coming for RRR's spot at number three, and is positioning itself to be the highest-grossing Indian film of the year. To put into perspective why this is such a big deal, consider this: before the K.G.F series, the biggest Kannada movie had made just $9.8 million in 2017, a measly number by Indian standards. Then came K.G.F: Chapter 1 in 2018 with a cumulative total of $33 million that was enough to set records for Kannada cinema (but not to break into #5). Its sequel has now quadrupled that achievement, entering the so-called 1000 Crore Club for Indian movies this week, minting big bucks at the box office with $130 million in and counting. For a relatively niche film industry, that is a monstrous success by any measure.
5	List of highest-grossing Indian films	1,311,975
6	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	1,142,375	The war continues to be awful. Some explosions in Transnistria led to worries about it being drawn in.
7	2022 NFL draft	1,139,811	Gridiron held its latest recruitment of college players. The top pick was Travon Walker, taken by the Jacksonville Jaguars.
8	John Wayne Gacy	924,271	This serial killer is featured in the Netflix documentary Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes, following Ted Bundy three years ago.
9	Twitter	874,183	Tweet-sized write-up: #2 purchased the social network where he ranks 7th in the most followed accounts. And a guy who could be right below on that list if he didn't get himself banned said Musk's involvement made him give up on any attempts at returning, so not everything is bad!
10	Deaths in 2022	852,296	Hello darkness, my old friend I've come to talk with you again...

Faces come out of the rain, when you're Strange (May 1 to 7)

Rank	Article	Views	About
1	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness	3,442,958	The first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of the year brings back Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, trying to protect multiversal traveler America Chavez. Director Sam Raimi still has the sensibilities that resulted in the first three Spider-Man movies, and shows his horror movie credentials, as the film has many jump scares, cruel deaths, and makes a terrifying villain out of someone who used be on the side of the heroes. Reviews were positive and Multiverse of Madness beat the Distinguished Competition for the biggest opening of the year with $450 million worldwide.
2	Amber Heard	2,513,708	Ah, Depp v. Heard. My favourite thing to write about. Amber Heard took the stand this week in the defamation trial that has occupied a significant part of the news and the internet since it began on April 11.
3	Roe v. Wade	2,373,194	Ruh-Roe! In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected a pregnant woman's right to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, effectively legalising abortion. However, now there are hopes/fears (depending on position on abortions) that the world's most famous court ruling might be overturned following a leak of the first draft of a majority opinion. Many states either have laws that uphold the legality of abortion, or have trigger laws that would outlaw abortion in the event of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision being overturned.
4	Johnny Depp	1,981,410	It's unusual to see two legal cases in the top 5, but 2022's weird. Depp's lawsuit focusses on the idea that Amber Heard's 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post about the culture around victims of sexual abuse caused irreparable damage to his career, and in particular his firing from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. This seems a bit dubious because Heard's article wasn't really even about the allegations (although the claim was undeniably part of the story), Depp's firing might not have been about the allegations at all, and even if it was, they were ruled to be substantially true in a previous case in 2020. To me it seems pretty hard to argue that Johnny Depp is in the right here, but then again, I'm not the internet.
5	Naomi Judd	1,704,981	A legendary country singer, mother of both actress Ashley Judd and Naomi's partner in the duo The Judds, Wynonna. The Judds split in 1991 after Naomi was diagnosed with hepatitis C, with reunions on occasion, including a Super Bowl halftime show, a 2011 tour and most recently a performance at the 2022 CMT Music Awards. Naomi, who also had a presence as host and judge in television, had long struggled with mental illness and decided to end her life on April 30, at the age of 76, the day before The Judds would be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which also forced the cancellation of a farewell tour The Judds would perform in the second semester.
6	K.G.F: Chapter 2	1,396,418	The most expensive and most lucrative Kannada film ever is now the third-highest-grossing Indian film of all time. We already detailed its success last week, so there doesn't seem like much point rehashing it, but FWIW it looks like the K.G.F franchise will continue with a third chapter.
7	Elon Musk	1,184,411	Most of this week's Elon Musk news was about how he plans to finance his acquisition of Twitter. You see, Musk doesn't actually have $44 billion because almost all of his wealth comes from his Tesla stock, which he can't sell because then he'd have to pay taxes on it. He's therefore only paying some of the money out of his own pocket. The rest will come from a loan he's taken out from some banks using Twitter and his own Tesla stock as collateral, and he's also got some money from other billionaires. There have been reports he may be able to lower the price he pays for the company in later negotiations, but the plan as it is now will leave Twitter with a substantial amount of debt going forward, which will likely pose significant challenges to the platform.
8	Cinco de Mayo	1,077,194	The year's most self-explanatory entry returns again. One can only hope this is from people finding out where it comes from as opposed to the date on which it occurs.
9	List of highest-grossing Indian films	1,062,340	Both third and fourth are green on this list, which isn't something you see often.
10	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	1,034,627	Ten weeks in, and Russia's invasion is still awful. The news this week was dominated by the evacuation of civilians from the Azovstal steel plant and U.S. intelligence claims about them helping Ukraine to sink the Moskva and kill Russian generals.

