Month in Review: March

Fantasy Wikipedia comes to a close: Farticles has won! This post will focus on March's results, with a recap on the entire season to follow later this week.

The final team rankings are below:

1. Farticles, 269.5 points (+120 from February)

2. Hot Chicks & Jesus, 204.5 points (+96 from February)

3. The Google, The Veto, and the Mr. Mom, 175.5 points (+62 from February)

4. 50 Shades of Wiki, 163.5 points (+30 from February)

5. Giant Clam, 103.5 points (+46 from February)

6. D's Asters, 97.5 points (+6 from February)

7. E-Cigs in Space, 57 points (+36 from February)

8. Wiki Wiki What?!, 33.5 points (+4 from February)

Articles in detail:

In general, few articles moved in March. Here are the highlights:

U.S. Politics: The Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal broke this month, giving 20 points to E-Cigs in Space for Hillary Rodham Clinton. John Boehner jumped from 0 points last month to 20, giving a boost to D's Asters. And Antonin Scalia came in from 50 Shades of Wiki's bench to come in for 8 points.

Middle East Politics: Iran went from 1.5 points to 16 points for Hot Chicks & Jesus, and Israel went from 12 to 20 for E-Cigs in Space. A lot happened in both places this month: Israel's elections came after a high profile visit from Prime Minister Netanyahu to the U.S. Congress. Iran's nuclear program was the center of diplomatic discussions in Switzerland. They became big news in the United States after GOP Senators sent a letter in the midst of negotiations.

Science! Giant Clam, the flagship article for Team 1 (aka "Giant Clam"), rose from 0 points in February to 16 in March, probably due to an article in the prestigious journal Nature about using giant clam fossils to determine prehistoric light patterns. Along the lines of light patterns, this year's total eclipse of the Sun brought Eclipse from 0 to 30 points for Hot Chicks & Jesus.

Tech and Tech Companies: 
Silicon Valley increased from 3 to 16 points, possibly due to the trailer for the HBO TV show "Silicon Valley," and possibly due to the Ellen Pao sexism case that ended in March. Another win for Farticles. Netflix jumped from 0 to 8 points for no discernible reason except to cement the victory for Farticles. Google and Apple, Inc., both on The Google, The Veto, and The Mr. Mom also had modest increases: Google from 12 to 20 and Apple, Inc. from 1.5 to 8.

Other:
Quantitative Easing gave another boost to E-Cigs in Space, going from 0 to 8 points.
The big last-minute surprise was the sudden jump for Hot Chicks & Jesus's Reese Witherspoon from 0 to 30 points on the last day on March. Oddly, this was not the only article to have massive increases in pageviews on March 31. Eiffel Tower, on team Giant Clam, also skyrocketed in pageviews and would have resulted in 30 points for Giant Clam if it had not been on the bench. This replaces Beck as the most unfortunate bench decision in Fantasy Wikipedia.

Sustained strong articles:
The other main contributors to points this month were articles that have also done well in previous months: 50 Shades of Wiki's Fifty Shades of Grey (+30), Giant Clam's Taylor Swift (+30), Hot Chicks & Jesus's Stephen Hawking (+30), The Google, The Veto, and the Mr. Mom's Iraq (+16) and four articles on team Farticles: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (+30), Bank (+30), Jurassic Park (+16), and OPEC (+16).

To follow up from last month, we never resolved Fantasy Wikipedia 2015's greatest mystery: the inexplicable increase in pageviews for Bank. To add to the mystery, by the end of March, it has declined back down to its pre-Fantasy Wikipedia levels.