English speakers, like most of humanity, are primarily a northern-hemispheric people, and as autumn draws close and the days grow shorter, as a group we tend to huddle around our flickering screens and remember what matters: TV, movies, sports and, of course, crazy doomsday prophecies.
The late-summer smash success of Straight Outta Compton remains the chief talking point of the English-speaking world, interrupted only by the welcome return of a Google Doodle.
Death is no stranger to this list, but it has never cast such a pall as this week, when for the first time half the slots in the top 10 were devoted to it, including the top 3.
It's July 4 weekend and on this list that means only one thing: Wimbledon. Sure, the American Independence Day gets noticed too, but it can't hold a candle to that staggeringly British sporting event.
As usual for the time of year, pop culture rules this week. The start of summer vacation in the US means a focus on summer movies, particularly blockbuster sequels Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Casual viewers may think I've posted the same list twice. But no, readers just happen to be really interested in May 2's Big Fight. In fact, last week was just the weigh-in and the trash talk. This week, the numbers actually increased.
Like colliding ocean liners, rousing entertainment and harsh reality merged ungainly in this week's top 10 list. The much heralded pay-per-view pummeling of Manny Pacquiao by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. dominated the list's top slots, giving this list one of its highest total view counts in months.
A dull week, with only three new entries in the top 10; a UFC champion, a Google Doodle and a Hindu festival involving people throwing powder at each other (though that does sound fun).
An odd juxtaposition this week, as interest in Fifty Shades of Grey coincided with the observance of the Chinese New Year and the annual festival of penance, Ash Wednesday.
Wikipedia presents itself as a repository for the world, and while that is a noble sentiment, it is still true that, Conservapedian complaints notwithstanding, the English language Wikipedia is very often the American Wikipedia, and never has that been more apparent than this week.
Traffic in the fog—most-viewed articles of 2014 include death, Facebook, and Ebola: As with last year, music stars were the majority of celebrities on the list, as their frequent concerts and media appearances keep their flames alight longer than others of their stripe.
Wikipédia sommes Charlie: It's a grim certainty what topic most interested Wikipedia viewers this week. The horrific attacks on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine have drawn anger and resolve from around the world, and also the attention of an English-speaking world that had previously never heard of it.
Unlike last year, Wikipedia viewers seem to have embraced the Christmas spirit, with three topics in the top 10 (and eight in the top 25) focused on the holiday season.
"It is, perhaps, ironic that humanity chose the week of Halloween to finally put its fears to bed. Let's face it: 2014 has been a year of tragedies, conflicts, plagues and pain, and eventually something had to break... Whether we at last came to terms with our limited ability to affect events, shoved those events under the carpet, or just decided to let go and move on, we turned our eye to more positive things, such as sports heroes, hotly anticipated movies, and lifelong learning; two Google doodles appeared in the top 25 for the first time since the beginning of August."
This could be the beginning of a new era for this list. Until now, decisions to remove suspicious content have been largely educated guesswork. This week though, we have a new collaborator who can shine a light on the origins and patterns, sorting once and for all the webwheat from the cyberchaff.
Even though it's not quite 3/4 over, it's safe to say that 2014 will go down as a year of war, mass murder, plane crashes and terrible diseases. While certainly paying it some heed, it's not surprising that Wikipedia viewers tried this week to find any alternative to that litany of tragedy and pain, and their chosen method of escape was, as usual, celebrity.
It's been a grim few weeks. It says something that formerly arresting crises like the war in Ukraine, Boko Haram and the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, despite still being ongoing, have fallen out of the top 10 to make way for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak and the equally if not more intense conflict against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Unsurprisingly, the World Cup continued to dominate the English Wikipedia's viewing statistics. In particular, the record-breaking performance of US goalkeeper Tim Howard and the tournament-ending injury to Brazil's Neymar drove large amount of views to their articles.
With Game of Thrones over for another year, the World Cup dominated yet again. And that is pretty much that. This list isn't likely to be particularly eventful until the Cup is won.
