Wikipedia:2023 Top 50 Report

Out of all the things that drew viewer attention in 2023, we can see some duality. Humans are so advanced in technology that the top spot is a chatbot showing how far artificial intelligence has gone, but so difficult in morality that there are two armed conflicts, a convicted criminal, and another who is being prosecuted yet still wishing to resume his political career. The usual entries on sports and movies are here, but reminding that India's huge population is a great counter to Americentrism (the top 10 alone includes two entries on India's favorite sport and the country's two highest-grossing movies of the year, and on the rest of the list there are four more entries on their prolific film industry), as is the worldwide popularity of association football (the biggest league and three very famous footballers, one of whom is retired; American football only scored an entry because of a player's new girlfriend), and also telling that the year was all over the place in Hollywood, with success stories (the 6 highest-grossing movies of the year plus the top earner from 2022, the big winner of the Academy Awards, and an acclaimed sequel), displays of failure (the expensive final chapter of a once-mighty franchise that didn't make much impact), and a case in-between (the latest by a legendary director that did not make much money but was hailed as one of the year's best movies). HBO provides two highly contrasting shows: an adaptation of unquestionable success that even brought in its main actor to this list, and a limited show of questionable quality whose controversies were higher than its viewership numbers. To remain in pairs, there are the two countries that most shape the list, a billionaire and the website he has been mishandling, the American head of government and the British head of state, a blonde singer in a billion dollar tour and a blonde actress in a billion dollar movie, and the late father of one of the year's deceased along with the late mother of that British king. Finishing it off, the yearly death list and four high-profile departures.

Based on data from the Pageviews tool and prepared with commentary by:

Exclusions
Toolforge's list, along with not including redirect views (for instance, Russian invasion of Ukraine was renamed a few times) and somehow excluding The Idol, has many pages we eliminate for suspicious numbers or activities:
 * Cleopatra – Google Assistant suggests people to visit this page. Well, even if people go there out of their own volition, it's not a good enough reason for inclusion.
 * Pages with over 94% (Bible, Skathi (moon)) or under 10% (Ansel Adams and everything with "XXX" or "XXXX") of mobile views. This threshold excludes 2023 Indian Premier League, Indian Premier League, 2023 Asia Cup and Alia Bhatt even if the above list proves India's love for cricket and their own movies translates into buckets of views, but we need to be pragmatic.
 * Websites such as YouTube, Google and even Wikipedia (plus Omegle and Flipkart) tend to have a high number of automated views. Twitter was an exception because of all Musk did to it, but even if Threads could be an excuse to extend the same courtesy to Facebook and Instagram we won't do so.

← Last year's report