Wikipedia’s most popular article is also its biggest threat - 3 minutes read




The most popular topic on Wikipedia in 2023 could also be the website’s downfall: ChatGPT. English Wikipedia’s ChatGPT page garnered nearly 50 million total visitors so far this year as of Nov. 28, making it more popular than even Taylor Swift and Barbie, according to a report from Wikipedia’s nonprofit host, the Wikimedia Foundation.

The AI chatbot launched by San Francisco–based OpenAI in November 2022 has pushed generative AI into the mainstream. ChatGPT itself reached 100 million weekly active users this fall, and nearly all Fortune 500 companies use the platform, according to OpenAI.

But Wikipedia editors have also worried that AI-generated content by chatbots such as ChatGPT could erode its readers’ trust by creating biased or incorrect content. One prolific Wikipedia writer, Barkeep49—known for his article “Death of Wikipedia” on the dangers of AI to the site—told the New York Times this summer that ChatGPT could force Wikipedia to “drop off a cliff” in the next four or five years.

But people are still visiting Wikipedia for now. The English version of the site has received 84 billion views so far this year, according to Wikimedia spokesperson Anusha Alikhan. Here are some other hot topics on the site in 2023:

Death, cricket

Death is popular on Wikipedia. Many of the site’s more than 265,000 volunteer contributors compile a frequently updated list of “notable” deaths of journalists, politicians, entertainers, business executives, and athletes around the world.

Wikipedia’s annual death lists have made the site’s top five most popular articles since at least 2015. Its 2023 death list was the most visited page on the site this year after OpenAI, according to Wikimedia. It received about 130,000 views on average every day, and nearly 43 million visits in total.

“People visit Wikipedia to learn about the world around them and, though death is a difficult and complex subject, it’s a perennially popular topic on Wikipedia,” Alikhan told Quartz via email.

Meanwhile, the 2023 Cricket World Cup was the third most popular article this year on Wikipedia, with 38 million visits, bringing the topic of cricket to the annual list for the first time ever. The Wiki page for the Indian Premier League, India’s cricket league, followed closely behind, attracting 32 million views.

Barbenheimer and more

The “Barbenheimer” phenomenon—the simultaneous premieres of the films Barbie and Oppenheimer in July that drove millions to movie theaters—brought fanfare to Wikipedia, just as it did to the box office. The Wiki page Barbie (film) drew 18 million visits, making it No. 13 among the site’s most popular articles in 2023.

While Barbie outpaced Oppenheimer in revenue, Wikimedia notes, Wikipedia’s Oppenheimer (film) page saw about 57% more page views as people looked to learn about the history behind the film, which illustrates the life of the man who created the first atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The page for the film garnered more than 28.3 million pages, landing in the top five.

Also among the most popular Wikipedia articles of 2023 were pages about Taylor Swift (No. 12), Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo (No. 14), and Elon Musk (No. 19).

Wikipedia’s top English-language articles of 2023


Source: Quartz India

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