Talk:List of most-viewed YouTube videos/Archive 3

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Reverting back to full numbers

Myself and a number of others clearly prefer the full numbers rather than this ridiculous rounding. I think we should revert to this format.Alternatively perhaps a new page could be set up with the numbers in this format. (RK) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.96.61.255 (talk • contribs)

There's far too many problems with keeping this page as it is with people doing partial updates or vandalism. The rounding prevents a number of problems, and is more appropriate for an encyclopedia (we are not worded about exacts, but summarizing information). --MASEM (t) 22:22, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Says whom. I completely disagree. I think the full numbers are far more appropriate for an encyclopedia. Also there has been significantly more reversions since this change than before. I state again it needs to go back to full numbers. Otherwise people are going to start reverting it every time it drops back to millions. Also if you are going to start rounding why not to billions so Gangham style will be 3 and everything else 1. Then no updates will be required for months at a time.(RK)

But with how fast the numbers change (by the minute) exact numbers make no sense. And the reason there's more edits on this page recently is that page protection on it ran out a few days ago, so there's a lot of IPs messing about with it. --MASEM (t) 04:33, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I disagree Masem. The rounded numbers is your preference, but I believe the vast majority would prefer the whole number. Yes the number changes all the time, but the list should be accurate at the point of update. Since the change the number of errors has increased and it is less accurate. The Hello number is not correct for the date in question. It was out by about five million. In fact when that was corrected you reverted the change.

In terms of the list I believe we should go with the majority view, and need to work out how to canvas that.(RK)

We need to try for consensus but Wikipedia is not a democracy. Really, the discussion is not exact numbers versus rounded to millions but how many significant figures should we round to? Clearly, exact figures are ludicrous as they would be out of date in the time it would take you to cut and paste them into the page (Hello is clocking up 65 views a second). If we think that a daily update is appropriate then the changes should be measured in millions (as per previous discussion) if we are going for weekly then 10 million is better. I would be happy with either. Btljs (talk) 12:51, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

If you are rounding why not to the nearest billion. I think the majority would prefer full numbers even if they are only updated once a week.

But that's not how an encyclopedia works. We don't report population figures to the exact person, or movie earnings to the exact dollar. We are not just a page of statistics. And we still need some resolution of figures to show differences - 1 million / 10 million are fine enough to see the significant difference without overwhelming the reader. --MASEM (t) 15:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Please sign your comments. If I asked you the time would you tell me it accurate to the hundredth of a second? That's equivalent to putting in 10 significant figures in this list. Btljs (talk) 16:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I'm in favor of using the full numbers. These shortened numbered are cumbersome to look at and decipher. The fact that some users were changing the numbers periodically was less of a problem than creating "rounded" numbers. So what if some figures are updated from time to time while some are left alone? It's not that big of a deal since all of the numbers are updated regularly anyway. Fixing a problem with a new problem isn't the solution.--JOJ ^Hutton 16:32, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

You can't have a table which says "as at this date" and then update the figures at different times. You would have to put the time and date each entry was updated. Do you really think people are going to do that each time? Btljs (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2016 (UTC) And how is 1,356,232,976 easier to decipher than 1356 million? Btljs (talk) 17:45, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

And as just happened today, this also could affect ordering. For example, the next full update will likely have a Bieber video replace Charlie Bit My Finger, but that requires the whole table updated to match, not just replace. This is a summary snapshot and we need ppl to worry less about this reflecting real time information, which is not the purpose WP serves. --MASEM (t) 17:49, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Hutton. The numbers are much easier as full numbers. Also you are reporting the number not estimating them so they should be as accurate as possible. Further, until this is resolved people are going to continue to keep switching the page between the two formats which is not helpful to anyone. Finally, who decides the purpose of a webpage - to you it may not be important to others it clearly is. 2.96.61.255 (talk) 18:05, 14 February 2016 (UTC) RK

It is a logical fallacy to think that it is more accurate to give a snapshot of an exact number which is changing every second than to show the range of that number over a reasonable amount of time. You are muddling precision with accuracy. I was 30 years old on my last birthday (and give date) is exactly as accurate as I was 11,057 days old on (date). One is just much easier to interpret than the other. There is absolutely no useful information added by the last six digits in these numbers. Btljs (talk) 18:19, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I disagree, but ultimately that is my opinion as yours is yours. The question is what is the solution. RK 2.96.61.255 (talk) 18:25, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The solution is that the page stays as is unless someone makes a case to change it. Can you give an example of how the last six digits provide useful information? Btljs (talk) 19:04, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

1. It allows you to see the gap between videos. Currently we have a tie. 2. It allows you to measure the number of views in a given time frame either by comparing revisions or by comparing to the current viewcount. 3. I personally find the full number easier. I suspect given Hutton's post I not the only one.

