Oddly familiar

This week's list is reminiscent of lists from the early days of this project: a preponderance of famous faces, Reddit threads, and Google Doodles. Predictably, the arrival of St. Patrick's Day topped the list, while the arrest of Robert Durst proved surprisingly popular. Events of global significance, such as the devastation of Vanuatu, were pushed out this week.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of March 15–21, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Saint Patrick's Day		2,783,603	Every man has his day, at least if he's a saint. And when your day happens to involve copious alcohol consumption and opportunities for gradeschool cruelty, it is bound to be popular. A Google Doodle doesn't hurt either.
2	Robert Durst		1,508,008	It's not often that a film documentary has an impact on an actual murder investigation; Errol Morris's 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line famously led to the exoneration of Randall Dale Adams, and now, the The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, the new documentary by Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans), has provided evidence leading to the re-arrest of Robert Durst, the wealthy son of a real-estate family suspected of, but never convicted for, three murders. It says something about the inner dynamics of the Durst family that his brother greeted the new evidence by saying he was "relieved" and "grateful" and that, "We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done."
3	Anna Atkins		953,069	The photographic and botanical pioneer (one of, if not the first person to illustrate a book with photographic plates) got a Google Doodle on her 216th birthday on 16 March.
4	Alex (parrot)		941,143	If his trainer is right, then this African grey parrot, who died unexpectedly in 2007, could very well have been the most intelligent non-human animal in recorded history. Not only did he have a vocabulary of over 100 words, he apparently understood what those words meant and could identify objects by name, even if they were different colours or shapes. But one day, Alex appeared to take things to another level completely. He turned to his trainer and asked, "What colour am I?" the first existential question ever asked by an animal. This was noted in a Reddit thread this week, which quickly filled up with contributions from parrot owners telling tales their own pets' abilities. Note: in the name of honest journalism I should admit that the above grey parrot is in fact NOT Alex, since his actual photo is copyrighted. Still, he'd pass in a crowd.
5	Natalia Kills		902,335	That's a rather aggressive stage name, it must be said. Anyway, the British singer apparently lives up to her name (somewhat) because she is currently engulfed in a minor scandal over bullying a contestant while acting as a judge on the New Zealand version of The X Factor.
6	To Pimp a Butterfly	Unassessed	828,825	The latest album from Kendrick Lamar (pictured) was released on 16 March.
7	Christian Laettner		811,567	How does a man named Christian Laettner respond to a TV documentary called I Hate Christian Laettner? Well if he happens to be the Christian Laettner who polarised fans throughout his college basketball career and stomped on rival team member Aminu Timberlake's chest during his career-defining match in 1992, he takes it in his stride and publicly apologises to his most famous victim, who promptly accepts it.
8	2015 Cricket World Cup		765,014	Down from 923K views last week as the tournament played through the quarter finals. With India still in, along with a raft of English-speaking countries (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), do not expect it to leave this list any time soon.
9	Saint Patrick		740,598	It is perhaps not surprising that Ireland, the only predominantly Catholic country in the English-speaking world, would produce the English-speaking world's most popular saint. It is, however, somewhat surprising that he has been embraced by pretty much everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.
10	Monica Lewinsky		692,719	The former White House intern and owner of the dress that almost brought down the free world gave a TED Talk this week on a pertinent subject in which she is well-versed: cyberbullying.

← Previous "Traffic report"

Next "Traffic report" →

In this issue

25 March 2015 (all comments)

News and notes

Op-ed

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

gradeschool cruelty ? Sounds like you went to an awfully harsh elementary school. I don't recall any cruelty associated with St. Patrick's Day, just Irish pride (and I'm only part Irish). Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:13, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What, you were never pinched for not wearing green? What's St Patrick's Day coming to? Serendi ^pod ous 21:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the pinch for not wearing green. Is that still done? It wasn't a big deal in the schools I went to. Or else I just wore a lot of green. I don't recall pinching others or being pinched so maybe I went to a kinder and gentler grade school. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

#22 has a redlink picture, you have to change it. Nahnah4 (talk | contribs | guestbook) 07:30, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have to do anything to it, and I can't change it, because there are no free to use images available. But I can get rid of it. Serendi ^pod ous 09:07, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]