Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of most-viewed online videos in the first 24 hours (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. ✗ plicit  12:36, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

List of most-viewed online videos in the first 24 hours
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This article may very well be unverifiable, especially the "Top videos" (videos that are not film trailers or music videos) section.

The "Top videos" section has very imprecise-looking figures that look like estimates, such as 400.0, 200.0 and 100.0. It also has notes that say:

"Reached 158 million views in three hours"

"Reached 100 million views within the first hour"

"Reached 100 million views within the first four hours"

which means they probably got more views in the first 24 hours than what is listed, and that this is not an accurate ordered list, yet are still listed as number 4, number 6 and number 7 respectively. There's also no explanation of where the sources got those figures from; they could be making them up!

There's also the problem that there are too many websites to collect view data from. One would have to combine views from not only YouTube, but literally every other website on the entire internet, which makes this article impossible to verify.

There might also be an apples-to-oranges situation going on here. A "view" on YouTube might not be equatable to a "view" on Instagram, for example. The "Top videos" section has an entry from Instagram and an entry from YouTube, but on YouTube you would have to go to the video's own unique page to view it, while on Instagram, you might only need to scroll down through a feed with many other posts, and thus inadvertently view the video in question. If this is true, the view counts cannot be compared in this way.

If action is to be taken on this article, I would suggest removing the "Top videos" section and keeping the "Top music videos" and "Top trailers" sections. 123957a (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Internet and Lists. 123957a (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2023 (UTC)


 * with alternative action: unmerge trailers and change to YouTube videos in 24 hours. I generally agree with the sentiment, but have an alternative proposal: split into two articles: 1. List of most-viewed YouTube videos in the first 24 hours and 2. List of most viewed trailers in the first 24 hours. Trailers were previously a separate article that was merged in, and "total views in the first 24 hours" is a commonly reported metric for trailers. On the other hand, a "top music videos" article will suffer from the same apple-to-oranges problem mentioned. Considering the music videos are all on YouTube, I believe it makes sense to have top YouTube videos in 24 hours rather than top Music videos. (This also seems reasonable considering that there is a List of most-viewed YouTube videos article but no "most viewed online videos article".) Yannn11 18:02, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Splitting would require overturning the AFD that caused them to get merged in the first place. Primefac (talk) 18:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Can that merge be overturned in this discussion? I don't have a strong opinion on the trailers. Having one page for something like "most viewed music videos and trailers in 24 hours" seems awkward, however. Yannn11 18:59, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 12:09, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment This appears to be a proposal to remove the "Top videos" section and leave the rest of the article alone. I am not sure why this is an AfD discussion. In any case, I support the removal of that section, in addition to a possible rename. InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I tried to keep other possibilities open as well. 123957a (talk) 23:13, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm more on the delete side. Social media platforms count a "view" in differing ways, so that no one view is equal to another. Making apples to oranges comparisons is a violation of WP:SYNTH. SWinxy (talk) 19:54, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Delete Purely WP:SYNTH. No objection to creating new articles for the more specific sections (music videos and trailers that have verifiable coverage), but trying to compare views across multiple platforms is impractical and usually WP:OR. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 13:42, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete due to WP:SYNTH problems that I do not think can be overcome. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:29, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete. I have been mulling this eventual AFD pretty much since I started keeping an eye on the page and enacting edit requests after it was protected. While I might not go so far as to say there are SYNTH issues, there are definitely WP:V issues - every value in each of the tables is reliant on the parent company releasing the information, whether that be a Chinese television broadcaster or a video sharing platform. YouTube's own view-counter is notoriously unreliable (we had to practically re-write the entire music video section at one point because YT said "oh by the way our counts are way off, here are the 'fixed' values"). There are also (as mentioned) the multi-platform-view issue, though I am less concerned about that since that metric seems to be used only for trailers and not music vidoes or the generic videos. I do suppose the SYNTH part of the issue is that we rely on secondary sources to notice these videos: it's the quintessential "if a tree falls in the forest" issue - if no one notices a video gets views, how do we record it? For music videos this is less of an issue, but as I noticed with the generic videos section some of the highest values were added years after the event happened. In other words, do we know what we don't know? Primefac (talk) 09:33, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete. I am changing to delete based on the points raised regarding WP:V and WP:SYNTH. To expand on Primefac's point regarding "do we know what we don't know?", I would contend that even a "list of most-viewed YouTube videos in the first 24 hours" would have the same limitation. For example, YouTube hides view counts on Google Doodle YouTube videos, and the Google homepage receives an estimated 40 billion visits per day. Yannn11 14:41, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete: Due to WP:V concerns, based on Pricefac's comment. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:33, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.