← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Summary: The month of May is upon us, and with it, apparently, are a plethora of spring festivals, from International Workers' Day to Cinco de Mayo and plain old May Day. Opposing this spirit of vernal rebirth was a surprisingly large number of violent and tragic deaths, including Jeff Hanneman's encounter with flesh-eating bacteria, Chris Kelly's encounter with a speedball, and a fairly despicable murder of a likely innocent man in a Pakistani prison.
For the week of April 29 to May 5, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Rank | Last | Wks | Article | Views | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | – | – | Jeff Hanneman | 1,000,226 | The unexpected, tragic, and somewhat disturbing illness prior to the death from another cause of the lead guitarist for the band Slayer got under people's skin this week. |
2 | – | – | Labour Day | 990,333 | Most likely the result of users searching for International Workers' Day, which falls on May 1 and got a lot of attention, particularly in the left-wing press. |
3 | 2 | 2 | Iron Man 3 | 975,476 | As expected, this mega-blockbuster, expected to join its predecessor in the $1 billion-earners club, had a 33% jump in views after its US debut on May 3 |
4 | - | - | Jason Collins | 690,067 | In a self-penned cover story in the May 6 issue of Sports Illustrated, Collins became the first member of a major American men's sports team to come out as gay, with the predictable reaction from the Christian right. |
5 | 24 | 2 | Aashiqui 2 | 641,956 | The popularity of this Bollywood blockbuster is a window on the substantial Indian presence on the English Wiki English. |
6 | - | - | May Day | 624,930 | Before it was International Workers's Day, May Day, aka May 1, was a fount of odd and esoteric traditions. |
7 | 3 | 9 | Game of Thrones | 556,635 | This epic fantasy TV series launched its third season on March 31, and has seen its ratings almost double on its premiere episode. |
8 | 11 | 2 | The Great Gatsby | 539,104 | This perennial contender for the Great American Novel and eternal junior high school homework assignment got a 33% increase in views this week, most likely from users looking for the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film. |
9 | 5 | 17 | 473,125 | A perennially popular article. | |
10 | - | - | Kris Kross | 466,872 | This 1990s hip-hop duo, famous for, oddly, wearing their clothes backwards, sparked interest after the death of one of them, Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly, from a drug overdose. |
11 | - | - | Steve Jobs | 438,784 | The flamboyant late CEO of Apple Inc. had a prolonged spike in views from April 15 to May 3, for uncertain reasons. |
12 | - | - | Cinco de Mayo | 434,702 | One of the most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia ever, this celebration of Mexican-American culture (originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French) occurred, conveniently, on May 5. |
13 | 8 | 27 | Deaths in 2013 | 418,124 | The lists of deaths in the current year is always a quite popular article. |
14 | - | - | Sarabjit Singh | 418,079 | The sad story of this Indian national, believed by many to have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death by a Pakistani court for a fatal series of bombings in Lahore and Faisalabad in 1990, came to an end on May 2, when he was pronounced dead after having been beaten by a brick and blade-wielding mob. |
15 | 20 | 29 | YouTube | 392,365 | Another perennially popular article |
16 | 19 | 3 | Game of Thrones (season 3) | 379,879 | see #7 above |
17 | 13 | 29 | World War II | 371,553 | Another perennially popular article. (The 16th most popular article from 2010–12, in fact, see Table 2 here.) |
18 | - | 3 | Arrow (TV series) | 367,076 | This currently popular Green Arrow TV series is nearing the end of its first season. |
19 | 22 | 3 | List of Game of Thrones episodes | 366,478 | see #3 above |
20 | 12 | 9 | 361,143 | A perennially popular article | |
21 | - | - | Satyajit Ray | 330,871 | The hugely respected Indian filmmaker (whose Apu trilogy was the inspiration for the name of a character on The Simpsons) was the subject of a Google Doodle on his birthday on May 2. |
22 | - | - | Robert Downey, Jr. | 329,028 | The onetime troubled star of the Iron Man trilogy rode his #1 movie into the top 25. |
23 | - | - | International Workers' Day | 326,860 | The actual day searched for by those looking at Labour Day, above. |
24 | - | 4 | Macklemore | 316,515 | Popular singer returning the top 25, though nearly always in the top 50 |
25 | - | - | United States | 301,934 | A newcomer to the top 25, but the 3rd most popular Wikipedia article between 2010-2012, and 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 Wiki English. |
Specific removals this week (those articles for which no reason for any sudden popularity could be located):
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article April 28 to May 4, 2013, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.