You say it should stay as it is. Why is your view more important than others? I could equally say it must revert and I will undo any changes. However, I don't think that is an appropriate way to behave. Hence I have opened a dialogue on the subject and not edited the article. Are you in some way the owner of the article and hence entitled to make such pronouncements? RK 2.96.61.255 (talk) 20:09, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

You don't need to see all the digits to calculate the average view rate with the same precision. And this view is the basis of WP, being a summary work, this is how we do it per MOS:LARGENUM. --MASEM (t) 20:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't stay as it is because my view is more important - it stays as it is because we are discussing it. If it was still full numbers it would stay that way. Btljs (talk) 21:14, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Quite simply you are wrong. Even for videos doing Hello's numbers it would make a difference. For Charlie... it may well not change between revisions. You asked for reasons why it should revert, I fail to see any advantage in rounding. I also do not see why a million not a hundred thousand or round to the nearest billion. However, I suspect you have no interest in anyone else's viewpoint hence the lack of interest in canvasing the views of others. The split go me seems 50 /50 at best. In terms of the link it is clearly referring to estimates and these are not estimates. Are you prepared to compromise and go to 1dp? - RK 2.27.159.222 (talk) 20:36, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

No it will not. There are only 3 significant digits in the calculation (from the number of days), so you only need viewcounts rounded to a million to get the answer with the known precision. And again, policy is set that we round these per MOS:LARGENUM. --MASEM (t) 20:45, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Masem, l am afraid your response makes no sense to me. Why would 1dp be inappropriate? RK 2.27.159.222 (talk) 21:00, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

There are no decimal places. There are significant figures. If you have a need for more than 4 or 5 (1234 million or 12345 X 100K) then WP is not the right place for your research. Btljs (talk) 21:14, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment: There has been no consensus on this issue for the last week. Currently the videos are not rounded and this has been the case in the past. As mentioned, there are merits to having the full view counts. It stops videos being rounded to the same number so you can see the gaps between the videos. The counts should not have been rounded in the first place due to a lack of consensus on the issue. There needs to be a longer discussion, with a broad consensus on how to display the counts, as otherwise it will keep being changed from on to the other. Oscar248 (talk) 21:19, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree, thank you. RK2.96.61.255 (talk) 21:22, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Er they are rounded. Btljs (talk) 21:27, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

You can't walk in the middle of a discussion, make a change and then say this is the way it should stay. Not how it works, sorry. Btljs (talk) 21:29, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

If you have two videos with the same number to four significant figures then there is no significant difference between them. Btljs (talk) 21:31, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The rounding has been put back in place by Masem. In MOS:LARGENUM, large numbers should be rounded if there is no precision of the viewcount. This is not the case, as YouTube provide the exact number on the video. For example, if there is a huge earthquake with many thousands of deaths, the estimated number should be rounded as there is a large margin of error. I understand that the number of views on some videos increase by several million per day, but some videos such as Charlie bit my finger and Gangnam Style do not go up as quickly. Th full number should therefore be used to ensure precision in these situations, as well as for videos which have a similar number of views. I have not reverted back to my edit, but this should be discussed further. MOS:LARGENUM Oscar248 (talk) 21:35, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The view counts change by the minute for all videos even older ones. Further, LARGENUM gives examples of cases where even if the value is precise to a large number, for an encyclopedia we only care about a few digits of precision (the jury award example, the city population example). --MASEM (t) 21:38, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Fine, keep it as rounded!!!! Oscar248 (talk) 21:41, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

How could you update all entries fast enough that the first one wouldn't be out of date in the last 3 or 4 digits by the time you got to the last one? That is not accuracy, it's just random numbers. Btljs (talk) 21:44, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Very true, but keeping more digits improves accuracy relative to other videos. Maybe round to the thousand , as 3 s.f for videos below a billion is still not very precise. Oscar248 (talk) 21:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Masem you are the first to complain if people update a single video on the grounds of accuracy, then say that the precision does not matter and we can round the number down to 3 sf. It is one or the other. Either go back to precise numbers or stop reverting when someone updates a single video. RK. 2.27.159.222 (talk) 22:34, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

No, that's not the same thing. This is a snapshot page, all the date needs to be the same date and approximate time. Updating one video breaks that. --MASEM (t) 23:05, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Even rounded to thousands they would go out of date in minutes. And the point about the significant figures is it's not the total which is important it's the rate of change. Clearly you can measure the height of a mountain and present it very precisely because it stays the same. If I told you I was 3.1413 metres above the ground and falling you would think I was bonkers. Youtube can monitor every view automatically as they happen, this page gets updated roughly daily. That's about a million views on average on this list. Hence, round to millions. If we see an entry not changing from one day to the next that tells us that it is moving more slowly than a million views per day. If we download the figures from the page history (as I have done) it is possible to plot a very consistent chart of trends and I can tell you with great accuracy when different entries will reach certain milestones and their rate of views at any time. All without the 6 least significant figures. If I can do that I wonder what anybody else is trying to do which they can't with rounded figures. Btljs (talk) 07:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

So what about my suggested compromise and go to 1dp. RK 176.12.107.132 (talk) 10:22, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean by 1dp. 3.1 is pi to 1dp and 2sf. Please explain. Btljs (talk) 16:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Effectively add the hundreds of thousands, but leave the numbers as millions so express it as .5 for example. RK 2.96.61.255 (talk) 18:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Also why has this topic been deleted and merged with the previous one? RK 2.i96.61.255 (talk) 18:09, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

This has been fixed. Gap9551 (talk) 19:59, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

To consider the idea of 1 decimal point (eg: 935.7 million), the problem is that most reliable sources that discuss views for videos > 100 million views do not use decimal points. In contrast, it's 50-50 when the video is less than 100 million views that they will use a decimal point or not. (even when the video is less than 10 million, the use of the decimal point doesn't happen all the time, leaving one significant figure). From this stance, it doesn't make sense to be more accurate than what RSes are reporting. They are clearly only interested to the millions place for the most point, not to the 100,000s place. That guidance should be what we use (in addition to all other reasons cited above). --MASEM (t) 22:32, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