Despite the interest generated by its season finale, Game of Thrones still couldn't top the World Cup, which still dominated interest, as evidenced by the fact that this top 10 is virtually identical to last week's, just with a different dead celebrity.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the main draw this week, taking four slots. People appeared desperate to bone up on their trivia; checking not only this year's World Cup, but the last one. Even so, they still couldn't push Game of Thrones from the top ten. It will be interesting to see what happens come next week's season finale.
It seems that, more than commemorating the great moments in our history, more than even anticipating great sporting events, what our audience wants is the weird.
The northern summer is a time when one is meant to celebrate the exuberance of life; instead, commemoration of the dead was a significant theme this week.
In the US, Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning of summer, and summer is definitely on people's minds this week, with summer films Godzilla and X-Men: Days of Future Past, the apparently designated summer song "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea, and summer TV show, Game of Thrones.
It's a relief to see Google Doodles having an impact again; their wide coverage means that they inspire curiosity on many subjects which, for reasons of nationality, ethnicity or gender, might not be known in the English-speaking world. It's a shame then, that Wikipedia so often fails to keep up; articles on Google Doodles are almost invariably C-class, and seldom do justice to their subjects. Still, interest in Google Doodles has been waning in recent months—Audrey Hepburn last week was the first to top the list since December—so any rise in popularity is worth celebrating.
For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems the human race most wants is a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.
Not much to report this week. The same post-Easter celebrations (4/20, Earth Day) were popular again this year, except last year we were still reeling from the Boston Marathon bombing.
Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to 8 if movies released on video and new TV tech are are included.
The mysterious fate of MH370 still tops the list, but in all other respects our readership has retreated from the real world into its pop-cultural happy place: TV, movies, music, Reddit and Google Doodles all made an appearance.
Topics like the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 eased down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.
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.
An intensely busy week, as a confluence of celebratory, curious and urgent topics pushed typical residents like Facebook and Deaths in 2014 out of the top ten entirely.
There's nothing like a good old bit of Cold War nostalgia, combined with a suitably scary international incident, to focus our attention on the real world. That said, nothing could stem our outpouring of affection for the beloved comedian Harold Ramis, whose death managed to top the week in the face of those international concerns.
The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list.
Valentines Day got a somewhat muted reception this week, overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the death of Shirley Temple.
Two great sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics, collide in one week, transforming the top ten into a festival of flying feet, a carnival of colliding caraniums and a bacchanal of bouncing balls, combined to influence Wikipedia's most popular articles last week.
There are times when this job is hard. As an analogy, imagine navigating in fog at night, except you don't know where you are, you don't know where you want to go, and your flashlight keeps dying on you.
While the 71st Golden Globe Awards, held on 12 January, had an impact on the top 25, their presence was largely absent from the Top 10. With the exception of Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio, the only Golden Globe entrants in the Top 10 are films that would have been there anyway.
The various maladies that befall humanity got some well-known faces this week: the death of the well-liked actor James Avery topped the list, but Michael Schumacher, who is in a coma after a skiing accident, also drew attention.
An animated Google Doodle for computer programmer and naval rear admiral Grace Hopper generated another record-breaking hit count for the year, though the count for the list overall was lower than for that of the previous holder.
When one edits this page for too long, one is tempted to appoint oneself as the psychoanalyst for the human race, or at least the English-speaking portion thereof. Since nearly everyone uses Wikipedia, the constant stream of TV updates, pointless celebrity scandals, and inquiries after who has died can seem like a dreary peek into humanity's surprisingly banal collective consciousness.
Summary:Doctor Who nearly got cancelled in its first week because its premiere was swamped by coverage of the JFK assassination, which happened the same day. Thankfully, producers saw fit to rerun it the next day, which is now its official anniversary date.
It's not hard to guess which event is leading interest in the top 25 this week. The sheer scale of Typhoon Haiyan is staggering; estimates place its maximum windspeed upon first landfall in the Philippines on November 6 at 315 km/h, which would make it the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to reach land. To date, the storm has killed nearly 4000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 4 million homes.
