Tracking Hot Topics On Wikipedia

Wikirage is yet another Wikipedia data mining tool. This one lets you see what topics are hot by quickly identifying the 100 most edited articles for the last hour, day, week, or month. If you like to track rising keywords and memes, this tool is a fine place to start.

The lists include something for everyone. Yes, there’s a lot of editing around future video game releases (Killzone 2), and kiddy characters like Harry Potter and Hanna Montana. But there are also serious topics like Luciano Pavarotti, and Hurricane Felix (2007). Do you have an unnatural lust for gadgets? Something called the IPod touch was the second most edited article yesterday.

A number of surprising articles made the list. These weren’t necessarily in the news, but they seemed to involve keywords related to current events. By the power of wiki, Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 outranked the September 4, 2007 news about a small, but vicious, thresher shark prowling the Atlantic City beach.

Did you know that the Olm (Proteus anguinus) is an amphibian that lives in the subterranean waters of the Dinaric karts in Slovenia? It is also call the “human fish” or white salamander. I have no idea why this article was so popular, fifth yesterday. If you figure that out, please let me know. Here’s a copyright free picture in case you need something to decorate your website:

Thanks for the Olm, Wiki.

Jonathan Hochman has two computer science degrees from Yale. He runs an Internet marketing consultancy and a web development shop.