• Let's consider the probability that the values on this page match those shown by Youtube on each video's home page at any time someone chooses to check. I don't know how often Youtube changes the figures, but let's assume hourly. Let's assume that all the videos on the page get edited daily. If an average daily change is 1 million, then for 23 out of 24 hours a full number down to units would be wrong (a 4% chance of being correct). Down to 100K as suggested (not unreasonably) above would change in its lowest figure ten times a day so 10% chance of being correct. At millions there would be one change per day on average so roughly a 50% chance of being correct. If all videos are changed at the same time there is also a much higher chance that they are all showing figures from the same Youtube 'refresh' frame. So accuracy is dratically reduced by even one extra significant figure. Clearly, if you showed them to 10s of millions they would stay accurate for longer but you would sacrifice some precision when comparing them to each other. Btljs (talk) 07:42, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I think having the full numbers is preferable and more clear for readers. Especially compared with the current way of displaying them. AusLondonder (talk) 16:09, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Top videos excluding music videos

I am proposing creating a list of top videos with the exception of music videos. I personally believe this is necessary and very useful, considering that 28 of the top 30 are otherwise music videos now.

I published a top 20 table of videos w/o music videos, fully sourced and complete, only for it to be reverted by a user believing that this distinction is unnecessary. Well I disagree and believe it would be very informative to add this table to the article.

See my table revision here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_most_viewed_YouTube_videos&oldid=705477708.

I want to get people's opinions on this and if I get enough support here, will add that table back. Please write your views here below. Thanks in advance. --Wellsrant (talk) 19:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

To some extent, it is partially OR to try to distinguish between music videos and other types, though this is not the only issue. The problem becomes then if we should break that down even further, for example, separating out the videos of the type like Misha and the Bear (produced works) from things like Charlie Bit My Finger or Evolution of Dance (more spontaneous works), which could also be a fairly argued split. For our purposes, we are looking at videos, regardless of what type, and if it is music videos that flood the top, we can't do much about that. --MASEM (t) 19:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I suppose my question would be: where are the 3rd party sources referring to these videos? Even with the main list we are on slightly dodgy ground as we only really have 1st party (ie Youtube) references to them. Is there anybody publishing details of successful non-music videos? Also some of these seem to be musical in nature so the differentiation is problematic (why is someone singing "Wheels on the Bus" different from someone singing "Lean On"?) Btljs (talk) 20:30, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedily deleted because... i like it and think it is interesting — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.227.204.52 (talk) 04:15, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Should we put the exact number of views or should we estimate it?

I know that the list is only updated about twice a week, but still; if we change it so that the view counts aren't as exact, the numbers won't be quite as off as they are when we update it. There is no real, important reason for having the number of views exact, since these numbers are changing every second. Also, this way we may not have to update the list as often. Please respond if you have any suggestions, such as to what decimal place we should estimate the numbers, if at all. (I won't make any changes unless enough people agree with my suggestion.) Clbsfn (talk) 05:16, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Rounding to millions of views (eg, Gangnam Style would be 2,500 million views) would make much more sense. --MASEM (t) 06:23, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

A pedantic note: it's not estimating that you're proposing, it's rounding. I think it's a great idea and will stop people updating it every time they check a video's exact figure (hopefully). Either as Masem says above or round to 10M as each video goes up by several million per day, eg. "views (billions)" 2.51, 1.45 etc. These would only go out of date daily rather than hourly as is the case currently. Btljs (talk) 10:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

I support the idea to round. I don't think we should round to 10 million though; some of the older videos gain only about half a million views per day. I prefer rounding to 1 million. Gap9551 (talk) 17:30, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The idea is that with rounding we shouldn't have to update this as frequently. To demonstrate, the fastest-to-1B-view videos would have had to had views between 5 and 10 million a day to get to those points (on average), and we know that tails off, so even if they average to 1M a day, 10M is still a better cap. Rounding to 10M means that this probably won't have to be updated nearly daily, but on a more weekly basis which is easier to maintain. --MASEM (t) 17:36, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Sure; the more you round, the less often updates are needed. But if you round too much (e.g., to 10M), you also lose meaningful information. You base your argument on the fastest risers (5 to 10M per day), but there is currently a video from 2007 in the list that gains less than 100k views per day (though it is in 30th place and will drop out soon). There are several other videos from 2010 and 2011 that gain about 500k views per day. Some of those slower videos would not have their figure change (if rounded to 10M) for about three weeks, and in that timespan typically between 5 and 10 updates take place. Also, since there appear to be at least two editors who don't want to round at all (based on their reverts today), I suggest that if we reach consensus to round, it would be better to round more conservatively, i.e., round to 1M rather than 10M, as a compromise. Rounding should be implemented to keep the list more accurate (by removing insignificant digits), not to motivate editors to update less frequently, as that would lead to larger inaccuracies. Lastly, rounding to 10M leads to several ties in ranks, when in reality their figures can differ by up to 10M. Gap9551 (talk) 18:14, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm happy with 1M as currently. Btljs (talk) 18:16, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

