The Coming Week: 1/11/15-1/17/15

Articles of the Week: Ebola and Electronic Cigarette

This week, nothing particularly big on my radar, so I'll write up on a couple articles that I expect will be interesting throughout Fantasy Wikipedia.

Article: Ebola

Category: Geography, Politics, Religion, and History
Owner: D's Asters (Team 8)
Pageviews in January 2014: 10,523

What's coming: In my opinion, Ebola is the closest thing to a surefire Fantasy Wikipedia 2015 winner. Looking back at the draft, it seems crazy that Team 8, D's Asters, got it. All the other teams took something else over Ebola for their first pick.

Ebola had just over 10,000 pageviews in January 2014. It wasn't on anybody's radar. By November of 2014, Ebola had more than 8 times as many monthly pageviews. 

Ebola remains big in the news. Just this past week, there has been discussion about potential vaccines and monitoring of potential Ebola cases in Michigan. D's Asters should feel pretty confident: either Ebola will continue to be a problem in the world, or humanity achieves a great newsworthy victory over the virus. Either way, Ebola will be much more important through April 2015 than it was before April of 2014.

Article: Electronic Cigarette

Category: Business, Science, and Technology

Owner: E-Cigs in Space (Team 5)

Pageviews in January 2014: 187,610

What's coming: Electronic Cigarette is currently protected from editing on Wikipedia. The article has had many editing disputes, and will not be open for editing until March 20, 2015. This is unique among all the articles in Fantasy Wikipedia.

I'll admit, I don't know much about electronic cigarettes. I think some people are using them as an alternative to regular cigarettes, possibly as part of a New Year's resolution. They may be in the news if they get more government scrutiny, or pressure from cancer groups. They also seem like something a celebrity could endorse in an ill-conceived off-the-cuff comment, causing people who are otherwise unfamiliar with electronic cigarettes to flock to Wikipedia to find out what they are.

The problem for Team 5 so far is that the article Electronic Cigarette was very popular already in 2014. It got nearly 160,000 pageviews every month in early 2014. By November 2014, it had fallen to less than 100,000 pageviews. Team 5 should be hoping for something big to get people talking about e-cigarettes again.