Summary: Oh what a Google Doodle can do. Perhaps the most potent vehicle ever devised for the procurement of passing posthumous popularity, it has granted two much lamented luminaries, the universe-upending Nicolaus Copernicus and the gigglingly ghoulish artist Edward Gorey, places in our top 5 for this week, with Nicolaus himself claiming the top spot. A welcome reversal of his treatment in earlier days. In other news, it was a surprisingly slow week, as can be seen by the presence of many perennially popular but seldom seen articles, such as Youtube, Google, World War II and even boat (Seriously, boat? Surely car would be more popular?). The curious Harlem Shake phenomenon tightened its hold on the list from last week, with four separate entries, while the Oscars, despite featuring a win for Wikipedia's most popular actress, Jennifer Lawrence, failed to register, aside from the eventual Best Picture winner, Argo. It seems movies can't fill the void in the human heart left by the Super Bowl. The only other major theme this week was death, or the approach thereof. The morbidly fascinating Deaths in 2013 made a reappearance, and the tragic deaths of Reeva Steenkamp and Mindy McCready were duly pored over. Basketball team owner Jerry Buss gained in fame by dying, while national hero Michael Jordan turned 50.
For the week of February 17–23, 2013 the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Google celebrated the 540th birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus with an animated Google Doodle of Copernicus's model of the solar system on February 19, 2013.
This page was only created on February 12, and is actually only a brief disambiguation page to help people find Harlem Shake (meme), which is #2 this week.
This American country music singer committed suicide on February 17, 2013. She was found dead on her front porch, the same place where David Wilson, her former boyfriend and the father of her younger son, had killed himself one month prior.
Up from 868,523 views last week. On 14 February 2013, the famed double below knee amputee and Olympic athlete was charged with murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp earlier that day, and news coverage of the story is continuing.
The popular online retailer's article has had a rise in page counts since February 13. In the news this week over a dispute in the United States over sales tax.
The continuing popularity of this article is a bit mystifying, possibly could be influenced by non-human views. Its popularity increased in June 2012 and has stayed that way. Down from 669,731 views last week.
See #2 above, this is the 2012 song by Baauer excerpted in the internet meme. Released as a single, it did not begin to sell well until this month, when it reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the UK Singles Chart. Its success has prompted Billboard to include video streams as a new component of their charts.
The 2012 film has enjoyed another round of popularity in the run up to the 85th Academy Awards. And maybe people were onto something, because it subsequently won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
We close the Top 25 this week with another perennially popular article.
This list is derived from the WP:5000 report. It excludes the Wikipedia main page (and "wiki"), non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Notable removals this week: 2MASS J04414489 (4,603,030) (Unexplained massive view count, has been removed once prior); Seether (847,383 views) (over 840,000 views on February 19, an unexplained massive spike); Still Life at the Penguin Cafe (this 1988 ballet had an unexplained 3 day massive spike in views); and Cat anatomy (482,923 views, explanation still unknown for its continuing high view counts).
Last week it took 464,599 views to make this list, this week it was only 351,862 views, allowing more perennially popular articles not always in the Top 25, like Boat and World War II to appear this week.
The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create list: [1]