This is pure idiotism. I don't know what you smoke but I'm also interested in it, it must be some hard stuff... --XXLVenom999 (talk) 18:04, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps we could round your over-reaction down to the nearest 10 million. Reasoned arguments welcome. Btljs (talk) 18:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

This is not a idea. But, i prefer only exact the circa numbers on the most views on YouTube see it [1] 2a01:e35:2e3a:cd60:6c70:e0ec:b5d8:cd06 (talk) 10:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Just my opinion but I think the table looked much better with the full numbers than it rounded to millions. (RK)

I agree with that. The short numbers are annoying. Go back to the full numbers. JOJ ^Hutton 03:19, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Just to clarify - are these rounded or truncated? For example, would 1492.6 million be 1492 or 1493? Andrew11374265 (talk) 00:48, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

As introduced in the table, we are using rounding and rounding half up, so 1492.6 is 1493 (as would 1492.5, but not 1492.49, which rounds down). --MASEM (t) 01:39, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

So we're using incorrect figures now. Feudonym (talk) 06:53, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Flag icons

I want to stress again that MOS:FLAGS forbids the use of flag icons for these cases. First, these videos are not representing these countries, they simply originated from there. Second, no sources have identified the importance of nationality of the top videos as to make it a critical aspect. --MASEM (t) 15:07, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Changing the format of the view counts

About a month ago a decision was made to round the view counts instead of using the exact numbers. While I agree with decision to round, I don't agree with how the numbers are formatted. The way they are currently formatted is by rounding each number to the nearest million and removing the last 6 zeros. For example, 943,627,419 becomes 944. This would've been a great way to write the numbers prior to December 2012 when every video had less than a billion views. But it's not so practical in 2016 when three quarters of the videos in the list have over a billion views. It becomes unnatural and confusing to write numbers in terms of millions if they are above a billion. For example, a number like 1,250,375,194 becomes 1250, but no one says "1250 million", they say "1.25 billion".
For this reason I would like to suggest writing numbers that are above a billion as single digit numbers to three decimal places, followed by a "B" to indicate "billion". Numbers that are below a billion would be written the same way they are now but followed by an "M" to indicate "million".
For example: 943,627,419 becomes 944 M and 1,250,375,194 becomes 1.250 B
This way the numbers are still rounded to the nearest million and it provides a more natural to way to read them. MattStan10 (talk) 01:37, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Have you got any WP:MOS that supports this? I would have thought that within a table the format of numbers should always be the same. Is "B" a recognised shortening of Billion? I've seen "Bn" elsewhere. Btljs (talk) 07:46, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

There's guidance in MOS:LARGENUM: "The number of decimal places should be consistent within a list or context (The response rates were 41.0 and 47.4 percent, respectively, not 41 and 47.4 percent), unless different precisions are actually intended." Also, for the 'exact number' proponents above: "...round to an appropriate number of significant digits; the precision presented should usually be conservative. Precise values (often given in sources for formal or matter-of-record reasons) should be used only where stable and appropriate to the context, or significant in themselves for some special reason." There's even an {{undue precision}} template. The abbreviation is "bn": "M (unspaced) or bn (unspaced) respectively may be used for "million" or "billion" after a number, when the word has been spelled out at the first occurrence (e.g., She received £70 million and her son £10M)." So you could have 1.25bn and 0.94bn in your example above OR 1250M and 944M but not a mixture and probably not 1.250bn and 0.944bn as this would be over precise. These are my interpretations, of course. Btljs (talk) 11:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

I have read the MOS and I understand the rules more clearly but I just want to address a few things. You said, "You could have 1.25bn and 0.94bn in your example above OR 1250M and 944M but not a mixture". The MOS says, "The number of decimal places should be consistent within a list or context (The response rates were 41.0 and 47.4 percent, respectively, not 41 and 47.4 percent) unless different precisions are actually intended". I think that only applies to numbers that are formatted the same.

For example: 875,631,842 and 918,249,073 would become 875.6M and 918.2M, not 876M and 918.2M

However, in our case, 944M and 1.250bn have the same precision so it doesn't matter that it's a mixture, it only matters that they have the same precision. You also said, "Probably not 1.250bn and 0.944bn as this would be over precise". An agreement was made to round each number to the nearest million because rounding to the nearest 10 million loses meaningful information. Since we are rounding to the nearest million, 1.250bn isn't over precise. As Gap9551 put it, "Rounding to 10M leads to several ties in ranks, when in reality their figures can differ by up to 10M". Another thing to keep in mind is that it won't be long until all 30 videos in the list have over a billion views and it won't make sense to keep counting by millions. It already doesn't make sense when three quarters of the videos have over a billion views. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds it odd to read numbers like 2533 million instead of 2.533 billion. Since the change last month, I've seen numerous revisions reverting the numbers back to exact values or adding the six zeros at the end, so there are obviously some people who have a problem with the new format. I suggest that we either change it to the "M" and "bn" format or just add the six zeros at the end. I've seen numerous Wikipedia pages that have kept the extra zeros and they look fine. MattStan10 (talk) 19:45, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

The MOS is very brief and leaves a lot open for interpretation. I think the issue here is that you find it strange reading 1256 million whereas I don't and I've seen lots of charts and tables which have far stranger multiples such as in tens or hundreds of thousands. I do, however, find it jarring to look at a list of numbers which changes format part way down. If you were going to do this, I would rather you listed the videos with over a billion views separately or omit the others all together. I've got no problem with adding the M or the bn to the figures although it is superfluous, if it aids comprehension - but only one or the other. Btljs (talk) 09:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

