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Wikipedia:Most read articles in 2008

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This essay, "Most-read articles in 2008" (or Most-viewed articles in 2008), is based on various Wikipedia article traffic statistics, gathered informally during the final months of 2008. Listed, in separate groups, are: the Top 1000 articles, then many of the top 10,000 articles, followed by scattered counts for other, various, popular articles (ranked below 10,000).

The top 1000 articles were trendy, for the year, with the "2008 Summer Olympics" (#4), plus those athletes (and prior Olympics) ranking very high. The word "wiki" (#6) is still viewed by millions, along with YouTube (#10), Facebook, and "Wikipedia" all higher than "Sex" (#20). Many blog websites and sexual words ranked in the top 500. Typical celebrities and the U.S. presidential-election candidates were also very high.

However, many traditional topics were still high ranking among the top 2,500 topics: Socrates #2118, Plato #1724, and Aristotle #1237, with William Shakespeare #458 and Physics #1386.

Top 1000 articles

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The following were the top 1000 after August (listing Rank, article & page-views). The data contains some errors, plus duplicates (such as "The Dark Knight" at both #16 & #57) and repeats some entries for upper/lowercase letters. Wikipedia pages (such as "Special:Search" & "Main Page") are also listed, so this is not a clean list, nor was it extensively analyzed. It's just 1000 high-count articles, as a rough-guess at popularity.

Some of top 1001–1500

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Some of top 1501–2000

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Some of top 2001–3000

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Some of top 3001–4000

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Some of top 4001–5000

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Some of top 5001–10,000

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Other topics below 10,000

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Higher interest

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The articles below were ranked lower than the Top 10,000 of the year, but many monthly readership counts (here for October 2008) are actually higher than for some articles ranked above 10,000. Discrepancies of rank are due to a lack of data, covering the entire year, rather than checking page-views after August, or just for October.

Lower interest

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The articles below were read less than 20,000 times per month, lower than above, but many still attracted wide readership. Articles read less than 50x times, per month, are somewhat questionable. However, Wikipedia bases notability on sources: if a topic appeared in mainstream media, but is read less than 20 times per month, that is acceptable. Notability is not tied to popularity of readers.

Top nations read in 2008

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Top people read in 2008

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   #7 Sarah Palin   4004853
   #9 Michael Phelps   3476803
  #11 Bernie Mac   2013775
 #13 Joe Biden   1966877
 #22 Barack Obama   1223473
 #24 Usain Bolt   1103977
 #26 Jonas Brothers   1036100
 #27 Mark Spitz   1032659
 #28 Nastia Liukin   1016437
 #30 Shawn Johnson   937873
 #38 Isaac Hayes   824535
 #39 John McCain   820156
 #40 Miley Cyrus   792186
 #41 Heath Ledger   771350
 #44 Chupacabra   695895
 #47 Lil Wayne   673499
 #50 Alicia Sacramone  656940
 #59 Katy Perry   608562
 #67 Kim Kardashian   581983
 #70 Selena Gomez   575149
 #77 Rihanna   550743
 #86 Leryn Franco   526251
#100 Eminem   474616
#103 Morgan Freeman   469340
#108 George W. Bush   464027
#109 Ian Thorpe   454562
#120 Demi Lovato   439767
#125 Nick Jonas   430180
#131 Christian Bale   422242
#134 Tupac Shakur   418708
#145 Yao Ming   395235
#146 Dara Torres   394893
#147 Chris Brown (singer)   394785
#149 Vanessa Hudgens   393066
#319 Abraham Lincoln   260368
#368 Arnold Schwarzenegger  244076
#375 Trace Cyrus   242031
#377 James Franco   241889
#383 Michael Jordan   240834
#386 Bruce Lee   239936
#396 Hayden Panettiere   237143
#397 Jennifer Aniston   237077
#406 Albert Einstein   235435
#409 Jesus   234580
#410 Bill Gates   231679
#411 Ronald Reagan   231515
#412 Shia LaBeouf   231342
#415 Zac Efron   231016
#416 Adam Sandler   230321
#464 Jessica Alba   214643
#549 Nelly   198664
#555 Ne-Yo   197882
#556 Portia de Rossi   197549
#559 Hugh Hefner   197154
#578 Brock Lesnar   194179
#582 Roger Federer   193817
#584 Nadia Comaneci   193687
#586 Paul Newman   193206
#587 Salvia divinorum   193157
#593 Ted Kennedy   192427
#599 Natalie Coughlin   190791
#605 Muhammad Ali   189700
#606 Neil Patrick Harris   189587
#613 Mahatma Gandhi   188558

Reminder about list inaccuracy

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Again, for the revisions of this essay in March 2009, the lists of articles were thrown together within just a few days, rather than the weeks or months needed to accurately rank the more than 10,000 articles, balanced across the whole year. The Top 2000 articles are especially skewed toward data from September 2008. However, the articles below 10,000 have monthly-count figures mainly from October 2008, rather than collecting data for all 366 days (leap year) during 2008, and dividing by 12 to calculate an "average" month.

Do not rely too heavily on the rank ordering of articles as shown in this essay. Rank figures are approximate for the year.

See also

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Wikipedia:Multiyear ranking of most viewed pages

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