Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (March 31 – April 6 2013)
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Summary: April Fool! Yes, the world's most infuriating tradition, with the possible exception of witch burning, makes itself felt in Wikipedia's Top 25 this week, with no less than 5 search spikes triggered by Google's Google Nose prank. The day itself also scored highly. On a more serious note, gun control, that perennial political neurosis in America, has become a major talking point in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, while North Korea caused consternation by throwing another international tantrum. On TV, The Walking Dead marked the conclusion of its third season, while that of Game of Thrones began.
For the week of April 1 to 7, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Rank Last Wks Article Views Notes 1 – – Maria Sibylla Merian 1,915,875 2 – – Roger Ebert 1,008,282 3 - - Cesar Chavez 898,649 4 12 5 Game of Thrones 886,658 5 3 8 The Walking Dead (TV series) 838,436 6 - - April Fools' Day 829,932 7 – – North Korea 784,775 8 1 2 Easter 627,150 9 8 2 The Walking Dead (season 3) 527,422 10 – – Kim Jong-un 505,837 The leader of North Korea also got a slot for his blustering oddness 11 6 13 Facebook 504,863 A perennially popular article. 12 - - Gun control 492,897 a hot button issue in the United States which was brought into sharp focus in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting. 13 - - Diaper 477,881 14 - - Richard Hammond 473,152 15 – – Dumpster 463,953 16 - - Durian 447,306 17 2 2 BioShock Infinite 40,113 18 – – List of Game of Thrones episodes 438,722 see #4 above 19 - - Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire 435,117 20 9 7 Deaths in 2013 432,483 The lists of deaths in the current year is always a quite popular article. 21 16 3 YouTube 403,144 Another perennially popular article. 22 – – Airport terminal 396,732 23 15 2 List of The Walking Dead episodes 380,498 See #5 above 24 – - Waffle 360,492 25 - - Kamala Harris 355,986
- This list is derived from the WP:5000 report. It excludes the Wikipedia main page (and "wiki"), non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish. Standard removals this week include:
- G-force; this has been in the Top 25 since the list was started at the beginning of the year. The continuing popularity of this article, which jumped in June 2012, has been without explanation. Articles on popular scientific concepts get nowhere this level of viewing based on our analysis to date, e.g., Gravitation (49,516 views from March 3–9), and therefore we have decided to remove it from the list as most likely caused by non-human views.
- Cat anatomy; explanation still unknown for its continuing high view counts
- Aho–Corasick string matching algorithm (a sudden rise from nothing to 200,000 hits on March 20–21)
- Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 355,986. Last week: 315,994.
- Almosts: MOS Technology 6502 (335,504 views); World War II (334,147 views); How I Met Your Mother (331,326 views)
- The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create list: [1]