According to statistics released on Tuesday, india, the 2023 ICC Men's cricket world cup, and the shahrukh khan films 'Jawan' and 'Pathan' are among this year's most read and popular pages on the world's biggest encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
According to Wikimedia Foundation data, english Wikipedia received over 84 billion views this year alone, with the top five articles of the year being ChatGPT with 49,490,406 pageviews, Deaths in 2023 (42,666,860), the 2023 cricket world cup in third place (38,171,653), the indian Premier League in fourth place (32,012,810), and the film Oppenheimer (28,348,248).
The foundation released the top 25 most popular pages on Wikipedia in 2023, and themes relating to india were included, including the country's top favourites cricket and Bollywood. The cricket world cup ranked sixth with 25,961,417 pageviews, followed by the film 'Jawan' in eighth place with 21,791,126 pageviews, the 2023 indian Premier League (20,694,974), and another Khan movie 'Pathan' in tenth place with 19,932,509 pageviews.
India was also one of the most popular subjects on Wikipedia, with 13,850,178 pageviews and ranking 21st on the list.
"The most-viewed Wikipedia articles of 2023 tell the story of you and society at large seeking out knowledge about our ever-changing world from the world's largest encyclopaedia," the foundation said in a statement.
While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world, no cricket article has ever been on the Wikimedia Foundation's year-end most popular articles rankings since they began releasing them in 2015.
"Until now," it explained. "In 2023, cricket accounted for 16% of the top 25 english Wikipedia articles." The third most-read post on our yearly list is on the 2023 cricket world cup, which drew 304% more attention this year than the previous edition. This includes more than 1.25 million views on the last day of the event."
Australia won the 2023 cricket world cup after defeating india in the final last month in Ahmedabad. Virat Kohli, the winner of the Player of the Tournament title, earned "more pageviews on Wikipedia this year (over ten million) than all those recorded for the 2019 cricket world cup that year (a little less than 9.5 million)."
According to the Wikimedia Foundation, a sizable proportion of visits to world cup, indian Premier League, 2023 indian Premier League, and english football's Premier League english Wikipedia entries "came from people returning to the pages over an extended period of time."
Not far followed the christopher Nolan-directed smash Oppenheimer were two additional films that had massively successful 2023 premieres - 'Pathaan' and 'Jawan,' which were two of the highest-grossing Hindi-language films of all time, according to Wikimedia.
"Pathaan debuted in january 2023 and broke several box office records." Jawan, which was released in September, quickly eclipsed their achievements. Both films starred Shah Rukh Khan as the primary protagonist. "Both films received over one million views in a single day on english Wikipedia alone around their release dates," it claimed.
Taylor Swift, 'Friends' actor Matthew Perry, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk were also among the most-viewed entries on Wikipedia in 2023.