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Summary: A very slow week. We haven't quite hit the depths of two weeks ago, but we're grazing it with our toes. With no major pop cultural events to follow (no new big movies, major sports events or TV shows) celebrity culture dominates, as does Reddit, which promoted three topics to the top 25 this week; it's highest confirmed count since the start of the year.
For the week of August 18 - 24, 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 | - | - | Lee Thompson Young | 709,809 | The tragic suicide of this young, up-and-coming actor (he was 29) and star of Friday Night Lights and The Famous Jett Jackson unsurprisingly became the prime talking point of the week. | ||
2 | 5 | 33 | 675,478 | A perennially popular article | |||
3 | - | - | Claude Debussy | 619,684 | With the possible exception of suicide, nothing guarantees a high Wikipedia view count like an interactive Google Doodle, and this French composer of "Oh yeah, that!" classical pieces like Clair de Lune got one for his 151st birthday on August 22. | ||
4 | 4 | 3 | Breaking Bad | 547,047 | The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11. | ||
5 | 4 | 3 | Chennai Express | 531,746 | This Bollywood action-romance has broken records at the Indian box office, becoming the first film to make 1 billion ($16.3 million) in four days. | ||
6 | - | - | I Am Rich | 447,963 | A $1000 iPhone app that did nothing except remind its users that they could afford it stimulated a discussion on Reddit this week. | ||
7 | - | - | Pseudofolliculitis barbae | 397,403 | Another Reddit discussion was stimulated by this skin affliction, commonly referred to as "shave bumps", because Domino's Pizza was declared in violation of the 1991 Civil Rights Act when it demanded its male employees be clean-shaven, even though roughly a quarter of African Americans are unable to shave without incurring it. | ||
8 | 8 | 43 | Deaths in 2013 | List | 389,605 | The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. | |
9 | 8 | 14 | List of Bollywood films of 2013 | List | 376,515 | An established staple of the top 25. | |
10 | 9 | 6 | The Conjuring (film) | 371,391 | James Wan's latest ghost story (reportedly based on true events, take that as you will) stormed the US, taking $70 million in its first week, and is now closing in on $200 million worldwide. | ||
11 | - | - | Bradley Manning | 348,420 | Between being sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role in the United States diplomatic cables leak and coming out as transgender, it's not really surprising that Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning made an appearance in the top 25 this week; it is surprising that this is his first appearance, particularly given the popularity of Edward Snowden. | ||
12 | 16 | 31 | 330,665 | A perennially popular article. | |||
13 | - | - | Pedro López (serial killer) | 330,017 | This Colombian serial killer, known as the "Monster of the Andes" got a bump thanks to another Reddit thread. Lopez could very well be the most prolific serial killer of all time, with up to 300 victims to his name, all of them young girls. He's also a free man, thanks to a maximum 20-year prison sentence; though Interpol have been after him regarding another murder in 2002. | ||
14 | - | - | Wentworth Miller | 329,638 | The onetime Prison Break star came out as gay on August 22 in opposition to Russia's anti-gay bill. | ||
15 | 24 | 40 | YouTube | 283,548 | Another perennially popular article | ||
16 | 19 | 2 | Kick Ass 2 (film) | 279,349 | The ridiculously violent superhero pastiche has yet to make back its $28 million budget worldwide, but remains a topic of discussion among Wikipedians. | ||
17 | - | - | SummerSlam (2013) | Unassessed | 277,218 | WWE event that took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California On August 18. | |
18 | - | 4 | IPv6 | 306,786 | 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. | ||
19 | - | 5 | Amazon.com | 272,461 | For such a popular website, it makes surprisingly few appearances in the Top 25. | ||
20 | - | 2 | Ben Affleck | 271,613 | It's fair to say that, Academy Award-winning writer/director though he may be, Ben Affleck has never quite earned similar respect as an actor; thus it was a bit of a shock to the Nerdisphere when it was revealed that Warner Bros had chosen him to play Batman in their upcoming Batman vs. Superman mashup. | ||
21 | - | - | Patrick Stewart | 268,816 | The onetime Captain Jean-Luc Picard has something of a following among the cyber-literate (literally; Twitter counts 573,477). So when his recent appearance at Twitter headquarters led to this viral video, it generated the single biggest nerdgasm of the year so far. | ||
22 | 12 | 2 | List of Breaking Bad episodes | List | 266,743 | People want to keep up with this show. | |
23 | - | - | Adrian Lamo | 256,596 | The hacker who turned Bradley Manning over the US government (see #11 above). | ||
24 | - | - | The Butler | 244,154 | The Butler (we don't need no Lee Daniels' here) is an undisputed smash hit, having earned $40 million in 9 days, but lags behind more geek-friendly fare in Wikipedia views. | ||
25 | 18 | 6 | Orange Is the New Black | 230,577 | The women-in-prison TV series premiered in its entirety on Netflix on 11 July. |