The 610,896 that the panel drew as 250,000

Dark navy dashboard slide, masthead “Audience dashboard · Eurovision week 2025 · Wikipedia daily pageviews · Panel maximum 250,000/day”, headlined “Every show night reached the top of the panel — and all three reached it together”. A standfirst says there is one bar per day for the whole of May on a zero-based axis with every day plotted, nothing smoothed, nothing indexed and no second axis, counts taken straight from the Wikimedia pageviews API; that the panel runs 0 to 250,000, the daily interest target set in early April when the article was averaging about 11,400 a day; and that both semi-finals came in just under it while the grand final reached it, so the three nights land within eighteen points of target of one another. The main panel, labelled “Daily pageviews · Eurovision Song Contest 2025 · en.wikipedia · 1–31 May 2025 · axis 0 to 250,000”, is a column chart of 31 blue bars with gridlines at 0, 50k, 100k, 150k, 200k and 250k. The bars climb through the first fortnight from about 16,000 to 64,000, then jump: 13 May and 15 May stand at 82% and 85% of the panel with those percentages printed inside them, and 17 May and 18 May are drawn flush against the top gridline, flat-topped, side by side and identical in height, each labelled 100% inside the bar. The x-axis marks 13, 15 and 17 in amber with “SF1”, “SF2” and “FINAL” beneath them. A table headed “Eurovision week against the 250,000 target” gives each day’s share of target and a status: Mon 12 May 26% Below, Tue 13 May semi-final 1 82% Below, Wed 14 May 69% Below, Thu 15 May semi-final 2 85% Below, Fri 16 May 73% Below, Sat 17 May grand final 100% Target met, Sun 18 May 100% Target met, Mon 19 May 65% Below, with a note that share of target is each day’s bar as a percentage of the panel maximum, read off the tile. A second table, “The month’s biggest days, by share of target”, ranks Sat 17 May and Sun 18 May joint first at 100%, then 15 May at 85%, 13 May at 82%, 16 May at 73% and 14 May at 69%, noting that two days share first place at 100% of target. Down the right-hand side, a card carries the figure “250,000+” over “Peak daily interest · May 2025” and “Target met on 17 and 18 May”. A card headed “Read-out for the programming board” says the grand final performed in line with the two semi-finals, 100% of target against 82% and 85%, and that interest across the week is remarkably level. A “Programme note” card says promotion is currently concentrated on the Saturday, that on this evidence the Saturday is not buying a bigger night, and that spend might be levelled across all three shows. A card headed “Why the panel maximum is fixed” says the tile is pinned at the 250,000 daily target so it stays comparable week to week, set in early April at 22 times the level the article was then running at. Further cards cover week-on-week comparability, data quality, “What we did not do” — the axis starts at zero, every day of the month is plotted, nothing is smoothed, indexed, annualised or binned, there is no second axis, and every bar is one calendar day of the same article, same language, same agent class — and the basis of measurement. Three ticked boxes run along the foot: “Zero-based axis”, “Every day plotted” and “One article, one language, one unit”. A footnote gives the source, notes that bars are drawn against a fixed panel maximum of 250,000, and says the slide is a demonstration drawn by us in the manner of an audience dashboard, that the desk, the target, the board read-out and the programme note are invented, and that every count behind it is real. — Showing the misleading chart

