boingboing on Wikibumps

Link to January 7 boingboing post.

Excerpt: The elegant and useful Wikipedia article traffic statistics utility is a great poor man's Q score, but it has a lot of delightfully useless uses as well. One of my favorites is monitoring "wikibumps," the jump in traffic that happens when an article is in the news.

It turns out that wikibumps usually peak in the first 24 hours, then taper off in about a week, giving further evidence for the hypothesis that the public's memory generally extends back to the last issue of People magazine.

Guestblogger Andrea James, "Los Angeles-based writer and troublemaker", provides examples of the best ways to get a Wikibump:

1. Die unexpectedly while famous.

2. Be involved in a controversial incident.

Just for fun, I checked a few topics unrelated to the above two Wikibump criteria.

Libraries: 5,425 views in 12/2009. (Twice as many as average on Dec. 3 and 4.)

Avatar: 1,583,543 views in 12/2009. (Biggest day on the Monday after it opened.)

Green Bay Packers: 82,433 views in 12/2009. (10,600 of them occurred on Tuesday, December 8, the day after they played the Ravens on Monday Night Football.)

Bo Ryan: 5,135 views in 12/2009. (Wow! Less than libraries. 1,500 of these occurred on Thursday, December 3, the day after the Badgers upset Duke at the Kohl Center.)

You're absolutely right, Andrea. It's delightfully useless fun!