Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/March 9 to 15, 2014

Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (March 9 to 15, 2014)

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Summary: However their inherent drama may affect us, air accidents are rare. Out of roughly 40 million scheduled passenger flights in 2012, only 119 ended in an accident, of which just 15 involved fatalities. Accidents during flight, as opposed to take-off or landing, are rarer still, comprising just eight percent of the total. Put simply, planes don't just fall out of the sky. Except, of course, when they do, and the utterly mystifying events surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which has not fallen from the sky so much as vanished from it entirely, has left an information-starved public scrambling for precedents, some logical, some... not. Other than that, not a busy week, with a relatively low entry point and most topics given over to TV.

For the week of March 9 to 15, 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	Image	Notes
1	-	-	Malaysia Airlines Flight 370		1,664,252		It's like something out of a novel by Robert Ludlum or Michael Crichton, or maybe an episode of Fringe: a fully loaded passenger jet deliberately cuts communication, flies dark for up to an hour, changes course and then... disappears without a trace. All while over one of the busiest shipping lanes and densely populated islands on the planet. It's no wonder people are spooked, or that the cable news channels are running 24/7 on pure speculation. But until more genuine information emerges, transfixed viewers, not to mention desperate relatives, have little else to go on.
2	-	44	YouTube		1,395,252		A perennially popular article, but owes its current high position to a one-day spike on March 14; one-day spikes are usually the result of bots, though it's possible this one might have something to so with a recent spike in coverage for YouTube user PewDiePie and his unconventional rise to riches.
3	9	7	True Detective (TV series)		864,772		The HBO police procedural, starring Woody Harrelson and recently minted Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey, had its season finale on 9 March.
4	-	-	Air France Flight 447		713,285		This 2009 air flight eerily prefigured the still-unresolved fate of Flight MH370 by crashing into the Atlantic Ocean during cruising, an exceptionally rare event. A quote from the New York Times in the event's Wiki page is chilling in retrospect: "No other passenger jet in modern history had disappeared so completely – without a Mayday call or a witness or even a trace on radar." That is certainly no longer true.
5	-	-	Bermuda Triangle		652,641		In the absence of facts, people turn to myths, so again it's not surprising to see this old malarkey resurrected, despite the fact that there is a far more fitting candidate for this event. The Triangle is largely a work of science fiction (ship disappearances are no more common in the purported area than elsewhere in the region) but when the real world makes no sense, sometimes nonsense gains credence.
6	-	2	Internet		478,569		Some have speculated that the attention given to the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web's invention by Sir Tim Berners-Lee has led to a spike in interest in this article, despite the fact that the Web and the Net are not the same thing (the Internet was invented by the US military in 1969).
7	25	51	Deaths in 2014		424,821		The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
8	-	-	Boeing 777		375,252		The relatively new model wide-body aircraft with an exceptional safety record came under scrutiny thanks to the events of MA Flight 370.
9	-	-	Flag of Bikini Atoll		369,827		The flag of the first island chain to be affected by the blast of a hydrogen bomb, which depicts the debt the islanders feel the US still owes them, became a topic of interest on Reddit this week.
10	-	2	Saint Patrick's Day		346,941		The lead-up to one of the biggest drinking days of the year (and in the USA at least, opportunities for grade-school cruelty) on March 17 is not generating nearly as much interest as last year. It seems people have other things on their minds.
11	15	23	The Walking Dead (TV series)		325,530		The show's fourth season recommenced on 9 February.
12	-	-	CryptoLocker		324,415		One of the latest and most feared of a new type of malware called "ransomware", which locks you out of your files until you pay a price, got a two-day spike on 12-13 March, for reasons as yet unknown, though the Trojan has been in the public eye since late last year.
13	1	3	Crimea		321,335		Last week's international incident of choice has now taken a back seat, understandably, to matters less of global power and more of basic human drama.
14	14	13	Frozen (2013 film)		317,267		Even excluding its Oscar win for Best Original Song, 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), has already outgrossed its quasi-predecessor both domestically and worldwide, having recently joined the exclusive $1 billion club. I must say I'm looking forward to the phenomenon fading, as it means I won't constantly hear that Madonna song in my head every time I do this.
15	-	-	Titanfall		300,506		This futuristic first-person shooter, in which the standard creeping-around-chest-high-walls-in-grey-and-brown-burned-out-buildings is occasionally supplemented with giant walking mechs, was released on 11 March and is touted as the "killer app" for the XBox One. So far, signs are promising; its Metacritic score is high and pre-order sales are through the roof, but whether the XBox One can sustain the momentum longterm is still uncertain.
16	-	10	Wikipedia		274,461		Wikipedia returns to its own Top 25 for the third time in a month.
17	-	-	Pi		270,188		The world's most famous irrational number has attained an almost mythic status in the public consciousness, so much so that it even has its own day to celebrate it, Pi Day, on 14 March, though the reference only really makes sense in the all-but uniquely American date system as 03/14. Other countries have to make due with the alternate 22 July (22/7).
18	-	34	List of Bollywood films of 2014		266,055		An established staple of the top 25 returns.
19	-	4	The Walking Dead (season 4)		263,041		People are undoubtedly using this page to look up air dates.
20	17	24	United States		255,546		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.
21	-	-	How I Met Your Mother (season 9)		253,101		People are looking up the latest episode in the final run to the series finale on March 31.
22	-	-	Resurrection (U.S. TV series)		250,293		It seems people can't get enough of the undead these days, even if they aren't craving your assorted bodily tissues, organs or fluids. This Brad Pitt-produced series has been a hit right out the gate, gaining double-digit Nielsen ratings for its first two episodes.
23	-	4	House of Cards (U.S. TV series)		242,874		The second season of this political thriller series was released in its entirety on Netflix on 13 February.
24	-	21	Game of Thrones		232,768		This TV show's previous season, not to be glib, owned this list. I expect its upcoming season, due to commence on 6 April, to do no less.
25	-	-	List of British monarchs		239,576		This list owes its presence in the top 25 to a two-day spike on 9 March and 10 March, the second of which happens to be Commonwealth Day, an annual celebration of all things British and Monarchical. Not likely a coincidence.

• Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 232,768. Last week: 406,330.

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

• Almosts: Daylight saving time (237,494 views); Eminem (234,215 views); Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (231,850 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.
  • Pornography: 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.
  • Alive: Link to disambig with no apparent reason for being.
  • 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.
  • IPv6: I have to face facts; I've been allowing this into the top 25 for months as it is the kind of issue that would appeal to web denizens (ala Bitcoin) but its insane popularity is just too high explain by human interest alone. It's getting help.
  • Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.

• Specific exclusions this week:
  • A/B testing: When an obscure technical topic such as this appears in the top 25, it's usually the result of a Reddit thread. Not this time apparently.
  • The Sum of All Fears (film): Mysterious one-day spike on 9 March, with no tailoff, suggesting non-human origin.
  • Clonetroopers/Plantronics Bluetooth: Links to redirects are usually the result either of very specific weblinks or bots. Since I can't find such a weblink, I automatically assume bot.
  • History of Bălţi: There is simply no logical way to explain the sudden rise of this hyper-obscure article except as the result of a traffic-checking botnet, ala cat anatomy