The same 31 days on a cream background, kicked “The same 31 days · axis run to the data · Eurovision Song Contest 2025 · en.wikipedia” and headlined “The two bars that tied at the ceiling are 41,531 pageviews apart — and the taller one is the morning after.” A standfirst says nothing about the tile was smoothed, cropped or truncated, that its axis simply stopped at 250,000 and its data did not; that two days ran past the top of the frame and were drawn at exactly the frame’s height, 17 May at 569,365 and 18 May at 610,896; and that running the axis to 650,000 makes the grand final 2.77× semi-final 1 rather than the 1.22× the tile drew, with the biggest day of the month turning out to be the Sunday after the show. The main panel redraws all 31 days on a zero-based axis running to 650,000, with gridlines at 0, 50k, 150k, 250k, 350k, 450k, 550k and 650k so that 250,000 falls on one, and a gold dashed rule across the plot at 250,000 labelled “The old panel maximum · 250,000”. Bars 17 and 18 May now tower over the rest, and the part of each that sits above the dashed rule is drawn in gold hatching, with 569,365 and 610,896 printed above them and 205,369 and 213,377 above the two semi-final bars. A caption says the hatched tops are what the fixed maximum removed from the picture — 680,261 pageviews, 23.0% of everything the article drew in May, and more than a third as much as the entire rest of the month put together — and that under the old maximum both hatched bars were drawn flat at the dashed line, at the same height as each other, with nothing on the tile to say either had gone past it. Beneath, a strip of five small panels headed “One week, five panel maxima — 13 to 19 May, unchanged data, gold = drawn at the ceiling” redraws the same seven days at five different axis maxima, every panel the same physical size: at 150,000 all seven bars are gold and full height, marked “7 days tie · Every day of the week flattens to one height · Final reads 1.00× semi-final 1”; at 200,000, “4 days tie · Both semi-finals join the final at the top · Final reads 1.00×”; at 250,000, outlined in gold and marked “the maximum the tile used”, “2 days tie · Final reads 1.22×”; at 400,000, “2 days tie · Still tied, and still 41,531 apart · Final reads 1.95×”; and at 650,000, “nothing clipped · The axis reaches the data. Every height is a quantity again · Final reads 2.77×”. Eight cards run down the right. “What the ceiling deleted” gives 680,261 pageviews above the panel maximum, 23.0% of the month’s 2,960,635, none of it excluded from the data — it was drawn, at the wrong height. “Two bars, one height” notes that 569,365 and 610,896 were drawn identically, that real daily traffic never ties, and that two adjacent bars with pixel-identical flat tops is the tell, visible without any of the numbers. “The finding the ceiling deleted” reports that the month’s biggest day is Sunday 18 May, the morning after the final, 7.3% above final night itself, noting that pageview days run on UTC and the contest ended late on the 17th so the hours after the result are counted on the 18th — the day boundary doing some of it and curiosity outliving the show the rest, and the tile unable to show either. “The read-out was the axis” says “Peak daily interest: 250,000+” is not a measurement but where the panel stops, the real peak being 610,896, 2.44× the number the tile reported as its own maximum. “What the target cost” says pinning the axis to the target makes every over-performance the same over-performance, and that a target line belongs on the chart, drawn across it, not as the top of it. “The family it belongs to” places it beside the truncated axis, which takes the bottom of the scale, and the broken axis, which takes a slice out of the middle, noting this one takes the top and is the quietest of the three because the zero survives, the gridlines are even and the theft has no zigzag to mark it. “How to spot it without the data” lists a flat top where a peak should be, two or more bars finishing at exactly the same height, a maximum that is a round number a person would choose, and a headline figure quoted with a plus sign on the end. “Basis of measurement” names the source — daily pageviews, “Eurovision Song Contest 2025”, en.wikipedia, all-access, agent user, Wikimedia Pageviews API, 1–31 May 2025 — and notes that these are pageviews on one article, not audience figures. A gold-ruled callout at the foot reads “An axis maximum is a promise that nothing on the chart is bigger,” and says to let the axis follow the data, and where a fixed maximum is genuinely wanted — a tile that has to stay comparable week to week — to make the overflow impossible to miss with an arrow, a broken bar-top, the value printed above the frame and a caption naming the maximum, because a chart that cannot show its largest value should at least be able to say so. A footnote gives the source and the key daily counts, explains that the 680,261 figure is the sum of each day’s excess over 250,000 and that the five-panel strip re-clips the same seven days and is otherwise identical in every panel, notes that pageview days are UTC days and the grand final ended late on 17 May UTC so traffic in the hours after the result is counted on 18 May, that pageviews count requests for one article in one language and are not a measure of the broadcast audience, and says both drawings are ours, that the dashboard, the target and the desk on the first are invented, and that every count on both is real. — Showing the misleading chart

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Eurovision week on a dashboard tile: daily Wikipedia pageviews, one bar a day, an axis that begins at zero and a month with no day left out — and three show nights that land within eighteen points of target of one another. The axis stops at 250,000; the data does not. Two days ran past the top of the frame and were drawn at exactly the frame’s height: 17 May at 569,365 and 18 May at 610,896, a 41,531 gap rendered as no gap at all. Run the axis to the data and the grand final is 2.77× semi-final 1 rather than the 1.22× the tile drew, and the month’s biggest day turns out to be the morning after the show.