At the end of the day it all comes down to personal preference. I think it works just fine with M and bn but I'll leave it the way it is to avoid conflicting reversions. I just hope that when all 30 videos reach a billion views we'll stop counting in millions and start counting in billions. MattStan10 (talk) 02:03, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree - it'll make the 2bn ones stand out better. Btljs (talk) 07:32, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Update

The Current Chart as of March 16, 2016 isn't accurate. Please update. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.97.227 (talk) 20:33, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Possible correction to table for "Hello" by Adele for number of views as of March 15, 2016

Not sure if I'm posting this correction correctly (first time, sorry!). But, according to YouTube's site, "Hello" by Adele currently has 1,337,138,965 views (see: ). The list currently shows it at 2.636 billion. This appears to be an error and should be corrected. Reference links in the table go back to the same video on YouTube's site that I linked, so I'm assuming this is just a typo or error. How can this be corrected? Thanks. Montereypoet (talk) 02:37, 17 March 2016 (UTC)montereypoet

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Justin Bieber - Sorry

There are two amount of views of Justin Bieber´s song, in places 15 and 17. Correct it please.200.117.116.13 (talk) 10:03, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Someone has fixed this. Gap9551 (talk) 16:53, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Extending the list into fifty videos

I have been long waited this for an expansion to 50 videos until Mac132000 expanded it (see [2], then reverted by ClueBot NG [3] but then reverted it [4], however he also reformed the table, removed note links and also removed most of the references. I does not like it, and i restored some of them by using previous table format, linked video views, restored styling, returned old sections and restored most of the references and note links. In this edit, i also added references, styling, old table format restoration and also linked video views for most of remaining last 20 videos (not all, and i continued it by this edit but i forgot one of views that is still not linked so i linked this video's views.). Later, the amount of videos returned because there is no consensus yet for an extension and later, most of the original elements have been returned (and also the views updated minutes later). (Also, in the past it was extended to forty videos, but it was restored to thirty because of the consensus). As such, i wanted to extend this list into fifty videos, because there are more videos are approaching "One Billion View Club" and there is also many unlisted videos that already reached more than 750 million views. I think these would be better for having fifty videos because we can see more than just only thirty videos, but fifty.--SMB99thx XD (contribs) 06:26, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

I would support this. 30 seems like a rather arbitrary number. Your arguments in favour of 50 make sense. AusLondonder (talk) 22:51, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Oppose; 30 is what reliable sources have counted in the past, so it's good metric. And the argument for expansion would mean that when we get close to 50 1B+ view videos we'll have to expand it again, so there's no potential end there. --MASEM (t) 23:04, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

@Masem: Could you like those sources for us? AusLondonder (talk) 00:48, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

For example [5], and when YouTube did YouTube Charts, they limited it to 30 (per [6]). --MASEM (t) 01:58, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Not the best sources, I would say. But why not Top 10? Many sources only list that? Such as The Independent , Rolling Stone and Billboard AusLondonder (talk) 03:07, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Masem I would oppose any extension to more than 50 videos for sure, even if most of the 50 videos reaching 1B+. That's it, only 50 is enough for this list. By SMB99thx,--202.67.33.34 (talk) 11:45, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't have objections to extending the list to 50. The list's popularity seems to justify this in the absence of clear guidelines applying to this case. As for the future, I don't think we should specifically aim to include all 1 billions views videos. Gap9551 (talk) 22:30, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

References column

Shall we move the references to a separate column, after the Notes column? Especially the references in the Views column, as they make the numbers harder to read (and mess up the alignment of the numbers). Gap9551 (talk) 18:36, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Music Compilation

The entry "The Wheels on the Bus" was highlighted as "not a music video". I have removed this tag, as it is a compilation of music videos. Catphish (talk) 11:39, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

It's not a strict, official music video, however, which is what the others are tagged as. It's a video with music, but not a music video. --MASEM (t) 13:51, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Expanding the number of videos shown from 30 to 50

Is it worth expanding the list to show the top 50 instead of the top 30 as now 25 videos have reached 1 billion views, the list feels like it needs an extension. 92.239.44.11 (talk) 23:14, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Note: there has been a recent discussion on this topic, see Talk:List of most viewed YouTube videos/Archive 3#Extending the list into fifty videos. If reliable sources are consistently using a certain list length, then we should follow that, but that does not seem to be a clear case. I support a list of 50 given the fact that the list is updated frequently (so there is no need to worry that a longer list wouldn't be updated), and this is a popular article with circa 17,000 views per day. I can imagine a lot of readers would appreciate 20 more entries. I don't think that the number of 1-billion views videos is an important consideration though. Gap9551 (talk) 23:26, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Peak Positioning

I think it would be cool to have a column in the table called "Peak." It would show the peak position of each video on the list throughout YouTube's history. For example, "Baby" is currently the 15th most viewed video, but in 2010, it was the most viewed, therefore its peak would be 1. I got this idea from List of highest grossing films who had a similar column for their table, this time applying to the highest grossing films. 0737290632t2x273n (talk) 02:03, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

This is not something reported by media (in contrast, film rankings are, just as albums/singles are too), so it would be original research to add this. --MASEM (t) 02:24, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, if that's the case and if anyone's interested, let's start working on it. 0737290632t2x273n (talk) 23:07, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I actually created the peak column in the List of highest grossing films article. And i'm happy its here now. Anyways, why not add the peak column after the rank column and before the video title column, just like on the Highest grossing films article, to me it would make more scene. Editor49 (talk) 23:36, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Watch time

It would be nice to have an article for YouTube videos by time watched. You can see it in the statistics under "Watch time". Jonsku99 (talk) 18:13, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Historical list of №1 most viewed videos

A few months ago, I tried to research the history of #1 most viewed YouTube videos for my blog. I was not as meticulous with my research as MattStan10 had been (in particular, I didn't do any estimates, and I wasn't aware of I/O Brush), but I did get some results for early dates that were inconsistent with the table presented here (note: some are recent findings)...

