Summary: The real world is beginning to creep its way into the minds of users. As the speculations about the strike on Syria begin to look like reality, searches on the topic are beginning to outnumber those on celebrity misbehaviour. Not that they are being totally ignored, mind you. In the runup to the qualifiers for the 2014 Football World Cup in Rio, football also seems to be moving up the list, with two megabucks transfers triggering public speculation, and doubtless no little astonishment.

For the week of September 1 - 7, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:

Rank	Last	Wks	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	-	-	Lil Wayne		662,661		Apparently, apologising to your fans on Twitter can work wonders, as Lil Wayne has gone from not receiving any BET Award or MTV Video Music Award nominations to coming tops in Wikipedia views, a far more worthy honour.
2	-	-	Rosh Hashanah		590,908		That's the Jewish New Year to the rest of us. Jews the world over ushered in the year 5774 on September 4.
3	4	35	Facebook		580,025		A perennially popular article
4	-	-	Mesut Özil		532,862		The German footballer was recently transferred to Arsenal FC for $67 million, which, for a presumed 5-year contract works out at roughly $1500 an hour.
5	5	5	Breaking Bad		507,227		The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11.
6	1	2	Twerking		502,811		The new term for girls waggling their bottoms onstage continues to be a point of interest.
7	6	2	Syria		468,913		The next potential Middle Eastern country in which the USA might embroil itself has, unsurprisingly, continued to be a topic of interest this week.
8	-	-	John Wisden		398,834		The star cricketer and creator of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack got a boost thanks to a Google Doodle on his 187th birthday on September 5.
9	-	-	Charlie Hunnam		393,246		The English actor and Sons of Anarchy star may not have wowed the English-speaking world in Pacific Rim but his casting as the title role of the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey has sent his popularity soaring.
10	-	-	Gareth Bale		392,593		The Welsh footballer was just signed by Real Madrid for a reported 100 million euros ($133 million), an even more astronomical sum than the above Mesut Özil.
11	-	-	David Frost		388,037		Venerable British broadcasting institution who memorably decamped the BBC for al-Jazeera in his later years died on 31 August.
12	-	-	Labor Day		383,336		The first Monday in September is the traditional end of the US summer season, and, for some people, the last time of the year it is in any way excusable to wear white.
13	8	45	Deaths in 2013	List	377,900		The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
14	-	-	Dakota Johnson		355,325		The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson has been cast as the much put-upon female lead in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey alongside Charlie Hunnam (see #9 above)
15	16	3	Breaking Bad (season 5)	List	331,746		People will turn to this page to keep up with the show.
16	-	-	Diana Nyad		326,346		On September 2, the 64-year-old swimmer became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
17	2	3	Robin Thicke		326,049		The Blue-eyed soul singer and son of Alan Thicke is still very much in the news; his role in Miley Cyrus's stage shenanigans, his unseemly behaviour with a female fan and his recent new album have kept him in the public eye.
18	11	16	List of Bollywood films of 2013	List	326,006		An established staple of the top 25.
19	22	4	List of Breaking Bad episodes	List	323,265		As above, people want to keep up with this show.
20	-	-	Tommy Morrison		322,286		This controversial former heavyweight boxing champion got a boost after his death from AIDS on September 1
21	19	2	Syrian civil war		320,460		If your country is potentially to become involved in a protracted, seemingly insolvable conflict, it helps to know more about it, and with the entire English-speaking world potentially on the guest list, interest on the English-speaking Wikipedia is understandably high.
22	-	-	Sarin		316,890		The nerve gas is one of several chemical weapons believed to be among the arsenal of Bashar al-Assad. It probably got the most attention over the other more dangerous suspected agents due to the possibility that British companies might have sold Assad the precursors.
23	12	33	Google		316,484		A perennially popular article.
24	21	2	Bashar al-Assad		311,606		The dictator of Syria is certainly in no mood to concede the civil war currently wracking his country. Whether he resorted to chemical weapons is still not known with certainty, but the possibility has certainly galvanized the situation somewhat.
25	-	-	Teachers' Day		291,642		This page arguably got a boost thanks to India's Teacher's Day on September 5 (A Google Doodle to celebrate China's Teacher's Day on September 10 occurred too late to be incorporated into this list).

Almosts:

• IPv6 (279,902 views); Fifty Shades of Grey (277,350 views); Wiki (276,006 views)

Exclusions:

• This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish. Please also keep in mind that the explanations given for these articles' popularity are, fundamentally, guesses. 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.
  • G: This, or alternately G-force, frequently appears in the top 25. It is probably due to people typing "G" for "Google" in Google Chrome's search bar and hastily clicking "enter".
  • Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
  • Lycos: the geriatric web portal seems to be back en vogue, for no apparent reason.
  • May you live in interesting times: the ancient Chinese curse, which, as far as is known, is neither ancient nor Chinese, has been trending a lot recently, for reasons unknown.

• Specific removals this week (those for whom no explanation for their popularity could be found):
  • Ham: if you can come up with a reason why this article got a million views in the 3 days leading up to Rosh Hashanah that preserves the dignity of the human race, I'll give you a cookie.
  • Central processing unit; Integrated circuit; Computer program; Hello world program; Computer multitasking; Microchip implant (animal); Microchip (disambiguation); Context switch; Computer process: large number of tech-related articles this week; tech-related articles often suddenly appear in the top 25 for no discernible reason. All had similar spikes in views between Sep 2 and 4.
  • Penguins: No, not penguin. Weirdly, this also had a similar spike between Sep 2 and 4. Unless Wikipedia has uncovered an evil plot to create an army of penguin cyborgs, I can't see why this should be the case.
  • Apollonius of Tyana: The Greek philosopher, supposed miracle-worker and contemporary of Jesus Christ seems like perfect Reddit fodder, but apparently not.
  • List of Mario role-playing games: This... no. I got nothing.
  • Southeastern Conference: There is probably some current sporty event that explains this, but it is such a general article that it's hard to pin down exactly what.

Notes:

• Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 291,642. Last week: 277,488

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