Over the past three years, Wikipedia member West.andrew.g bas been analysing the weird and wonderful data traffic on the English-language Wikipedia. In the the latest edition of Wikipedia’s community-managed newspaper, The Signpost, he’s revealed the biggest traffic spikes on the site within that time — in the process proving that we’re all morbid sports fan.
Excluding duplicate articles and DDoS attacks on the site — they don’t count, obviously — the most-viewed pages on Wikipedia in a one-hour period since January 2010 make for fairly grim reading. Take a look at the list.
Celebrity deaths and Super Bowl, almost exclusively. That’s perhaps not surprising — they are events that pique general interest for a very short period — but it would be nice to see a little more variation in what really catches the public interest.
West.andrew.g has also published the most-visited pages over the past three years, too, but there aren’t many surprises there: Facebook, Google, Just Bieber, Lady GaGa… you know the drill. You can read the whole report over on The Signpost. [Wikipedia via Verge]
Image by pernillarydmark under Creative Commons license