The numbers this week are beyond anything that has been seen since this report began. The top view count beats the average by an order of magnitude. Usually the appearance of numbers this big on the list is due to spamming, but in this case it seems they are due to honest interest; more specifically, Google Doodles, which for the first time claimed all five top slots. This column has raised numerous times the power of a Google Doodle to shine light on Wikipedia, but the wattage has never been as high as this.
It's fair to say that commemorating death was a strong theme this week, with Lou Reed's passing generating interest, as well as a Google Doodle celebrating the costume designer Edith Head. And of course, the world's greatest celebrations of the dead, Halloween and the Day of the Dead, were also popular this week.
The top 10 encapsulates the history of human aviation; at #1, a Google Doodle celebrating the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump; at #10, the enduringly popular scifi film Gravity, a paean to human spaceflight. It's odd to think it's taken us 200 years to travel about that many miles up.
Peaceful potpourri: A slow week, with low overall views and the Top 10 dominated by longstanding pages. Gravity, Alfonso Cuaron's outer space-set action art film, not only held its position at the top of the US box office but climbed to the top of the Wikipedia chart as well, showing that it has become a major talking point.
If you're living in the United States, what did you do during the government shutdown? Well, it seems most people watched the final episode of Breaking Bad.
The saga of Walter White, chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin, as told in the critically adored television series Breaking Bad, has been a water-cooler necessity for years, and now, as it nears its end, audiences are feverishly following every plot thread to guess what the finale will reveal.
The top 10 is bookended by unlucky dates, as Friday the 13th fell just after the anniversary of 9/11. Breaking Bad's final season continued to draw attention, while interest in Miley Cyrus's youthful exuberance is fading only slowly.
oh my!: While the Syrian Civil War crept its slow way into the minds of the public, with a new fourth related entry in the top 25, the top 10 remained dominated by celebrity, mainly sports and music. Two megabucks transfers stimulated public interest in football/soccer ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, while Lil Wayne's public apology ahead of his latest album release sent him to the top.
The debt that Wikipedia owes sites like Reddit or Google often goes unacknowledged around here. If the purpose of Wikipedia is to bring knowledge to the world, then it is sites like these that are actually doing it.
The arrival of the final season of Breaking Bad, arguably the most critically acclaimed TV series since The Wire, has spurred interest across the board, with two entries in the top 10. A Google Doodle to celebrate the birthday of physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave entries for both the man and his ill-used cat. This week was also another banner week for Indian viewers, with four India-related topics in the list, including no. 1, no doubt aided by the celebration of that country's Independence Day on August 15.
It's crickets and tumbleweeds this week, as the top 10 sees its lowest view-count since the project began. If Wikipedia were selling anything, we'd be having a fire sale by now.
Somewhat predictably, the birth of a new heir to the House of Windsor on 22 July led the English-speaking world to suddenly embrace Monarchism. In honour of this occasion, the Traffic report will be assiduously employing British spelling and dating conventions. Cheers.
Death hangs over the top 10 this week, as tragic deaths both past and present continued to cast their pall over an already troubled world. The death of Corey Monteith led to a spike in interest in the man himself, his girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, and the show that made them both famous, Glee.
The real world made a strong showing in the top 10 last week, as news stories such as Yahoo!'s purchase of Tumblr, the murder of Odin Lloyd, the continuing drama over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the ill-health of Nelson Mandela crowded out the usual roster of TV shows, movies, websites and video games. Not that they were entirely excluded, of course.
With most TV shows on hiatus for the summer, attention has turned to movies, celebrity and sports. The dramatic events at the 2013 Confederations Cup drew massive attention, as did summer blockbusters like Man of Steel and World War Z. But the most searched event of the week was the tragic and unexpected death of popular actor James Gandolfini on June 19.
The season finale of Game of Thrones ensured that the epic high fantasy series would dominate the top 10 again last week; however, it was joined by Maurice Sendak and Man of Steel.
Last week's most popular article list on the English Wikipedia was dominated by the massively popular TV series Game of Thrones, which claimed six slots in the top 25, including the top three. Its popularity was likely stoked by the most recent episode, The Rains of Castamere. Bollywood continued to increase its share of views as well, aided by the tragic suicide of star Nafisa Khan.