Wikipedia is seen by many as one of the front pages of the internet and a major contributor and documenter of human knowledge. Which is what makes the annual rankings of the most popular pages on the user-generated, collaborative encyclopedia so interesting.
On Tuesday, the Wikimedia Foundation, which oversees the website, published its list of the most-trafficked pages so far this year (it’ll update the list with final numbers early into 2024). Topping the list: ChatGPT, the large language model-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI.
“We all know that a lot of people were interested in that new technology,” says Anusha Alikhan, chief communications officer at the Wikimedia Foundation. “But now we know from Wikipedia data just how interested they really were.” In all, the Wikipedia page for ChatGPT gained 49.5 million of the 76 billion views across English-language Wikipedia between January 1 and November 28. The single-subject page attained nearly 7 million more views than the next most popular page, outlining notable deaths in 2023.
“We know when people are looking to understand the world around them that they turn to Wikipedia, and this is a prime example,” says Alikhan. “It’s really clear that people wanted to better understand the history and the context behind ChatGPT as they experimented with using it.”
However, Wikipedia’s makeup is constantly changing, as is evidenced by some of the others that make the site’s top 25 list. Sixteen percent of the list is dominated by pages relating to cricket, the sport that is particularly popular in India and other parts of the world. The Wikipedia page covering the 2023 Cricket World Cup ranked third in the most-viewed list, while the Indian Premier League, the cricketing equivalent of Major League Baseball, was fourth. Both had a combined 70 million views.
That share of the top English-language Wikipedia articles is unprecedented, says Alikhan. “Last year, the highest-ranked cricket article was ranked in, like, the 60s. It was also interesting that cricket was the largest component of sort of a strong contingent of articles related to India.” She points out that two Bollywood movies were on the top 10 list. “And both of those attracted more attention than Barbie in English,” she says.
That popularity doesn’t just stop at who is reading the pages, but who’s contributing to them. India is rising, says Alikhan. “What we’re seeing is that it really is a home to this vibrant and growing community of both readers as well as editors who edit Wikipedia,” she says. “The total number of editors to Wikipedia puts them only behind the United States and the United Kingdom.”
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