← Last week's report – Next week's Report →
Summary: When Jimbo envisioned Wikipedia bringing knowledge to the world, that vision probably didn't include people using it as a TV listings guide. But things are as they are, and TV remains remains arguably Wikipedia's single most enduringly popular topic. This week, with its confluences of series endings or near-endings, series premieres and season premieres, brought this aspect of our audience to the fore.
For the week of September 22 - 27, 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 | 3 | 8 | Breaking Bad | 1,094,844 | The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11. | ||
2 | 4 | 38 | 663,781 | A perennially popular article | |||
3 | 6 | 7 | List of Breaking Bad episodes | List | 605,400 | People will turn to this page to keep up with the show. | |
4 | - | - | Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. | 580,701 | Joss Whedon's extension of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into television has been met with mixed reviews but to date, anyway) fairly stellar ratings. | ||
5 | 2 | 3 | Grand Theft Auto V | 554,242 | The sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed video games 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 gypped prostitutes. | ||
6 | 7 | 6 | Breaking Bad (season 5) | List | 526,088 | As above, people want to keep up with this show. | |
7 | 13 | 36 | 400,116 | A perennially popular article. | |||
8 | - | - | Dexter (TV series) | 371,813 | The final season of the serial killer/vigilante TV series has received, frankly, abysmal reviews; that said, the series finale still generated huge interest. | ||
9 | - | - | Max Martin | 352,775 | The writer of a huge number of bubblegum pop hits (including "Baby One More Time", "I Want It That Way" and "I Kissed A Girl") got a Reddit thread this week. | ||
10 | 11 | 48 | Deaths in 2013 | List | 344,294 | The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article. | |
11 | - | - | The Big Bang Theory | 323,275 | The hugely popular sitcom about tech geeks had a double-header season premiere on September 26. | ||
12 | 15 | 19 | List of Bollywood films of 2013 | List | 320,177 | An established staple of the top 25. | |
13 | - | - | Lorde | 305,200 | The not-quite 17-year-old singer-songwriter from New Zealand released her modestly titled debut album, Pure Heroine, on 27 September. | ||
14 | 18 | 3 | Wikipedia | 291,089 | 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. | ||
15 | 23 | 41 | World War II | 284,370 | Another perennially popular article. (The 16th most popular article from 2010–12, in fact, see Table 2 here.) | ||
16 | 21 | 8 | IPv6 | 283,937 | 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. | ||
17 | 25 | 7 | Twerking | 282,976 | The new term for waggling your bottom onstage continues to be a point of interest. | ||
18 | 20 | 4 | Miley Cyrus | 288,100 | Well, she twerked herself into her coming of age, then graduated into adulthood by riding nude on a wrecking ball while licking a sledgehammer. Any attempt to top this will have to involve shaving her head or shoplifting. | ||
19 | - | - | James Hunt | 280,971 | The first of two legendary racers whose duel was retold in Ron Howard's film Rush | ||
20 | - | - | Dexter (season 8) | List | 277,931 | The final season Dexter got a berth to itself, which is odd since it just ended. | |
21 | 9 | 2 | Nothing Was the Same | 277,634 | The latest album from Canadian rapper Drake was released on September 24. | ||
22 | - | 6 | How I Met Your Mother | 267,686 | This hugely popular sitcom has always been a popular search on this site. Its latest season premiered on September 23. | ||
23 | - | 8 | Attack on Titan | 267,323 | This anime TV series has attained cult status in the Nerdisphere. | ||
24 | - | - | Niki Lauda | 247,792 | The other half of Rush's dueling racing duo. | ||
25 | - | - | BMW | 241,360 | Nothing is more likely to stimulate interest in a brand like a complete product recall, and BMW had one this week. |