Down to a simmer

After a flood of traumatic, perplexing and complex events, users took time to digest the material confronting them, with topics such as the 2014 Crimea crisis or the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 easing down the list, making way for such traditional topics as St Patrick's Day, Reddit threads and even Google Doodles, which have reappeared after a long absence.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.

For the week of 16 to 22 March, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Saint Patrick's Day	1,604,355	Sometimes I have to admit making a mistake, and my previous assumption that people weren't interested in arguably the world's most popular saint's day turned out to be due to mistiming; as it happens, people are very interested in it – on the day itself. Interest wanes pretty quickly in the days leading up to and from it. Given the long association of this holiday with binge drinking, perhaps there's a reason it fades in the memory so quickly.
2	Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	1,075,269	We still don't know precisely what happened to this flight, or to its 239 passengers and crew, but, gradually, a drip of hard facts is beginning to replace occasionally wild speculation. The most significant development (the Malaysian government's declaration that the plane was lost in the southern Indian Ocean) occurred after this time period, but even before then, leads had already begun to coalesce around that isolated, violent region of the sea off the coast of Australia.
3	Crimea	949,876	In recent decades, the map of the world has only changed to reflect the rise of new independent nations. One country deliberately annexing part of another is not something our generation is used to. Case in point: over the last few days, Wikipedia's maps of Russia first absorbed this fragment of Ukraine, then excluded it, then finally included it in an indecisive shade of mint green, indicating it is in dispute. Given the nature of Wikipedia, that is likely as far as the argument will go; other organizations (such as Russia Today) have not been nearly as accommodating.
4	Spite house	863,608	This unique form of architecture, in which usual considerations such as aesthetics, functionality or even livability are abandoned in favour of annoying the neighbors, usually by blocking sunlight, became a topic of interest on Reddit this week.
5	L'Wren Scott	658,411	The tragic suicide of this famously tall former model (she was 6'3''), stylist and fashion designer at just 49 caused a great deal of lurid coverage in the British tabloids, particularly regarding her longterm relationship with Mick Jagger.
6	Agnes Martin	457,187	The Canadian abstract painter got a Google Doodle for what would have been her 102nd birthday on 22 March.
7	Deaths in 2014	448,266	The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
8	Saint Patrick	443,567	The man himself naturally drew interest on his day.
9	Facebook	443,413	A perennially popular article.
10	Fred Phelps	433,520	It is either ironic or fitting, depending on your point of view, that a man who achieved fame in life by leading pickets of innocent people's funerals would receive so much attention upon his own death. For all his fury and "GOD HATES FAGS" bombast, there is tragedy in a man beginning his career as a civil rights lawyer yet ending it in a morass of bigotry and hate.

Down to a simmer

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