Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 15 to 21, 2013)
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Summary: The winter solstice is traditionally a time to reflect on the nature of death and rebirth, and death, always a topic of interest on Wikipedia, has certainly hovered over this list in the last few weeks. The continuing interest in the deaths of Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker was supplemented this week by the deaths of Joan Fontaine and, most obviously, Peter O'Toole. Even the surge in interest in the Great Train Robbery TV movie was likely aided by its coinciding with the death of the most notorious of the robbers, Ronnie Biggs. Of course, the approach of Christmas also led to contemplation of eternity, embodied by the eternal flame of Baba Gurgur.
For the week of December 15 to 21, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages* were:
Rank Last Wks Article Class Views Image Notes 1 - - Peter O'Toole 
827,820 
The top ranking for the Lawrence of Arabia star demonstrates the enduring popularity he enjoyed until his death on December 15 at the age of 81. Despite his advanced age, he was working until he died and we are still due one more performance from him when the echoically named Katherine of Alexandria opens in the UK next week. 2 6 50 Facebook 
645,285 
A perennially popular article 3 2 7 Nelson Mandela 
607,578 
The 95-year-old father of the new South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize winner and global inspiration finally succumbed to his long illness on December 5, triggering tributes from around the world. Although his death was initially overshadowed by that of Paul Walker (see below), he appears to be gaining in the race to posterity. 4 - - Winter solstice Unassessed 600,862 
The shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere has been a date of profound significance to humanity since before recorded history, as the image to the left indicates. It's interesting to note that the northern hemisphere's winter solstice is also the southern hemisphere's summer solstice, though "summer solstice" got barely a 50th its sister's numbers and failed even to crack the top 5000; an indication of how northern-aligned the English-speaking world remains, despite English's status as the global language. 5 - - Baba Gurgur 
504,175 
Baba Gurgur, the "Father of Fire", became a topic of interest on Reddit this week. It is a flame that burns perpetually near the city of Kirkuk in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. A subject of fascination for millennia, it may have been referenced in the Book of Daniel, and was the site of the first oil strike in Northern Iraq in 1927. 6 - 2 Duck Dynasty 
461,652 
Despite this reality show's fourth-season finale having aired on December 11, it has flushed itself back into the open thanks to some fairly ill-informed comments about homosexuality by its pater familias, Phil Robertson (see below). 7 9 59 Deaths in 2013 List 457,231 
The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. 8 - - Dhoom 3
432,648 
No, not Doom 3, the surprisingly scary demonic blow-em-up video game, but the third installment of the Dhoom series, a hugely successful Bollywood buddy cop movie franchise involving hi-tech crime. Like many recent Bollywood films, it has broken domestic box-office records, it made back half of its $23 million budget at the box office in its first two days and even broke records for a Bollywood film in North America, cracking the US top 10. 9 23 2 Beyoncé Knowles
355,033 
The most popular singer of the new millennium managed to knock the world for six when she released her latest album, Beyoncé, on iTunes on December 13 without any prior announcement or promotion. Nonetheless, the album sold nearly half a million copies in less than a day. 10 - = Great Train Robbery (1963)
352,156 
A rare showing in the top 25 for an item of purely British interest, curiosity about this plan to rob a train carrying old currency to the incinerator was kindled by a mildly tongue-in-cheek TV movie on December 18, (coincidentally the day that the most notorious of the outfit, Ronnie Biggs, died) that showed that the largely botched caper was in no way worthy of its moniker. 11 11 3 Christmas
344,778 
Bit surprising to see the numbers have hardly budged. One wonders if it will reach the top of the tree by next week. Perhaps the economic climate has somewhat muted anticipation. Or perhaps it's always like this and I'll see this repeat next year. 12 10 6 Bitcoin
343,623 
The oddball digital currency that is mostly beloved of radical libertarians is back in the news this week. Bankers have (prematurely?) suggested it may prove a legitimate competitor to real money, even though many argue they are best described as a store of value rather than a functional currency. An attempt to declare "Bitcoin Black Friday" to try and get people to actually spend the frigging things instead of hoarding them (Except that, from one point of view, hoarding them is exactly the right thing to do if their value continues to skyrocket as it has done) led to the purchase of a great deal of gold, swapping one store of value another. 13 5 13 United States
