Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 15 to 21, 2013) edit
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Summary: The hubbub over Grand Theft Auto V and the antepenultimate episode of Breaking Bad mingled with more scholastic inquiry this week; the fact that said Breaking Bad episode was named "Ozymandias" led many users to Shelley's poem, while Reddit and Google acquainted readers with the Foucault pendulum and Methuselah, the 2000-year-old Judean date palm brought back from extinction.
For the week of September 15 - 21, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Rank Last Wks Article Class Views Image Notes 1 - - Léon Foucault 
1,540,620 
The surest path to Wikipedia glory is to be memorialised in an interactive Google Doodle. And the guy who proved that the Earth rotated (albeit a few centuries after it was strictly necessary) got one for his 194th birthday on September 18. 2 13 2 Grand Theft Auto V 
1,004,366 
The sequel to the most critically acclaimed video game of all time (seriously) and arguably the only situation in which someone will cheer you for hijacking and then crashing a jumbo jet full of passengers, just made $1 billion in 3 days. That's a lot of jipped prostitutes. 3 4 7 Breaking Bad 
800,124 
The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11. 4 2 37 Facebook
689,888 
A perennially popular article 5 - - Nina Davuluri
572,786 
The first Indian American Miss America was the recipient of some singularly opinionated Tweets following her win this week; claiming that she's an immigrant (she's from New York), she's an Arab (she's Telugu) she's a Muslim (she's Hindu), and, oddest of all, that it would matter a whit if she was. 6 6 6 List of Breaking Bad episodes List 532,082 People will turn to this page to keep up with the show. 7 7 5 Breaking Bad (season 5) List 515,167 As above, people want to keep up with this show. 8 - - Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
416,789 
All sports create gods, but, for some reason, none do it like boxing. And the world middleweight champion certainly looks decidedly deific after beating Saul Alvarez on September 14; a fight that an estimated 2.2 million televisions tuned in for, and which could ultimately net him $100 million. 9 - - Nothing Was the Same
385,859 
The next album from Canadian rapper Drake will be released on September 24. 10 - - Volvo YCC Unassessed 373,177 
The concept car designed by women, for women got a Reddit thread on September 18. 11 9 47 Deaths in 2013 List 359,804 
The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. 12 - - Oldest viable seed
342,319 
The 2,000-year-old date palm, thought extinct in the 2nd century, was successfully germinated from a seed found in a sealed jar in the ruins of the palace of Herod the Great. You couldn't make up a story like that, and Reddit readers certainly took to it. 13 11 35 Google 
329,306 
A perennially popular article. 14 - - Grand Masti
324,404 
This Bollywood adult comedy has seen its business slacken in its second week, but still seems on course to crack the ₹1 billion mark. 15 12 18 List of Bollywood films of 2013 List 312,456 
An established staple of the top 25. 16 - - Ozymandias
308,220 
The poem by Percy Shelley shot into the top 25 thanks to being the namesake of a cracking episode of Breaking Bad. How do you get the wired generation interested in a 200-year-old poem? Have Bryan Cranston recite the heck out of it, that's how. 17 - - Costa Concordia
297,597 
The cruise ship that ran aground 18 months ago at the cost of 32 lives was finally parbuckled upright on September 17. The cost of resurrecting the listing hulk has so far risen to $800 million. It's expected to be taken in for breaking in early 2014. 18 14 2 Wikipedia
295,425 
Wikipedia's presence in its own top 25 appears to due to genuine interest. Perhaps we should expect it to take up permanent residence in future. 19 - - Foucault pendulum
293,719 
The pendulum that swings as the world turns beneath it got a surge of interest thanks to the Google Doodle for its namesake (see #1) 20 5 3 Miley Cyrus
288,100 
Well, she twerked herself into her coming of age, graduated into adulthood by riding nude on a wrecking ball while licking a sledgehammer, and then finally reached maturity by splitting with her movie star boyfriend. Any attempt to top this will have to involve shaving her head or shoplifting. 21 17 7 IPv6
283,425 
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. 22 - - Mid-Autumn Festival
278,193 
The Chinese holiday got a Google Doodle on September 19. 23 - 40 World War II
276,395 
Another perennially popular article. (The 16th most popular article from 2010–12, in fact, see Table 2 here.) 24 - - M. S. Subbulakshmi
275,371 
The renowned Carnatic singer got a Google Doodle on what would have been her 97th birthday on 16 September. 25 3 6 Twerking
274,779 
The new term for waggling your bottom onstage continues to be a point of interest.
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- Almosts:
- Under the Dome (TV series) (273,902 views); YouTube (261,932 views); Costa Concordia disaster (259,465 views)
- Exclusions:
- 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 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.
- G: This, or alternately G-force, frequently appears in the top 25. It is probably due to people typing "G" for "Google" in Google Chrome's search bar and hastily clicking "enter".
- Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
- Lycos: the geriatric web portal seems to be back en vogue, for no apparent reason.
- Notes:
- Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 274,779. Last week: 235,621
- The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create this list.