Beginning of the French Wikipedia article on Rishi Sunak (screenshot)
The all-out crisis in Great Britain has caused it to break several records: the shortest presence at 10 Downing Street (44 days) for the very short-lived Prime Minister Liz Truss – who will nevertheless have known two sovereigns, which was not arrived 67 years ago (with Winston Churchill, first of Elizabeth II’s 15 prime ministers) -, then with Rishi Sunak, the youngest (42 years old) since 1812, the richest, the first Hindu… and the 5th Prime Minister since 2016 of our neighbors (and before this somewhat chaotic political situation, the queen’s death had caused a tidal wave in Wikipedia, where the article on the sovereign was consulted, in all its languages, 19.9 million times in a day).
The most viewed article in 24 hours
Is it this unprecedented news that has stimulated the activity of Wikipedians? From the announcement of his probable appointment, Monday, October 24, to this Wednesday evening, Rishi Sunak has seen the number of languages in which he has an article in Wikipedia climb at a remarkable pace. Judge it:
– on the 24th at 3:40 p.m., I noted that Boris Johnson’s former Finance Minister (Chancellor of the Exchequer) had an article in 57 languages in the collaborative encyclopedia, compared to 97 languages for Liz Truss and 123 for Boris Johnson ( and in France, 145 languages for Emmanuel Macron, 48 for Elisabeth Borne).
– Seven hours later, the number of versions of the article on Rishi Sunak had increased from 57 to 63 languages.
– Shortly before 1 p.m. on October 25, it increased to 70 languages. In addition, it was in the French version the most consulted article of the last 24 hours (except for an anomaly which placed “cookie” at the head).
– At 8:30 p.m. on the same October 25, we had reached 79 languages.
– Finally (provisionally), this October 26 at 9:30 p.m., the article has gone to 89 languages.
5.4 million English page views in two days
The audiences also mark curiosity about this newcomer to the head of the United Kingdom: nearly 245,000 page views on October 24 and 25 for the article in French, 370,000 in German, 213,000 in Spanish, 120,000 in Italian, and so on. , and above all, in English, nearly 5.4 million page views over the past two days.
The article in French was written by 131 contributors, including the first 6 for 70% of the text. The one in English has 877 contributors, of which the main one alone wrote 56% (!) and the next five 36%.
Another case of accelerated creation of an article in additional languages, I had noted in September that Charles III went from an article in 99 languages at the disappearance of his mother to 113 languages less than 24 hours later, and 119 three days later (he is now at 130 languages, compared to 200 for his mother).
Wikipedia currently has active versions in just over 300 languages (59.8 million articles in total), 98 of which exceed 50,000 articles each. 18 exceed one million, with English in the lead at 6.5 million. The French version has 2.465 million articles (it passed two million in July 2018).
Read also
In Wikipedia, a record attendance for Elizabeth II – September 11, 2022
Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Wikipedia’s Very Multilingual Coverage – February 27, 2022
Notre-Dame fire: Wikipedia has sounded the tocsin – April 21, 2019