One of the big outstanding questions for many years with Wikipedia was the usage data of images. We had reasonably good data for article pageviews, but not for the usage of images – we had to come up with proxies like the number of times a page containing that image was loaded. This was good enough as it went, but didn’t (for example) count the usage of any files hotlinked elsewhere.
In 2015, we finally got the media-pageviews database up and running, which means we now have a year’s worth of data to look at. In December, someone produced an aggregated dataset of the year to date, covering video & audio files.
This lists some 540,000 files, viewed an aggregated total of 2,869 million times over about 340 days – equivalent to 3,080 million over a year. This covers use on Wikipedia, on other Wikimedia projects, and hotlinked by the web at large. (Note that while we’re historically mostly concerned with Wikipedia pageviews, almost all of these videos will be hosted on Commons.) The top thirty:
14436640 |
President Obama on Death of Osama bin Laden.ogv |
|
10882048 |
Bombers of WW1.ogg |
10675610 |
20090124 WeeklyAddress.ogv |
10214121 |
Tanks of WWI.ogg |
9922971 |
Robert J Flaherty – 1922 – Nanook Of The North (Nanuk El Esquimal).ogv |
9272975 |
President Obama Makes a Statement on Iraq – 080714.ogg |
7889086 |
Eurofighter 9803.ogg |
7445910 |
SFP 186 – Flug ueber Berlin.ogv |
7127611 |
Ward Cunningham, Inventor of the Wiki.webm |
6870839 |
A11v 1092338.ogg |
6865024 |
Ich bin ein Berliner Speech (June 26, 1963) John Fitzgerald Kennedy trimmed.theora.ogv |
6759350 |
Editing Hoxne Hoard at the British Museum.ogv |
6248188 |
Dubai’s Rapid Growth.ogv |
6212227 |
Wikipedia Edit 2014.webm |
6131081 |
Newman Laugh-O-Gram (1921).webm |
6100278 |
Kennedy inauguration footage.ogg |
5951903 |
Hiroshima Aftermath 1946 USAF Film.ogg |
5902851 |
Wikimania – the Wikimentary.webm |
5692587 |
Salt March.ogg |
5679203 |
CITIZENFOUR (2014) trailer.webm |
5534983 |
Reagan Space Shuttle Challenger Speech.ogv |
5446316 |
Medical aspect, Hiroshima, Japan, 1946-03-23, 342-USAF-11034.ogv |
5434404 |
Physical damage, blast effect, Hiroshima, 1946-03-13 ~ 1946-04-08, 342-USAF-11071.ogv |
5232118 |
A Day with Thomas Edison (1922).webm |
5168431 |
1965-02-08 Showdown in Vietnam.ogv |
5090636 |
Moon transit of sun large.ogg |
4996850 |
President Kennedy speech on the space effort at Rice University, September 12, 1962.ogg |
4983430 |
Burj Dubai Evolution.ogv |
4981183 |
Message to Scientology.ogv |
(Full data is here; note that it’s a 17 MB TSV file)
It’s an interesting mix – and every one of the top 30 is a video, not an audio file. I’m not sure there’s a definite theme there – though “public domain history” does well – but it’d reward further investigation…
“Anglocentric public domain history”, perhaps?
This is a really interesting list. Wikipedia is currently asking the public “what does Wikipedia mean to you”.
As someone who once took a keen interest in how Wikipedia worked, this is very bittersweet. The community is amazing but i worry it burns people out, dealing with all the nonsense.
I imagine the Obama speech gets many of its views by linking for news websites; could the others have been used similarly, to illustrate news stories cheaply?
Andrew,
I’ve been trying to connect with you because of a photo posted on Wikipedia Commons under your name. (At least I hope it’s you.) It’s the one of the railway in Solon. I’ve used it on the cover of a “scientific novel” about climate change entitled TRAIN WRECK EARTH, published by Climate Activists here in North Carolina, US. Of course I’ve credited it as required, but we’d like to send you a book. If you don’t mind sharing your address, use my email address above. Thanks.