While Google's Zeitgeist gives us a glimpse into the spur-of-the-moment searches we all made this year, Wikipedia's most viewed pages reveal what we actually felt a need to bone up on. Brace yourselves.


While Wikipedia doesn't actually publish official end-of-year results, devs can root around in log files to provide the data. Which is exactly what Swedish software engineer Johan Gunnarsson did—and now he's published the results online for us all. Here're the top 10 most-read pages on the English language Wikipedia:

1. Facebook (32,647,942)

2. Wiki (29,613,759)

3. Deaths in 2012 (25,418,587)

4. One Direction (22,351,637)

5. The Avengers (2012 film) (22,268,644)

6. Fifty Shades of Grey (21,779,423)

7. 2012 phenomenon (20,619,920)

8. The Dark Knight Rises (18,882,885)

9. Google (18,508,719)

10. The Hunger Games (18,431,626)


A heavy emphasis on film, then, along with terrible music, mom-porn and the yet-to-appear apocalypse. Perhaps strangest of all, though, is the huge number of people desperate to learn more about this new-fangled thing called Facebook.

But crucially, let's find comfort in the weirdness of other nations: the most-visited page in Japanese is a list of adult movie actresses; the best-read Italian article is about the TV show Grey's Anatomy; and the top German article is, peculiarly, about cul de sac streets. Of course! [Tool Server via All Things D]

Image by pernillarydmark under Creative Commons license