323,197 
The 3rd most popular Wikipedia article between 2010 and 2012, and even when not on the list, a perpetual bubble-under-er. Not really surprising that the country with by far the most English speakers would be the most popular on the English Wikipedia. 14 - - Joan Fontaine
318,457 
The Academy Award-winning actress, onetime muse of Alfred Hitchcock and younger sister of Olivia de Havilland died on 15 December at the age of 96. Surprisingly, her elder sister has managed to outlive her. 15 - 21 IPv6
314,266 
This issue has reappeared in the top 25, after hovering below it for some time. It is something of a crisis, though not one that is necessarily apparent. It may come as a surprise to some, but the Internet is, for lack of a better word, full. Every computer online is assigned a specific address, made up of a sequence of numbers, that allows other computers to contact it over the Internet. The original number sequence, known as IPv4, is currently the norm for ~99% of online computers. It allows for a maximum of about 4.3 billion addresses; a number that maxed out in January 2011. The long-term plan is to migrate over to IPv6, which allows for 3x1038 addresses; however, since this would require a massive software and even hardware upgrade, many companies are reluctant to undertake it. Until now we've been stalling for time by harvesting abandoned addresses and re-allocating them, a decidedly short-term measure. 16 - - Homeland (TV series)
307,231 
The controversial War on Terror-themed series had its third-season finale on December 15. 17 - 5 Jennifer Lawrence
304,357 
Wikipedia's favourite actress needs little excuse to reenter the top 25, though she has many this week, with two films in the weekend box office top ten (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and American Hustle). 18 8 3 Frozen (2013 film)
301,264 Disney's de facto sequel to Tangled outperformed its predecessor in its first two weeks, and has now grossed nearly $350 million worldwide. 19 - - Santa Claus
294,895 
The patron saint of childhood greed finally makes an appearance in the top 25, after hovering below it for some time. 20 4 3 Paul Walker
282,683 
The tragic death on the road of this Hollywood star remains a major talking point. 21 - = Beyoncé (album)
279,530 Beyoncé Knowles's album (see above), released on iTunes on December 13 without any prior announcement or promotion. 22 14 31 List of Bollywood films of 2013 List 269,792 
An established staple of the top 25. 23 12 13 Lorde
253,511 
The just-turned 17-year-old singer-songwriter from New Zealand released her modestly titled debut album, Pure Heroine, on 27 September. 24 - - The Hobbit (film series)
252,039 
Now that the hubbub over the second has subsided, it's time to look forward to the last one. 25 - - Phil Robertson
248,535 
The somewhat retrograde opinions of this man on the topic of homosexuality, which included comparing gays to terrorists, became a talking point this week.
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- Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 247,011. Last week: 272,303.
- The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create this list.
Exclusions
edit- This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Please keep in mind that the explanations given for these articles' popularity are, fundamentally, guesses. Just I can't find a reason for an article to be included doesn't mean there isn't one; conversely, just because a plausible reason is found for a view spike, that doesn't mean it wasn't due to a bot.
- There are a number of articles that reappear frequently in the top 25 for no determined reason, and have been excluded as likely being due to automated views. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.
- Lycos: the geriatric web portal seems to be back en vogue, for no apparent reason.
- Java: My only guess is a bot searching for the programming language.
- Several articles related to global warming (including global warming) have been removed from this list; their continued high view counts are raising suspicions of artificial inflation. I'll believe that Climategate was #1 during a typhoon, but that it got more hits than Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving? No.
- XXX (film): this decade-old Vin Diesel movie frequently appears in the top 25; given the popularity of articles like XXX, XXXX and .xxx, it has been suggested that this may be due to people Googling "XXX film" and not getting exactly what they expected.
- Meat/Vegetarian cuisine: another mysterious reappearance, most likely due to bots.
- Specific exclusions for this week:
- Daniel Patterson (chef): I have been unable to determine why this Bay Area chef got a massive one-day spike on 18 December.