SECOND LIFE RANKS IN WIKIPEDIA'S TOP 500

Just how important is Second Life in the vast scheme of things?  As of last night, a touch less than a medieval plague or a geological eruption, and just a tinch more than the nation of Jorge Luis Borges or a soccer player's celebrity wife.  At least, that's the judgement of a cool new widget which tracks total Wikipedia searches for a given month.  Not a bad showing for an encyclopedia with 6 million entries, and at the moment, boasting an edge over "Hinduism" (486) and "Emo" (488).  Then again, to keep it real, that's still fairly far behind "World of Warcraft" (177) and "Buddhism" (166).

Comments

[Interfect Sonic]

Apparently, Season 6 of 24 is more important than Helen Keller, and Pubic Hair scraped out a win over Dick Cheney. Eagles and Giant Pandas also beat out Plato.

I wouldn't trust that chart.

[Laetizia Coronet]

Black Death beats Second Life. Interesting - trendwatchers, take note! As for pubic hair beating Cheney... isn't 'bush' another word for pubic hair? And isn't Bush Cheney's boss? ;)

[Torley]

Joy, with a grain of pepper. Note the site sez: "Some of the results may be false or misleading!"

Site also says: "This page shows the most viewed articles of wikimedia projects." One thing I sure noticed is that the Second Life entry is heavily edited (with 500+ edits in the last couple months alone), and each time you edit a page, it counts as a new view, even if it's not a unique IP.

At least, that's what I found when editing the Second Life Wiki...

Talk about a living document!

Kudos to SignpostMarv Martin and others for doggedly updating the works.

[Vincent]

Interfect,

If the chart isn't trustworthy, it's not for the reasons you mentioned. The chart measures on monthly intervals, hence "300" and "Battle of Thermopylae" being near the top of the list. It's not an "all time" ranking and therefore really isn't a measure of which Wikipedia articles are "important." So yes, in this month, one can expect Season 6 of 24 to be higher than Helen Keller. It's a snapshot of recent trends (with a few immortal subjects like sex) more than a measure of our era's intellectual zeitgeist. Analogously, a snapshot of Google searches this month would probably have Britney Spears higher than Aristotle... but just because Aristotle is more important than Madame B.S. doesn't mean the index was wrong.

Next month, this surely will change, and I predict that if this were to keep up for years and years and averaged out, Helen Keller will edge over 300 as 300 fades from the collective memory and Plato will tackle down the Eagles.

Frankly, given the sexual disposition of human beings and the brief tenure of presidents from the vantage point of history, pubic will probably maintain its lead over Cheney.

[Alastair Chamerberlin]

Hey Laetizia...if you think bush is really cheney's boss, well, I got a bridge to sell you!!