Australian WikiProjects and Popular Pages
Last year, we wrote about 2022's Most Viewed Wikipedia Pages In Australia. That looked at what Wikipedia pages Australians were viewing, and featured a mix of topics from around the world. But what about just Australian content?
To get an idea of what Australian Wikipedia pages the entire Wikipedia community engage with, we can look at WikiProjects.
What's a WikiProject?
A WikiProject is a place used for groups of contributors working together to improve Wikipedia, focusing on a specific topic area. For example, WikiProject Australia looks at all Australian related content on Wikipedia, while WikiProject Australian Music is a subproject that just focuses on Australia music.
English Wikipedia currently has over 2,000 WikiProjects open to everyone to join. You can find out more in our article How To Join a WikiProject on Wikipedia.
Popular pages stats
Many WikiProjects list popularity stats for Wikipedia pages within their project scope. These include the total number of page views and daily averages, and are global stats showing the page popularity from all visitors to English Wikipedia. See for example, WikiProject Australia Popular pages list.
WikiProject Australia includes Wikipedia pages on the British Royal Family and World Wars because they are related to Australia.
These topics are incredibly popular, and are also part of other international projects. If we exclude those, the most popular pages include Australian entertainers, sports people, beer, and elections.
The popularity of Wikipedia pages often follow news trends. In January 2022, pages around the Australian Open tennis tournament were popular. In May, when the Australian Federal Election was held, Anthony Albanese was popular, and in August when Olivia Newton-John died their Wikipedia page views also increased.
WikiProject Australia popular pages vs Australia’s most viewed pages
When we previously looked at 2022's Most Viewed Wikipedia Pages In Australia, the stats were gathered for December 2021 and November 2022. To make a comparison, we've gathered stats from WikiProject Australia popular pages in the same period.
There were 769 different pages listed in the WikiProject Australia Popular pages between December 2021 and November 2022. See the full list here.
Across both the most viewed and popular pages lists, there are 100 pages that appear in both lists, and another 1065 pages that don't appear on both lists.
During this period, globally the Wikipedia page for Elizabeth II received 45,184,374 views. In Australia alone it received 1,479,900. It was one of the most viewed and most popular page on both lists.
Anthony Albanese was the 5th most viewed Wikipedia page in Australia and received 2,321,814 views globally, with 1,148,300 views from within Australia.
You could also use these stats to get a clearer idea of the popularity of Australian sports globally.
To see the complete list of pages compared from both lists click here.
Pages that don't appear on birth lists
The Wikipedia page for XXXX beer was the 4th most viewed on WikiProject Australia Popular pages, with 11,050,856 views globally. But it didn't even make the top 500 pages viewed in Australia.