The free global online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has been a widely
used tool for people of all ages and from all walks of life, to find authentic
information of any kind whatsoever. The website cites relevant links and
resources where it takes the content from and gives the public free access to
make relevant changes to articles according to latest updates.
This year especially, Wikipedia’s parent organization, the
Wikimedia Foundation has struggled to keep the site as up-to-date as possible,
to provide information on every breaking news of the year, from the Corona
virus to the US elections.
Wikimedia’s security, product, legal, and communications teams worked hard to keep the site free of false news. It formed a disinformation task force to target people circulating any fake news regarding the 2020 US Elections. The site has been managed by 56,000 unpaid volunteers who worked as editors to monitor around 2000 pages related to elections.
Recently, Wikipedia released a report that shows that 297 million page views were generated by seven out of the top ten articles on the platform, while all 10 together produced 396 million page views.
The top-most topic of the ten most-viewed articles on
Wikipedia was the COVID-19 pandemic that received a total of
8,30,40,504 views. The top most-searched topic of articles on the COVID-19
pandemic was “deaths in 2020”. Other related topics included facts about the
corona virus, its diseases, precautionary measures, etc.
The next popular topic was related to Donald Trump, which gained
a total of 5,54,72,791 views. Other most-searched articles were related to
Kamala Harris, followed by the newly elected President of the US, Joe Biden.
Articles related to Kobe Bryant were on number 7, after the
NBA star’s sudden death shocked the world. The list ends with articles on Queen
Elizabeth II, with 2,41,47,675 views.
