Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/January 5 to 11, 2014

The Top 25 Report

Summary: Thanks to User:Atlasowa, we now have a tool that enables us to see traffic at far higher resolution; not just day by day, but hour by hour. This means we can get a far more accurate picture of which short surges in popularity are likely natural and which are not, and frankly, it couldn't have come at a better time, since there were a LOT of anomalous entries this week, most stacked helpfully near the top of the list. A side effect of this new perspective is that I will have to start including articles that fit the natural profile, even if I have no idea why they're there. So say hello to the new, less decisive, more inclusive Top 25 Report.

As for this week, well it looks like Reddit creep is back, with three articles in the top 25 due to Reddit threads; four if you count Alliance (Firefly), which I couldn't locate, but certainly looks like a Reddit thread. Also, Google Doodles again made an impact, with two entries.

For the week of January 5-11, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages* were:

Rank	Last	Wks	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	4	3	Jordan Belfort		526,424	Onetime stockbroker who spent 22 months in prison for running a penny stock boiler room, he went on to write the books that the film The Wolf of Wall Street is based on. Yes, he did actually call himself "The Wolf of Wall Street".
2	-	-	Zora Neale Hurston		493,678	The famed early 20th century chronicler of black American folklore (including Hoodoo and the stories that inspired Uncle Remus) got a Google Doodle on her would-have-been 113th birthday on January 7
3	-	-	Polar vortex		477,713	Despite being known about for years, the polar vortex became a buzzword overnight when it gallumphed onto the lower 48 this week, bringing its home clime to places less appreciative of its charms.
4	3	2	Sherlock (TV series)		473,438	The contemporary-set revamp of the Sherlock Holmes mythos has become a surprise global hit (and turned its star, Benedict Cumberbatch into an international sex symbol) and is now watched in 200 countries and territories (out of 254), so it's not surprising that its much ballyhooed return from a two-year hiatus was met with feverish anticipation.
5	-	-	Alliance (Firefly)		456,430	Why this Sino-American union of space opera overlords from the cult series Firefly suddenly gained nearly half a million views in just 16 hours I have yet to determine, but it does appear to have happened without robotic aid.
6	-	-	Simone de Beauvoir		447,882	The French foundational feminist and existentialist got a Google Doodle on her would-have-been 95th birthday
7	5	53	Facebook		434,746	A perennially popular article
8	7	3	The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)		419,781	Martin Scorsese's acclaimed account of one person's contribution to our general economic misery opened to a respectable $34 million on Christmas Day.
9	-	3	List of Doctor Who serials	List	386,922	With the Christmas special over, people are looking forward to the new season next autumn, with its new Doctor.
10	-	-	Dennis Rodman		363,203	If there's one thing this five-time NBA Champion and two-time NBA All-Star knows other than basketball, it's how to draw attention to himself. Whether he's marrying himself, crotch-kicking cameramen, or stepping out on the Chicago Bulls midway the NBA Finals to go wrestling with Hulk Hogan, this guy is living proof that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Until now, perhaps. In 2013, he began making trips to North Korea, entertaining its basketball-mad dictator, Kim Jong-Un. After claiming that he would speak to him on behalf of jailed US citizen Kenneth Bae, Rodman backed down, claiming that Bae was responsible for his incarceration. Upon returning to the US this week, he apologised for the comment, claiming he had been drunk.
11	-	-	Carl Tanzler		327,284	This guy redefines the term "madly in love"; after falling for a dying patient in a Key West clinic, he stole her corpse and lived with it in his house for seven years. So naturally his page was brought up on a Reddit forum about creepy Wiki pages.
12	-	-	Hákarl		321,539	A Reddit thread appeared this week about this Icelandic delicacy, which consists of cubes of meat from a shark that has been left to rot in the ground for 6 weeks. It apparently has a distinctive ammoniac flavour that Wikipedia calls an "acquired taste". You don't say.
13	24	62	Deaths in 2014	List	321,403	The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
14	-	-	Marcus Luttrell		310,316	The former US Navy SEAL whose biography was the inspiration for the film Lone Survivor (see below)
15	14	16	United States		300,044	The 8th most popular article of 2013 and the 3rd most popular Wikipedia article between 2010 and 2012. Even when not on the list, this article is a perpetual bubble-under-er. Not really surprising that the country with by far the most English speakers would be the most popular on the English Wikipedia.
16	10	5	Frozen (2013 film)		286,311	Disney's de facto sequel to Tangled has become something of a sensation. It reclaimed the top spot in the US charts on its sixth weekend (a feat only matched by Avatar and Titanic) and has already outgrossed its predecessor both domestically and worldwide, with a total of nearly $700 million.
17	-	-	Mónica Spear		268,895	The former Miss Venezuela and telenovela actress was murdered on January 6 in an attempted robbery
18	-	-	List of Sherlock episodes	List	258,022	Fans of Sherlock are eager to keep up with the show.
19	-	-	Her (film)		253,696	Spike Jonze's latest curio, in which a man falls in love with his computer operating system (it has the voice of Scarlet Johansson, if that explains things) is not connecting with audiences; its Cinemascore is a B-, ridiculously low for the usually generous poll, and it is doing badly at the box office. Regardless, Wikipedia-users still seem interested; perhaps the plot speaks to us digital natives in ways it doesn't to those in Peoria.
20	-	22	IPv6		249,291	This was one of the most-viewed articles of 2013, and there remains a certain suspicion that, like many articles on technical subjects, it may be over-inflated. However, it is important enough to be given the benefit of the doubt. 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.
21	-	-	Phyllis Smith		243,376	The former star of The Office got a Reddit thread this week when her Wiki page revealed she had once been a cheerleader and Burlesque dancer.
22	-	-	Lone Survivor (film)		236,957	Peter Berg's account of a botched military operation in Afghanistan opened to a fairly staggering $38 million this week.
23	6	16	Breaking Bad		231,465	People just can't let this show go. The most Wikipedia'd show of the year ended for good three months ago; even so, with its appearance on countless "best of the year" lists, and an unexpected endorsement from US President Barack Obama, it's still drumming interest from the public.
24	-	-	Yogendra Yadav		228,294	One of the leading figures in Arvind Kejriwal's left-wing insurgent Aam Aadmi Party that hopes to break through the longstanding duopoly at the top of Indian politics, the Hindu nationalist BJP and the Indian National Congress, in this year's contentious general election.
25	22	10	India		224,894	The second-largest English-speaking population on Earth is a regular visitor to the top 25.

Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 224,894. Last week: 234,129.

The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create this list.

Almosts: Wikipedia (224,244 views); Bitcoin (214,510 views); Lizzie Velásquez (206,183 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 I can't find a reason for an article to be included doesn't mean there isn't one; conversely, 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.
- Lycos: the geriatric web portal seems to be back en vogue, for no apparent reason.
- Java: My only guess is a bot searching for the programming language.
- Several articles related to global warming (including global warming) have been removed from this list; their continued high view counts are raising suspicions of artificial inflation. I'll believe that Climategate was #1 during a typhoon, but that it got more hits than Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving? No.
- Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
- Meat/Vegetarian cuisine: another mysterious reappearance, most likely due to bots.

Specific exclusions this week:
- E. T. A. Hoffmann: sudden spike with no buildup or tail, that lasted for exactly 48 hours. Views jumped from 17 in one hour to 28,000+ the next.
- The Godfather: 800,000 views in one 8-hour spike.
- Pornography: My collaborators suggest I drop this. It could be Wikipedia users returning to their old ways, but I'd rather nip this in the bud before it becomes the next Climatic Research Unit email controversy.
- Netbook: All views in a big four hour spike without buildup or tail.
- Memory (song): Has a big two hour spike. Then drops. Then comes back, then drops completely again. No edits to the article during the spike.