Can I Play with Madness? (May 8 to 14)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness	2523503	The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film, from the original Spider-Man trilogy's director Sam Raimi, continues to top the box office despite a steep 67% drop in profits, which I'd attribute to it polarizing audiences due to containing much less MCU shenanigans and much more of Raimi's signature comically absurd body horror. (Though personally, I thought the film was excellent and a breath of fresh air for the increasingly samey and fan service-obsessed franchise.)
2	Eurovision Song Contest 2022	1207777	Ukraine won the annual song contest this year, represented by Kalush Orchestra with the song "Stefania", which received over 200 points from the 25 country votes, and over 400 points from the audience vote. The UK improved dramatically from last year, going from receiving 0 points to coming second place (thanks to a space man), receiving over 300 points. Although the show's hosts and the viewers likely expected Ukraine would win as a result of #4, it was nice to see Ukrainians finally enjoy something and be happy after months of war. Our #7 also appeared on the show.
3	K.G.F: Chapter 2	1058176	India continues to bring in the crore to this Sandalwood epic set in the Kolar Gold Fields .
4	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	1023189	Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to be awful, and could now cause a worldwide food shortage due to its blockade of the port at Odessa. On the bright side, Ukraine won #2 by a landslide, whereas Russia were excluded from attending the annual song contest completely because of the invasion.
5	Johnny Depp	1013880	Depp v. Heard is still ~~polluting~~ making headlines as the he-said-she-said legal drama continues.
6	Amber Heard	983264
7	Mika (singer)	912682	The singer who wanted to be like Grace Kelly then tried a little Freddie was one of the hosts of #2, and also performed a medley of his hits.
8	Deaths in 2022	888058	And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love you make...
9	List of highest-grossing Indian films	875766	#3 has now surpassed RRR for third place, meaning the Sandalwood epic is only behind the Tollywood\Kollywood collaboration Baahubali 2: The Conclusion and Bollywood's Dangal.
10	2022 Philippine presidential election	840705	Voters in the Philippines went to the polls this week to (among other things) elect their president for the next six years, and elected Bongbong Marcos, whose central promise was to return the country to the days of his father's dictatorship. It's an... odd choice, especially given his opponent seems to be actually competent, but I guess that's what happens when disinformation replaces reason.

There'll be times when my crimes will seem almost unforgivable (May 15 to 21)

Rank	Article	Views	Notes/about
1	Amber Heard	1,540,466	After dropping out last week, Johnny Depp's depressingly successful attempt to publicly discredit Amber Heard has returned to the top spot.
2	Johnny Depp	1,236,120
3	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness	1,166,564	Sam Raimi's return to superheroes was a magnet for fan theories, and even after release the story of sorcerer Stephen Strange trying to stop a mom who lost her kids from killing a kid who lost her moms is still bringing attention (not to mention over $800 million worldwide!).
4	2022 Buffalo shooting	1,004,206	Another mass shooting in America. This time, a white supremacist domestic terrorist attack which killed 10 people, on May 14. As usual, the shooting has raised the debate surrounding gun laws, and as usual, nothing will change.
5	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	987,902	The defenders of the Azovstal iron and steel works surrendered to Russia this week after over two months trapped inside it; conditions inside the steelworks were horrific. It's not known what will happen to them. In other news, Russia's blockade will likely cause global food shortages, as Ukraine produces about 9% of the world's wheat, which it can't export anymore. Great. Another crisis.
6	2021 Southeast Asian Games	876,822	Southeast Asia's regional version of the Olympics took place over the last week and a half, after being postponed a few months for... some reason. Hosts Vietnam won the most medals in front of the crowds in Hanoi.
7	Deaths in 2022	853,104	Your talk'll be somethin' that shouldn't be said out loud Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now
8	Andrew Symonds	819,768	Australia mourned this retired cricketer who died at just 46 in a car crash.
9	Eurovision Song Contest 2022	753,443	To compensate for #5, Ukraine won here. Wonder if Kalush Orchestra will also follow last year's winner Måneskin in following the competition with a global hit.
10	Elon Musk	752,385	Elon Musk's sort-of-aborted Twitter acquisition seems to be the only reason he's on here (unless he's done some other "newsworthy" things I don't know about).

