Syria, celebrities, and association football

Summary: While the Syrian Civil War crept its slow way into the minds of the public, with a new fourth related entry in the top 25, the top 10 remained dominated by celebrity, mainly sports and music. Two megabucks transfers stimulated public interest in football/soccer ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, while Lil Wayne's public apology ahead of his latest album release sent him to the top.

For the full top 25 plus exclusions, see WP:TOP25

For the week of September 1 - 7, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Lil Wayne	662,661	After apologising to his fans on Twitter, Lil Wayne has gone from not receiving any BET Award or MTV Video Music Award nominations to coming tops in Wikipedia views.
2	Rosh Hashanah	590,908	That's the Jewish New Year to the rest of us. Jews the world over ushered in the year 5774 on September 4.
3	Facebook	580,025	A perennially popular article
4	Mesut Özil	532,862	The German footballer was recently transferred to Arsenal FC for $67 million, which, for a presumed 5-year contract works out at roughly $1500 an hour.
5	Breaking Bad	507,227	The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11.
6	Twerking	502,811	The new term for girls waggling their bottoms onstage continues to be a point of interest.
7	Syria	468,913	The next Middle Eastern country in which the United States might become embroiled has continued to be a topic of interest this week.
8	John Wisden	398,834	The star cricketer and creator of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack got a boost thanks to a Google Doodle on his 187th birthday on September 5.
9	Charlie Hunnam	393,246	The English actor and Sons of Anarchy star saw his popularity soar after being cast in the title role of the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey.
10	Gareth Bale	392,593	The Welsh footballer was just signed by Real Madrid for a reported 100 million euros ($133 million), an even more astronomical sum than that for the above Mesut Özil.

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11 September 2013 (all comments)

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Lil Wayne must have deleted those Tweets because I can't find any that are provocative and there is no mention of them on his WP article. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 13:18, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They weren't provocative; he just apologised to his fans for not getting any awards for his last album, and said he'd do better next time. So he releases his next album, and comes top of the list. Serendi ^pod ous 15:02, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I really like this feature - it's an interesting view into the interests of the readership at large, and the ratings encourage any self-respecting editor to say "WAIT an article with such a low rating is getting that many views? It needs to be improved." Great concept. Dcoetzee 02:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! It's always nice to get positive feedback. Serendi ^pod ous 13:05, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If twerking makes the list again next week, can we please not refer to it as "girls waggling their bottoms"? Men/boys/women can twerk too. Gobōnobō ⁺ ^c 20:53, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have doubts whether Facebook is really so popular or whether something is inflating this. Why isn't Google, Youtube or Twitter making an appearance? Something is fishy. This does seem to have some support in search terms popularity ([1]), where Facebook seems more popular than the proverbial sex or porn. It also is much more popular than all the other popular articles of ours, like this weeks' Lil Wayne. I don't grok it. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:14, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the Top 25 report, you'll see that those other websites are also frequently listed. Facebook is the post popular website on Earth (it's more popular than Google) so it will logically be the most popular website search. It is likely that these websites are getting some inflation from people typing them into the search bar and accidentally clicking on the Wiki page instead of the page itself ("G" has a high ranking, probably for this reason) but there's no way for us to say how much. Serendi ^pod ous 07:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]