2. The Beatles (111,896): In the Telegraph's list for 2008, two different Beatles pages are listed as numbers 14 and 18 for 2008; however, according to the original Wikistics source statistics the "Beatles" page is ranked at number 20. In 2009, the page became the second most visited page on Wikipedia due to automated requests. The fact that the Fab Four's catalogue is due to be re-released in digitally remastered format within the year also can't hurt page traffic.

3. Michael Jackson (79,734): Not surprisingly, Michael Jackson's page is among the most viewed pages on Wikipedia. The day after Jackson's death the page received 5.9 million views. Of the top 10 most-viewed Wikipedia pages of 2009, Jackson's name is also mentioned on the Deaths in 2009 page and briefly in the Beatles page due to his controversial purchase of most of the Lennon-McCartney Beatles catalog in 1985.

*Favicon.ico (78,077): While the Telegraph articles lists this as number 4, it's irrelevant as the Wikistics stat source cites that the Favicon.ico ranking includes browser-based requests for the Wikipedia icon.

4. YouTube (72,318): Whether looking to cite corporate info or simply interested in finding out what the fuss is all about, Wikipedians have flocked to both YouTube and Facebook pages for the last two years.

5. Wikipedia (52,542)

6. Barack Obama (49,401): In 2008 the Barack Obama page was the 3rd most visited page on Wikipedia and not surprisingly, interest has dwindled post-election. Sarah Palin's page (64,465) was the 4th most visited page in 2008 and John McCain's page (34,486) was the 13th most visited page.

7. Deaths in 2009 (48,758): Apparently the public is clamoring to remember those they've lost in 2009. Both the Deaths in 2008 page and the 2009 page have made the top 10 list of most visited Wikipedia pages. It looks like memorial sites like My Death Space and Respectance aren't such a strange idea after all.

8. United States (46,545): This page offers basic information on politics, economics, demographics and customs of the United States. With a large population and a large number of Wikipedians hailing from the US, the page is a popular one. Surprisingly it is not listed on the community's most vandalized pages. Meanwhile both the US Democratic Party and Republican Party pages are listed.

9. Facebook (42,679)

10. Wikipedia Current Events Portal (40,962): This page lists daily news topics and the latest Wikinews articles. It is a great source for breaking news stories. The page also links to recent deaths and ongoing events such as the automotive industry crisis.

For the Telegraph's entire list visit the article. You can also check them against Wikistics list of yearly page hits for 2008 and 2009.

Another interesting resource is Wikipedia's most popular articles within the last hour. While recently deceased celebrities appeared on this list at the time this article was written, there were definitely some interesting anomalies. For instance, the Ernie Davis Wikipedia page saw a dramatic increase in hits. When cross-referenced against real time search engine Collecta it appears HBO was airing the Ernie Davis biography "The Express". Audience members were simultaneously watching television while searching for Davis' biography.

The Google gadget called What's Popular came to our attention thanks to Steve Rubel's blog Micro Persusion. His take is that it has the potential to rival Digg. While we think that might be a bit ambitious, we definitely think the gadget is a lot of fun.

Voting on stories is just as easily. Pagination is automatic, so you just scroll down the list, clicking on stories you want to read and voting stuff up or down as you please. More stories appear as you scroll so there's effectively no bottom. The widget keeps track of all the items you voted on (making voting another form of bookmarking) and also all the URLs you submitted along with how popular they have become. If you maximize the widget, more options are revealed, like the ability to sort by story, image or video, and by date or popularity.

That's about it. Quick to load, endless supply of interesting links, ability to vote - ok, it does sound a little like Digg. However, there's a key component missing: commentary. Your opinion can only be made with your vote (and, I guess, the 'report abuse' button). There's no way of providing any additional web resources, opinions, or, well, anything. Plus, it's hard for us to see how a widget that is competing for screen real-estate with a stock ticker and a twitter client will take down a community site like Digg.

StumbleUpon, on the other hand, may want to watch this one carefully.

Luciani's conclusion: between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between 5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times and Thursday is the best day. The worst time to post? Between 3 and 5 PM PST on the weekends - nobody cares. See the graphs below.

In the graphs below the factor measured is what AideRSS calls a PostRank of 6 or higher. AideRSS looks at all the items in an RSS feed and scores them (relative only to other items in the same feed) in terms of number of comments, number of Diggs, number of times saved to Del.icio.us and number of inbound links from blogs. The highest percentile of posts in a feed have PostRanks closest to 10.

These graphs then measure which times and days see the largest numbers of posts submitted that end up being more popular than other posts in the same feed. So the most wildly popular and discussed items among all popular items at Digg, etc. It's tracking the time that the post is submitted to the news site - not when it was necessarily posted on the blog. It's a touch obtuse and it would be nice to read a little more about the methodology employed - but the PostRank algorithm is relatively transparent and the conclusions are intuitive.

This is just one of many things we've written about using AideRSS for here at RWW. It's a simple and very powerful tool that I at least use every single day.

Note that of course people blog for more reasons than just popularity and popularity cannot be equated with popularity! If you're in a hurry it is one way to look for quality, though. :)

With no further ado, knock yourself out wrapping your mind around these graphs. I almost did; remember that times here are GMT and if you're on the West Coast of the US, I hope you just had a nice lunch and remember to subtract 7 hours from this 24 hour clock to figure out these times for yourself.

Thanks for the creative and valuable work, Jake!

For more RSS fun times, check out the other entries on the AideRSS blog.