The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (film) is drawing 172x more Wikipedia traffic than normal

What this article is

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a 1982 American musical comedy film based on the 1978 stage musical by Larry L. King, Peter Masterson, and Carol Hall. Directed by Colin Higgins from a screenplay he co-wrote with Masterson and King, the film stars Burt Reynolds, Dolly Parton, Dom DeLuise, Charles Durning, and Jim Nabors. The story is about the proprietress of a brothel (Parton) and her lover, the local Sheriff (Reynolds), who fight to keep the house open after it's targeted by a moral crusader (DeLuise).

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (film)", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

What changed that day

See everything that changed on 2026-08-26 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.