Summary: A slow week, deducible from the low number of highest views (1.56 million, down from 1.85 million last week), and the predominance of perennially popular articles (World War II, Deaths in 2013) as well as articles on popular websites (Google, Facebook, Youtube), popular films (Oz the Great and Powerful, Argo), popular television shows (The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones) and popular video games (Tomb Raider, SimCity - though the latter's notoriety was likely aided by a disastrous launch week). The bizarre story of a man who died when his bed fell into a sinkhole in Florida made sinkholes a popular topic this week, while the Death of Hugo Chavez gained him the number 2 slot. The wrestler Paul Bearer also gained views by dying, and the rise of Oz the Great and Powerful allowed Mila Kunis to usurp Jennifer Lawrence's throne as Wikipedia's most popular actress, though time will tell if she can retain her crown. The Harlem Shake phenomenon continued its surprisingly slow decline, from four entries two weeks ago, to three last week, to two now.
For the week of March 3 to March 9, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Long-awaited return of the beloved SimCity video game franchise, marred by a spectacularly bad opening week in which always online DRM meant millions of people who had purchased the game could not play it for days.
The popular online retailer's article has had a rise in page counts since February 13, arguably due to a dispute with US state governments over paying state tax.
Popular science geek sitcom. A perennially popular article that last entered the top 25 in the week of January 27-February 2.
This list is derived from the WP:5000 report. It excludes the Wikipedia main page (and "wiki"), non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Notable removals this week: G-force (607,922 views; this has been in the Top 25 since the list was started at the beginning of the year. The continuing popularity of this article, which jumped in June 2012, has been without explanation. Articles on popular scientific concepts get nowhere this level of viewing based on our analysis to date, e.g., Gravitation (49,516 views this week), and therefore we have decided to remove it from the list as most likely caused by non-human views. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish); 2012 Summer Olympics (1,087,922 views, over 1 million of which came in an unexplained spike on 6 March 2013); Cat anatomy (562,258 views, explanation still unknown for its continuing high view counts); and Ernst Litfaß (562,192 views; also removed a few weeks ago, is having another unexplained spike in views). Litfaß (or Litfass) was the German inventor of Advertising columns. Whether the views are the work of a spambot with a sense of humour is unknown. The German Wikipedia version saw no view spike, as before.)
Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 352,391. Last week: 405,518.
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