Conquest of the Couch Potatoes

Summary: Television has always been a topic of choice on this site, but it exploded this week. Fully six slots were devoted to television shows, as the final episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular Wikipedia searches of the last few years, coincided with the season finale of The Walking Dead and the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. The number rises to eight if movies released on video and new TV tech are included. This leads me to ponder: if television is the principal concern of our readership, perhaps a more TV-friendly Wikipedia spinoff is in order? We could call it WikiTiVi.

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

For the week of 30 March to 5 April, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	How I Met Your Mother		931,180		This hugely popular sitcom has always been a popular search on this site, and it creeps back into the top 25 in the week of its final episode on March 31.
2	April Fools' Day		920,853		The first day of April, perennial party for practical jokers and pranksters, continues to amuse the cynical and infuriate the gullible.
3	How I Met Your Mother (season 9)		654,840		Obviously, people wanted to know when the series finale aired.
4	The Walking Dead (TV series)		615,592		The show's fourth season finale fell on 30 March.
5	Amazon.com		500,321		This article has been veering wildly (and suspiciously) around the view graph for several weeks, but at least now its presence on the list has a reason: Amazon Fire TV, announced this week, is a digital streaming device to watch online content on an HDTV. How it distinguishes itself from the three or four other such devices currently on the market is a matter of some dispute.
6	Game of Thrones		453,199		This TV show's previous season, not to be glib, owned this list. I expect its upcoming season, due to commence on 6 April, to do no less.
7	"Last Forever"		435,595		How I Met Your Mother, one of the most popular shows among our readership, drew 13.3 million viewers to its finale on March 31; its highest ratings ever. That said, when you hinge a show's entire plot on its final event (just look at the title) you better pull off that event with aplomb, and from the looks of things, the risky, problematic ending the writers chose (and actually filmed six seasons ago) has polarised critics and diehard fans alike.
8	Deaths in 2014		419,505		The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
9	The Walking Dead (season 4)		297,540		People are undoubtedly using this page to look up the finale's air date.
10	Frozen (2013 film)		412,808		Disney's Oscar-winning juggernaut got a shot in the arm thanks to its release on DVD on March 18. Despite this, it has already overtaken Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as Disney's highest-grossing film in theatres.

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• How'd you get this list? From what I see, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 should be at #1, with Crimea at #2, and neither are even on the list. -Newyorkadam (talk) 04:23, 13 April 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam[reply]

Edit: Ok, I see you got your list from Wikipedia:TOP25. I'm not sure why the two lists differ. -Newyorkadam (talk) 04:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)Newyorkadam[reply]

This is a weekly list; your list is monthly, and covers the month of March. This list is already in April. Serendi^podous 05:14, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]