Daily pageviews for “Eurovision Song Contest 2025”, English Wikipedia, all-access, agent class user, Wikimedia Pageviews API, 1–31 May 2025, 2025Added September 1, 2026

01The claim

A dashboard tile of one number, daily pageviews for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 article on English Wikipedia, across the month the contest actually happened. The axis behaves itself throughout: it starts at zero, runs to 250,000, has no break, no truncation and no second axis. Every day of the month is plotted, none is smoothed, indexed, annualised or binned, and every bar is one calendar day of the same article in the same language with the same agent class. The panel maximum is the daily interest target, fixed in early April so the tile stays comparable week to week — set in early April at 22 times the level the article was then running at, when it was averaging about 11,400 pageviews a day. Semi-final 1 on Tuesday 13 May came in at 82% of target and semi-final 2 on Thursday 15 May at 85%. The grand final on Saturday 17 May reached 100%, and so did the Sunday. Peak daily interest for the month: 250,000+. So the three show nights land within eighteen points of target of one another, and two days share first place outright. Read-out for the programming board: the grand final performed in line with the two semi-finals, and interest across the week is remarkably level. Programme note: promotion is currently concentrated on the Saturday, and on this evidence the Saturday is not buying a bigger night, so consider levelling spend across all three shows.

02The trick

The axis stops at 250,000 and the data does not. Two days ran past the top of the frame and were drawn at exactly the frame’s height, because that is all a fixed maximum leaves a bar to do: 17 May was 569,365 pageviews and 18 May was 610,896, so the biggest day in the data is 2.44× the number the tile reports as its own maximum. Above the ceiling the bar stops being a measurement and becomes a threshold test — every quantity up there is the same quantity — which is why a 41,531-pageview gap between two adjacent days arrives on the page as no gap at all, and why the grand final reads as 1.22× semi-final 1 when it is 2.77×. Everything else on the slide holds up. Zero is where the axis begins, the gridlines are evenly spaced, no day of the month is missing, and every count is the count the API returns. That is what makes this one quieter than its two relatives: a truncated axis announces itself by starting at 94.6, and a broken axis marks its theft with a zigzag, but a ceiling’s whole effect lives in values the picture never mentions, so there is nothing to read and nothing to subtract. What there is, is ink. Two bars finishing flush with the top gridline at exactly the same height is not a measurement, it is a collision, and daily traffic on a live article does not tie. The read-out gives it away too, in the way these read-outs usually do: “peak daily interest: 250,000+” is not a fact about the month, it is a fact about where the panel stops, and the plus sign is the tile admitting it. The 680,261 pageviews sitting above the line — 23.0% of the 2,960,635 the article drew in May, and more than a third as much as the entire rest of the month put together — were never excluded from the data. They were drawn, at the wrong height. (Both drawings are ours; the dashboard, the target and the desk on the first are invented, and every count behind them is real.)

03The fix

Run the axis to the data. On a zero-based axis reaching 650,000 the same 31 days tell a different week: the grand final is 2.77× semi-final 1 rather than 1.22×, the two clipped days separate by the 41,531 that was always between them, and the biggest day of the month turns out to be Sunday 18 May, the morning after the show, 7.3% above final night itself. Two things are behind that and both are worth saying: pageview days run on UTC and the contest ended late on the 17th, so the hours after the result are counted on the 18th, and curiosity plainly outlived the show as well. Which is the one thing on the tile worth a programme note, and the one thing the ceiling could not show. The programme note the tile did produce is exactly backwards: the Saturday was not level with the semi-finals, it was nearly three times either of them. Where a fixed maximum is genuinely wanted, and here it genuinely was — a tile that has to be laid beside last week’s and read without rescaling — keep it and make the overflow impossible to miss rather than impossible to see: break the top of the bar with a ragged or arrowed edge, print the value above the frame, and say in the caption what the maximum is and how far past it the series went. A clipped bar that announces its own clipping is an honest chart with a footnote; one that does not is a wrong number drawn to scale. Keep the target off the axis while you are there — draw it as a rule across the plot, where a bar can be seen beating it and by how much, rather than as the edge the bar arrives at, because pinning the axis to the target makes every over-performance the same over-performance. And never let a read-out be computed from the drawing: a peak that equals the axis maximum is a fact about the template. How much any of this matters is a choice the maximum makes rather than the data, which is the clearest way to see the mechanism. Re-clip the same seven days at five different maxima and the same numbers give five findings: at 650,000 nothing is clipped and the final reads 2.77× semi-final 1; at 400,000 two days tie; at 250,000, the tile’s own setting, two days tie and the final reads 1.22×; at 200,000 both semi-finals join the final at the top and the final reads 1.00×; and at 150,000 all seven days of Eurovision week flatten to a single height, a week of identical traffic that never happened. One last note on what is being counted, because it is not the technique but it is the kind of thing worth saying out loud: these are requests for one article in one language, not broadcast audience figures, and the comparison here only ever runs between days of the same series.