This is a list of Wikipedia’s most popular pages, and it has a lot of questionable items on it

Enrique February 12, 2013 8

I’m not sure what’s more amazing here, the fact that Wikipedia member ‘West.andrew.g’ has spent 3 whole years downloading and analyzing data traffic across Wikipedia’s English-language pages as a research project, or the fact that right below Facebook, United States, YouTube, and Google is Justin Bieber. Sigh.

West.andrew.g has posted data from his ongoing research project to Wikipedia’s community-managed newspaper, The Signpost, and the results are pretty interesting to say the least. The results are split into two categories: long-term results collected from data from 2010 to 2012 (second image below), and short-term results that came with sharp traffic spikes (first image below) — or in other words, celebrity deaths and Super Bowl halftime performers.

What surprised me the most would have to be the Wiki article being the most popular on Wikipedia. Can’t get any more meta than that. Which of these articles surprised you? Tell us in the comments!

[via Wikipedia (The Signpost), The Verge, image via iloveJB123]

TAGS » Justin Bieber, news, Wikipedia

POSTED IN » World Wide Web

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About the author: Enrique View all posts by Enrique

Enrique brings you your daily tech news on dotTech. When he isn't writing the news, you'll find him playing video games or traveling.

8 Comments »

Seamus McSeamus February 12, 2013 at 10:21 AM (comment permalink) -

I’m not sure what is more disturbing; the fact that Bieber is #6, or that so many people are going to Wiki for information about sex.

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Ashraf February 12, 2013 at 5:31 PM (comment permalink) -
Mr. Boss

@Seamus McSeamus: Well Wikipedia is the second result when searching for ‘sex’ on Google, so… yeah… LOL

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Enrique February 12, 2013 at 10:43 PM (comment permalink) -
Minion

@Ashraf: I just tried it and it was the FIRST result on mine. Haha. Oh well…

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AFPhys February 13, 2013 at 6:50 AM (comment permalink) -

I am almost certain that the total number of times I have seen any of those sites on Wikipedia is exactly zero.

I must be weird, I guess, to have no interest in searching for information on those topics.

I have a feeling that the reason for Wikipedia being at the top of the list is that visiting the base page of the web site is counted as seeing its entry.

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Shawn February 13, 2013 at 4:23 PM (comment permalink) -

@AFPhys

We don’t need Wiki we’ve got Dottech ;-)

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Ashraf February 13, 2013 at 5:48 PM (comment permalink) -
Mr. Boss

@Enrique: You know Google personalizes search results based on past history and activity, right? You get what I mean :-P
@AFPhys: Hmm? I’m not exactly sure what you mean
@Shawn: ikr?

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michael clyde February 13, 2013 at 5:49 PM (comment permalink) -

that’s JUSTINA not justin

but then, if i was (or had been) involved with selena gomez you could call me JUSTINA all day long
or even JUSTDISGUSTIN, i’m open-minded… more or less

michael clyde

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Enrique February 14, 2013 at 12:45 AM (comment permalink) -
Minion

@Shawn: Exactly! Woohoo!

@Ashraf: Uhhh… No it doesn’t!! :p

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