Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/April 7 to 13, 2013

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 7 to 13, 2013)

Prepared with commentary by User:Soulbust

This list may look a little different from the rest of the 2013 lists & that's because this list is being made retroactively in 2018. This week was for some reason skipped.

For the week of April 7 to 13, 2013 the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

RankArticleClassViewsImageNotes
1Margaret Thatcher 2,429,904
Thatcher was a highly controversial, but highly regarded former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Her implemented policies have become to be known as Thatcherism. Dubbed "The Iron Lady", Thatcher died on April 8.
2WrestleMania 29 785,041
This event appears annually on the Top 25 Report, even leading for 1 week in 2016 and again, for 2 consecutive weeks in 2017. John Cena (pictured) defeated The Rock at 2013's event.
3Annette Funicello 626,479
Funicello was one of the original Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club, popularized the Beach Party genre, and was a popular singer. She died on April 8 from complications with multiple sclerosis.
4Bitcoin 614,943
Bitcoin was pretty in the news back in early April 2013 too. Kind of weird reading some of the headlines from back then.
5Game of Thrones 566,293
Game of Thrones is no doubt more popular than ever in 2018. But back in 2013, viewers were clearly already very interested in seeing what Daenerys Targaryen (played by Emilia Clarkepictured) was up to.
6North Korea 507,210
North Korea was talking/threatening about using nukes back in 2013. That's still being tossed around in today's climate, just in a much more surreal way.
7Facebook 475,554
Perennially popular article capable of notching a spot on the Report back in 2013.
8Kim Jong-un 461,684
On the list during this week for being the leader of #6. Only recently (just a few weeks ago here in the future 2018) did a portrait image of Kim Jong-un become available on Wikipedia.
9Deaths in 2013 460,299
5 years later and this is still a Top 25 article. Well the 2018 version, anyway.
10Google 448,735
Perennially popular article capable of notching a spot on the Report back in 2013.
11Oblivion (2013 film) 443,020
This Tom Cruise (pictured) vehicle, also starring Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko, was capturing the interests of readers prior to its April 19 release in the U.S.
12Game of Thrones (season 3) 414,910
Season 3 of the immensely popular show starring Peter Dinklage (pictured) had just began airing on March 31 back in 2013. "Dark Wings, Dark Words" was the episode that premiered during this week's time frame.
13World War II 375,905
Perennially popular article capable of notching a spot on the Report back in 2013.
14YouTube 373,827
Perennially popular article capable of notching a spot on the Report back in 2013.
15The Walking Dead (TV series) 349,872
Game of Thrones wasn't the only show popping back in 2013. Season 3 of The Walking Dead just finished wrapping up on March 31.
16List of Game of Thrones episodes 331,976
A very popular list to check up on during the middle of a GoT season.
17Sophie Turner (actress) 312,070
Turner stars as Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, so it makes sense she's popping up on the list here. Also update from the future (2018): Sophie Turner's going to be starring as one of the most iconic comic book characters of all time in X-Men: Dark Phoenix later this year and also, this article is now a redirect to the more direct "Sophie Turner".
18The Big Bang Theory 305,282
Season 6 of this (not really all that) funny sitcom was airing back during this time frame. It was also a perennially popular article among readers back in 2013. (Stars of the show Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki pictured)
19United States 302,773
Perennially popular article capable of notching a spot on the Report back in 2013.
20Rick Pitino 296,758
Pitino led the Louisville Cardinals to a National Men's Basketball championship over the Michigan Wolverines on April 8. He was also inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame earlier that day. Hello again from the future! That 2013 Cardinals has now been stripped of its title due to a stripper/sex scandal related to the player recruitment process.
21Jackie Robinson 292,711
#42 was batting page views back in April 2013 because of the April 12 release of 42, a biopic about Robinson. That film starred Chadwick Boseman as Robinson. I hear Boseman's doing pretty good for himself now.
22Mark Thatcher 290,192The son of Margaret (#1) was certainly of interest this week due to the death of his mother.
23Hoshi Ryokan 289,374
Was the subject of a Reddit Today I Learned (TIL) thread, but not during this week. Still, with legitimate edits during this week's time frame, it doesn't seem like this article was the target of bot-inflated views. Now serves as redirect to the correctly spelled Hōshi Ryokan, by the way.
24Hannibal (TV series) 287,465
And here we have another show! This series, starring Mads Mikkelsen (pictured) in the title role, actually premiered on April 4.
25Arrow (TV series) 282,165
And so the list rounds off with yet another TV show. Arrow, starring Stephen Amell (pictured) as Oliver Queen, was almost finished running through its first season back in April 2013.

Exclusions

  • This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.
  • Exclusions regularly made at the time of this report back in 2013 were:
    • G-force; 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 from March 3–9), and therefore we have decided to remove it from the list as most likely caused by non-human views.
    • Cat anatomy; explanation still unknown for its continuing high view counts
    • Aho–Corasick string matching algorithm (a sudden rise from nothing to 200,000 hits on March 20–21)
  • Further exclusions I've made after researching:
    • Calvinism: Calvinism was at the top of the WP:5000 with 4,151,121 page views, however, there seemed to be no historical or cultural occurrence—whether a Google Doodle, a popular Reddit "Today I Learned" thread, or a good, old-fashioned news story that would propel that article to that height. Further analysis] shows page views spiked for Calvinism and quickly died down to normal levels.
    • Active Directory: Kind of suspect. Yes, Windows Azure was launched during this week see here but that shouldn't be enough to blow this article up that much. Also somewhat obscure tech-related articles are usually targeted by bots.
  • Other articles that had to be excluded (due to knowing what we know now about bot-views):
Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.