• According to this Wayback Machine link, Cross Bar (a different video of the Touch of Gold ad) was the most viewed video as of December 10, 2005. Note that it has a lot less views here than Touch of Gold is attested to have by Dec 10, while Touch of Gold does not appear on the list at all. (Here is Touch of Gold on Dec 10; note a lack of any "#N all time" comment.)
• There is entirely no reference to Jay Leno Phony Photo Booth (apparently top for a while in February 2006); I found it by surfing for old versions of the Most Viewed table, but the video itself is also attested with #1 honors on Feb 2, Feb 3, Feb 6, and Feb 12 (and the table is Feb 14).
• Checked on a whim just now: SNL - The Chronic of Narnia Rap is attested with #1 honors on Jan 9, Jan 14 and Jan 16, and #2 on Jan 4 and Jan 27 (presumably after Touch of Gold, and Jay Leno Phony Photo Booth, respectively). Apparently better known as Lazy Sunday.
• Summary: I/O Brush top for a few days in late October; Touch of Gold ca. Oct 31 to Jan 6; Chronic of Narnia ca. Jan 6 to Jan 21; Jay Leno ca. Jan 21 to Feb 17; Myspace by Feb 18 (with less views than the last two, them having been deleted due to a copyright claim), and the current list thereafter. (Oh, yeah, and don't ask me about Cross Bar.)
• Also, the situation with Evolution of Dance vs. Girlfriend is a bit more complicated, but that's another question entirely. --85.140.241.1 (talk) 14:01, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

top 41 :D

Hi u guys, someone added a 41st placer. impatient fan? lol — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.224.72.252 (talk) 16:53, 5 September 2016 (UTC) ok, reverted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.224.72.252 (talk) 16:59, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

† note

Am I missing something? Where is † defined? - Paul2520 (talk) 17:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

It used to be defined in the same line as the yellow color, with the same meaning. Someone must have thought it was extraneous and deleted it (and/or mistook it for a note and deleted it since the respective comment did not seem to appear anywhere - naturally since it never existed in the first place).
I'll try to check the origin; could be that they meant something different originally. It is strange that the same thing would have been represented by both a symbol and a color. --85.140.246.105 (talk) 00:41, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Update: checked, it was put in by MattStan10 in July with a reference to WP:COLOR (not sure of the details, but I suppose because the light yellow might not be very visible on some monitors) and partly reverted by a one-edit IP a few days ago. You might as well put it back, it doesn't really hurt anybody. --85.140.246.105 (talk) 00:51, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. It's since been removed. For the record, this is where it was added, and this is where the footnote explanation was previously removed. - Paul2520 (talk) 00:34, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The relevant style guide is WP:COLOR Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information. Especially, do not use colored text or background unless its status is also indicated using another method such as an accessible symbol matched to a legend, or footnote labels. Otherwise, blind users or readers accessing Wikipedia through a printout or device without a color screen will not receive that information. Btljs (talk) 03:29, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

On the "X videos with more than Y00 million views" counts...

@RX22:, the type of information that is being added here [7] is not stats that represent data that other secondary sources have chosen to catalog YouTube videos by. While it is factually true, it becomes excess detail that doesn't compare with other coverage of YouTube views. (In contrast, most other data on the page is something that has come from how secondary sources review video view counts or the statistics related to it). Hence, it is not appropriate to keep adding this. --MASEM (t) 20:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Historical list of №1 most viewed videos between April 2005 to September 2005

I want to research the history of #1 most viewed YouTube videos between April 2005 to September 2005 ? But, where is the first video to reach 100,000 views before October 2005 and where is №1 most viewed videos on YouTube before I/O Brush ? I say the first video on YouTube this "Me at the zoo" publish in 23rd April 2005 with 30,000 views. But, where is surpassed the next video №1 after "Me at the zoo" please ? I didn't do any estimates.