Exclusions

These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

Most edited articles

This month, the Traffic Report is trying out a new section for the most-edited articles. Commentary provided for these pages will include potential reasons for why certain pages are "hotter" for editors. The Signpost hopes that this will unveil interesting editing patterns inside Wikipedia. – E

Articles in this column are sourced from this database report; the period covered is April 8 – May 8 2022.

Rank	Article	Edits	Notes/about
1	Deaths in 2022	1869	The list that never leaves the Top 25 Report also apparently gets enough edits that it's topped this list. I wonder if we'll have to start doing songs about death here too...
2	2022 World Snooker Championship	1280	Ronnie O'Sullivan became champion for a record equalling seventh time, beating Judd Trump in the final. The event took place from April 16 to May 2, and has a dispropotional large number of edits (when compared to its views). If I had to guess, I'd say the live updating of scores was to blame?
3	K.G.F: Chapter 2	1178	In April 2022, this Kannada film was released, and became the fourth-highest grossing Indian film (now third), as you will know if you've read the writeups about it above.
4	2022 NBA playoffs	986	The postseason for basketball's finest started with a bang. And now it seems it might boil down to "six finals in eight years" vs. "17 titles", talk about an anti-climax.
5	2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	984	While edit numbers for this article aren't quite what they were two months ago, editors are still documenting the largest war in Europe since 1945.
6	List of equipment of the Ukrainian Ground Forces	979	As the war continues, the equipment Ukraine has access to changes rapidly, both from Western countries supplying them with arms, and from Russia destroying/capturing them.
7	List of Chinese football transfers winter 2022	918	User:Qby is making sure to keep updated the changes to the Chinese Super League and China League One rosters.
8	2022 NFL Draft	858	262 gridiron players were chosen here, no wonder it had so many edits.
9	Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness	780	The latest instalment of the MCU was released near the end of this counting period, and became the highest-grossing film of 2022 so far. The amount of available information about the film massively increased during that time, and (judging by the article length) about half of it was added to the page.
10	Libs of TikTok	751	The reveal of the responsible for this anti-liberal TikTok led to quite the edit war.
11	Russian cruiser Moskva	738	Russia's highest profile loss, this cruiser was destroyed 14 April, over half of the pages entire edit history falling in the last 5 weeks, and 6⁄7 coming in this year (at time of writting).
12	Neoplatonism	699	Unlike most of the other entries on this list, this isn't an article with a lot of recent information. It's just an article a particular editor is working on.
13	Bigg Boss (Malayalam season 4)	682	The Malayalam version of Big Brother has been running since 27 March 2022, including a 24/7 live stream on Disney+ Hotstar.
14	2022 French presidential election	682	The world (well, most of it) breathed a sigh of relief after centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Macron's victory managed to be both emphatic and hollow; he won by a bigger margin than most predicted, but still received 2 million fewer votes than he did last time. Depending on who you ask, this is either a win, a near miss, or somewhere in between.
15	Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore	677	The return of the Wizarding World aka Warner Bros. doing Harry Potter movies after finishing the main series. Less eventful than The Crimes of Grindelwald, but with less "What is J.K. Rowling doing?", so an improvement. Underwhelming box office might finish what were supposed to be 5 movies in this third, but at least it's a movie with a clear ending rather than an open one that requires a sequel.
16	2022 Badminton Asia Championships	643	Along with being one of the favorite sports of our Indian friends (Olympic medalist P. V. Sindhu even went well here too), this continental tournament was held in the Philippines, who also have a significant contingent who manifest every once in a while.
17	2022 Pacific typhoon season	620	A season of worry, specially to our many Philippine readers. And the hurricane article will probably get even more edits, we have some very dedicated editors on that.
18	List of songs recorded by Sabina Yasmin	614	One user is documenting the ouvre of this Bengali singer. The article lead says her output is in the thousands, so it's a lot of work!
19	Candidates of the 2022 Australian federal election	601	1,624 candidates nominated for Australia's election, which was held four days ago as I write this. Editors generally added candidates' names as they nominated, which caused this article to get edited a lot.
20	2022 Mutua Madrid Open – Women's singles	600	And you thought Wikipedia only cared about Grand Slams. The Tunisian Ons Jabeur took this one.
21	2022 in film	593	The year's movies keep on coming, with many good ones. Most of the edits might be to update the table of the highest-grossing.
22	Lebanese Shia Muslims	581	This page has seen mass editing by Savipolo, dating back to the end of last year.
23	1987 in the United States	578	1987? What the Fuck Is Going On? Well, one user decided to update on the births of that year.
24	List of highest-grossing Kannada films	571	After all, #3's box office numbers were being frequently updated. And adequately, its predecessor as the biggest overall was K.G.F: Chapter 1.
25	Beast (2022 Indian film)	542	Round out the list is another recent Indian action film release, although this one didn't do nearly as well as #3.