Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 29 to October 5, 2013)[edit]

← Last week's report – Next week's Report →

Summary: Things barely changed since last week, with Breaking Bad still dominating and most topics being holdovers. In the top 10 alone, the only new articles are related to a crisis caused by financial disagreement in the U.S. government, a deceased best-selling author, and a newly released blockbuster.

For the week of September 29 - October 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	Class	Views	Notes
1	1	9	Breaking Bad		1,479,907	The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11, and actually ended this week (see #15).
2			Government shutdown in the United States		1,202,416^[1]	October started with the funding for federal government operations getting cut due to the budget for the upcoming fiscal year not getting released in time. It's been 15 years since the last one, and this time it's causing an impact, with lots of people taking forced work absences.
3			United States federal government shutdown of 2013		730,644
4	-	-	Tom Clancy		675,054	The best-selling author of espionage thrillers, most of whom star agent Jack Ryan, and whose name use has even been purchased by Ubisoft, died on October 1 of a heart attack.
5	5	8	List of Breaking Bad episodes	List	618,240	People will turn to this page to keep up with the show.
6	7	7	Breaking Bad (season 5)	List	571,349	As above, people want to keep up with this show.
7	2	39	Facebook		515,310	A perennially popular article
8	13	2	Lorde		502,186	The not-quite 17-year-old singer-songwriter from New Zealand released her modestly titled debut album, Pure Heroine, on 27 September.
9			Gravity (film)		426,904	Alfonso Cuaron's outer space opus is shaping into the critical darling blockbuster of the year, and had a respectable $55 million opening weekend.
10	4	2	Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.		410,581	Joss Whedon's extension of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into television has been met with mixed reviews but (to date, anyway) fairly stellar ratings.
11	23	9	Attack on Titan		389,751	This anime TV series has attained cult status in the Nerdisphere.
12	12	20	List of Bollywood films of 2013	List	371,291	An established staple of the top 25.
13	-	-	Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act		364,902	AKA Obamacare, the government-provided healthcare system overhaul launched its website, HealthCare.gov.
14	15	42	World War II		361,550	Another perennially popular article. (The 16th most popular article from 2010–12, in fact, see Table 2 here.)
15			Felina (Breaking Bad)		360,047	The series finale of Breaking Bad (#1) was broadcast this week, attracting 10 million viewers.
16			Meek Mill		351,693	This rapper has released his latest mixtape, Dreamchasers 3.
17	7	37	Google		347,805	A perennially popular article.
18	10	49	Deaths in 2013	List	340,763	The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
19	18	5	Miley Cyrus		312,955	Well, she twerked herself into her coming of age, then graduated into adulthood by riding nude on a wrecking ball while licking a sledgehammer. Any attempt to top this will have to involve shaving her head or shoplifting.
20	-	-	Noodles (musician)		308,667	The Offspring guitarist Kevin Wasserman was the subject of a Reddit thread this week.
21			Mahatma Gandhi		304,202	Gandhi is the kind of person who deserves to be homaged with a holiday - and that's the case in India, namely on his birthday, October 2.
22	14	4	Wikipedia		293,869	Over the last few weeks, Wikipedia has secured a place at the top of its own chart, and, by all appearances, a legitimate one.
23			Steve Jobs		292,456	The flamboyant late CEO of Apple Inc. had a prolonged spike in views, for uncertain reasons.
24			Besharam (2013 film)		284,002	This Bollywood film starring Ranbir Kapoor had a great opening day, but the intakes fell abruptly in the second amidst negative reviews.
25	5	4	Grand Theft Auto V		282,338	The sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed video games of all time (seriously) and arguably the only situation in which someone will cheer you for hijacking and then crashing a jumbo jet full of passengers, just made $1 billion in 3 days. That's a lot of gypped prostitutes.

^ Combination of the views in both Government shutdown in the United States (556,134 views) and its former name Government shutdown (646,282)

Almosts:

Asian giant hornet, (279,414 views) (236,587 views); Furlough (278,405 views, see #2); Silk Road (marketplace) (275,113 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 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.
- 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.

Specific exclusions this week:

Go (game): The ancient Chinese strategy game has been getting a lot of views over the last few weeks, though I have yet to determine why (to be honest, it may simply be due to the difficulty of Googling the word "go").

Notes:

Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 282,338. Last week: 241,360

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

[1] Combination of the views in both Government shutdown in the United States (556,134 views) and its former name Government shutdown (646,282)

[1]