2A01:E35:2E3A:CD60:A950:A28D:9BF4:DA71 (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Very little is recorded from the history of YouTube between April 2005 and the official launch in December 2005, and not very much from the months immediately after.
It is extremely fortunate that we even know about I/O Brush; to the best of my knowledge, the next known reference to a most viewed video is not until late November.
In fact, even the timeline currently on the page is missing a few early videos (most notably Lazy Sunday).
(Just to clarify, I would applaud you if you manage to find any other information for those early videos; I wouldn't even know where to look, unfortunately.)
--85.140.251.133 (talk) 01:30, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Lazy Sunday is the first video to reach 100,000 views on YouTube ? It's true or false ? -- 2A01:E35:2E3A:CD60:A950:A28D:9BF4:DA71 (talk) 15:34, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Definitely false (it happened before this video was created, probably in September or October 2005), but there's probably not enough information to say which one was. I'll try to search, but we'll probably never know for sure (unless some very early records appear). --85.140.252.224 (talk) 03:05, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Surprisingly, there actually is a preliminary answer to the "first to 100k" question: "Money, get a way!", by DeKku, apparently attested with 127,030 views on August 9, 2005. This is before YouTube was first Slashdotted, I believe; I have no idea how this video made it that far that early (was it an early viral? Google is silent), but I doubt we could find anything else remotely similar. --85.140.241.174 (talk) 20:12, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Peak column

Is there a source for the 'peak' column? I'm not sure whether this counts as original research or not, so I thought I'd ask here on the talk page. Kinetic37 (talk) 17:06, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this readily can be sourced, nor is this a value tracked in secondary sources with any regularity (as opposed to the current top positions or viewcounts), and thus starts bordering on trainspotting. YouTube is not yet like Billboard charts (which do track the top position explicitly), and until that is the case, we should avoid this. --MASEM (t) 17:09, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Since no one else replied here, I went ahead and removed this column from the table for now. Kinetic37 (talk) 15:27, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

yellow lines

the yellow background indicating that the video is not a music video semms to be more disturbing than useful. is there really a need for that? i'm planning to remove it. 193.224.72.252 (talk) 12:45, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

As such, maybe no. They used to also include non-color indicators, which were sadly removed recently. --85.140.242.160 (talk) 12:59, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Expanding to the entire billion view club?

In a few weeks (perhaps days), there will be no videos in the top 40 that have less than a billion views. With that in mind, should this page switch to including the entire billion view club (once it expands beyond 40 videos)? It's certainly a less arbitrary cutoff than top 40 (though it runs the risk of expanding to hundreds of videos by this time next year, but we could deal with that when it happens). --85.140.242.160 (talk) 12:58, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind expanding the list to 50. Gradually doing that following your suggestion would be an option, although it can also be done at any time before 50 videos reach 1B views. As long as the list is frequently updated (indicating the article is sufficiently popular), it is not too long, I think. Gap9551 (talk) 03:29, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

No, this makes the list entirely unmaintable as it grow indefinitely large. Top 30 was picked because that was the number that most sites documenting the top videos used. If all videos on the list are "Billion view clubs" we need to try to rewrite the language to reflect the timing of that, and that nowadays, its far less useful as a metric for video counts. --MASEM (t) 03:35, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Billions

Can we avoid using "billions", or at least have a footnote that explains it refers to one thousand millions, due to differences between the long and short scales? It can be confusing to international readers because Europe usually uses the long scale. nyuszika7h (talk) 10:23, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

WP assumes that "billions" is 1,000,000,000 regardless of article (see WP:NUMERAL), but I did include that number in the body to be clear. --MASEM (t) 15:20, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Music Video?

I feel like Wheels on the Bus is a music video... 68.70.61.125 (talk) 01:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

It's not a music video by the strict definition, which in this case basically comes down to "it's not a music video because it's not about a single song". (It's not, right? I haven't watched it, but I think it's a collection of songs, not just one song repeated over and over; it's definitely a music video if it's the latter.) I agree that counting it as a "non-music video" looks a lot like cheating, however - it's an awful lot closer to a music video than stuff like Recipe For Disaster or Charlie Bit My Finger. --85.140.242.87 (talk) 22:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

i think the whole non-music video colouring is more disturbing than informative. 82.131.207.243 (talk) 13:11, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

If the list was longer (say 100-200 videos), it might have been worth it to have multiple differently-colored categories - e.g. "Vevo video" (Uptown Funk, Shake It Off), "Non-Vevo music video" (Gangnam Style, See You Again), "Song collection" (Wheels on the Bus, Johny Johny Yes Papa), "Non-musical" (Recipe for Disaster, Charlie bit my finger - the latter is #63, just off the current list), and maybe some more classification of the latter (the two non-musical videos in question aren't particularly similar to each other, and the next two in line, #70 and #75, are quite similar to each other but not much like the previous two... then the next three are one more of the #70 category and two more Masha and the Bear episodes).
At this size, all categories except the first two will only have 1-2 videos in them, so we really only need to distinguish Vevo and non-Vevo (which we, ironically enough, currently do not), and might as well lump everything else together (which we already do).
What would be nice is to have a list of most viewed non-music videos, but such a list would be quite ghastly (with titles such as "Play Doh Ice cream cupcakes playset playdough by Unboxingsurpriseegg"), and probably original research anyway. --85.140.250.107 (talk) 03:45, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

By year section

MattStan10 I can see that you've put a lot of work into this new section. A couple of questions: are these reliable sources? is this number of views in a given year or just total views at the end of a given year? Not quite sure what is being shown here. Thanks. Btljs (talk) 09:42, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not MattStan10 (also, fixed your spelling, you had a red link), but it appears that the number is essentially the current number of views, limited to videos uploaded within a given year (with some rather counterintuitive results - I had no idea that Evolution of Dance and Charlie Bit My Finger were not the most viewed videos of their years anymore). I have no idea where do the figures come from, however (especially for 2005). --85.140.250.107 (talk) 13:38, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Btljs All the information for the years 2008–2016 come from the exact same source that the main table comes from, which is a list of YouTube's top 500 most viewed videos of all time, each with over 270 million views. Information for the years 2006 and 2007 come from the first list and a continuation of that list, which includes videos 501–1000, each with 150–270 million views. Information for the year 2005, however, comes from two other sources. The first is a continuation of the previous lists, which includes videos 1501–2000, each with 65–95 million views. The second source is a list of most viewed videos from 2005 and 2006. It includes videos from 2006 that have over 20 million views and videos from 2005 that have over 2 million views. So far, only 16 viewable videos from 2005 have been found to exceed 2 million views. Also, I believe 85.140.250.107 answered your other question. The number being shown is the current number of views for each video. The table shows the top 5 videos from each year that have accumulated the most views. --MattStan10 (talk) 09:42, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Updating view counts

I've noticed that recent edits do not update all the videos in the list, but rather only the top several (some edits I've looked at ranged from 2 to 5). For the most accurate information, these should be updated simultaneously. Andrew11374265 (talk) 23:05, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 January 2017

Update the list as 60th place has changed (Not Afarid to Faded; not updated on Youtube charts yet but you can check the videos for evidence) 79.66.43.73 (talk) 20:06, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:14, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Will it be done now that the YouTube charts had updated too? --85.140.247.141 (talk) 12:59, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

top how many?

What about cutting back the list to, say 50 items? Now it hasn't been updated for more than a week. I guess this is the reason. 193.224.72.252 (talk) 09:00, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree. I don't mind a long list, as long as it is updated frequently. It could even be cut down to 30 or 40 if that's what it takes. Gap9551 (talk) 14:43, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

It really should only be 30, because that is the only example of how other RSes have casted the top list in the past. At this point, it's more a list that's showing the music videos that made the most viral impact, for all purposes, and we don't need more than 30 for that. --MASEM (t) 14:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

If you made it a two person job, i think 50 could be do-able(Deum ex machini (talk) 22:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC))

Page in violation of what Wikipedia is actually for?

@Jytdog: Thanks so much for your enlightening comments over at Talk:Laura and John Arnold Foundation! I'd be super curious to hear your thoughts on this page. It seems that, by your exact reasoning, this whole page should not exist (rather than just the tables section on Laura and John Arnold Foundation). Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone? Riceissa (talk) 21:17, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Your reasoning here is a typical newbie mistake and understandable but is invalid in Wikipedia. I have no comment on this article. Jytdog (talk) 21:27, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog:, please don't call experienced editors "newbies". Thanks, I appreciate it :) Ethanbas ^(talk) 22:01, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: With all due respect, I am not a newbie and I am not invoking WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. I am not pointing to this page as something that exists, and therefore the tables on Laura and John Arnold Foundation should also exist. Rather, I am outlining the precise reasoning you are using on Laura and John Arnold Foundation and applying it here; if the same reasoning leads you to conclude one page should exist while another should not, it is hardly convincing.

However, while you are citing WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, you might want to actually read it. It says, "identifying articles of the same nature that have been established and continue to exist on Wikipedia may provide extremely important insight into the general concept of notability, levels of notability (what's notable: international, national, regional, state, provincial?), and whether or not a level and type of article should be on Wikipedia".

Why do you have no comment on this article? Riceissa (talk) 22:08, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't care about this topic; you are missing the point of the essay, btw. Wikipedia is full of content, some of it good and some of it bad. Finding some content that has the same problems as yours and trying to use that to justify yours, is very weak, especially when there are policies that read directly on the content actually under discussion. It is not an argument that experienced editors make. But the main thing is, i don't care about this topic, and i will not respond further here. Please discuss the content at the relevant article talk page. Jytdog (talk) 22:16, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: I'm not missing the point of the essay – you are. Calling me "very weak" is a WP:PERSONALATTACK, so feel free to refrain from that. Saying that my actions are not like those of "experienced editors" is incorrect. Some editors, such as myself, are both experienced and fed up with people like you who follow inane rules to the letter. Have you thought of that? Riceissa (talk) 01:10, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I characterized an argument as "weak". I said that you made a newbie argument that experienced editors don't make. Please focus on the content at its article page; WP:DRAMA is unproductive. Jytdog (talk) 01:11, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Videos incorrectly marked as not music videos

Numbers 12 and 39, "Wheels on the Bus" and "Johny Johny Yes Papa," are both music videos according to the definition in the link given on this very article (Music video). Why are they labeled as not music videos? Knoxjeff (talk) 20:08, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Let me quote the definition: "A music video is a short film integrating a song and imagery" (emphasis mine). The videos "Wheels on the Bus" and "Johny Johny Yes Papa", despite their titles, both include many different songs, and thus do not, technically speaking, count as music videos.
I agree that it is rather cheating to count those in the same "not a music video" category as actual non-music videos such as the cartoon episode "Recipe for Disaster" and the classic viral "Charlie bit my finger" (the latter briefly being on the list a few weeks ago, and currently just off it at #72). However, if we do not count them as non-music, the current list only has a grand total of 1 non-music video (Recipe for Disaster), which somewhat undermines the very purpose of the category. --85.140.255.174 (talk) 14:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

We are treating music videos as official publications of an artist's work by the music publisher to promote their music; the whole purpose of the "music video" vehicle is for promotion. The two noted videos are simply cuts of larger works that do not fall into that definition. --MASEM (t) 15:04, 16 February 2017 (UTC)