Last Week: 1/18/15-1/24/15

Article: Google

Category: Business, Science, and Technology

Owner: The Google, the Veto, and the Mr. Mom (Team 6)
Pageviews in January 2014: 705,167

What happened: Last week was the final week that someone could purchase Google Glass. According to Google, the work on Google Glass is moving into another phase, which means it will be unavailable, as least temporarily.

Google has performed well for Team 6, aka "The Google, the Veto, and the Mr. Mom." With 7 more days left in January, Google already has as many pageviews in January 2015 as it had in the entire month of January 2014.

Some Fantasy Wikipedia participants check their scores daily to see how well their team is performing. Briefly, it looked like The Google, the Veto, and the Mr. Mom would be in the lead at the end of the month. However, the top four spots have remained competitive. Farticles is currently in the lead, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg getting a large bump since she fell asleep at the State of the Union. Close behind are D's Asters an 50 Shades of Wiki. Since points scored in February are +50% what we scored in January, and double in March, it's still anyone's game. But we've got 4 teams who have pulled ahead pretty well so far.

The Coming Week: 1/18/15-1/24/15

Articles of the Week: Quantitative Easing and Barack Obama

Article: Quantitative Easing

Category: Geography, Politics, Religion, and History

Owner: E-Cigs in Space (Team 5)

Pageviews in January 2014: 68,083

What's coming: This week, the European Central Bank may adopt the policy of "quantitative easing" to increase the Euro's worryingly low rate of inflation. I'll be honest, I don't understand it much more than that. I would check Wikipedia to understand it better, but I'm trying to avoid Fantasy Wikipedia articles until the competition ends in April. For a timeline of quantitative easing in the United States since 2008, check here.

The governing council that makes this decision meets this coming Thursday, January 22. I expect that a decision on the policy either way will make headlines and cause people to scramble to Wikipedia to understand what's going on. If that happens, expect a big bump in pageviews for Quantitative Easing. That would be a much-needed help for E-Cigs in Space (Team 5), currently 8th place in the competition. 

Article: Barack Obama

Category: Geography, Politics, Religion, and History

Owner: Farticles (Team 4); currently "benched"
Pageviews in January 2014: 595,065

What's coming: This Tuesday (January 20), President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union to Congress. While this is an event that happens every year, there's reason to expect that it will be more important in 2015 than it was in 2014. The President has already been making a domestic tour to "preview" this year's speech. The New York Times reports that some of the issues that the President will speak on are higher education, housing, and jobs.

The article Barack Obama is owned by Farticles (Team 4), and currently sits on his "bench." Each month, team owners need to state that 2 of their 10 articles are inactive, not eligible for points. So far this month, Barack Obama is projected to result in -1 points for Farticles, since it is projected to have less than 75% of the pageviews as it did in January 2014. Farticles is currently in the lead, so it looks like this was a good decision on his part. But last year, Barack Obama got a big bump after his State of the Union address. A bigger bump this year could put Barack Obama over last year's total, making the team owner of Farticles regretting leaving the President on the bench.

Last Week: 1/11/15-1/17/15

Article: International Space Station

Category: Business, Science, and Technology

Owner: E-Cigs in Space (Team 5)
Pageviews in January 2014: 125,999

What happened: Last week, a malfunction at the International Space Station resulted in a brief evacuation. It appeared there was an ammonia leak at the station. The astronauts onboard "put on emergency masks and [rushed] to the Russian side of the orbital station to avoid potential poisoning from ammonia." Thankfully, it turned out to be a false alarm.

The brief scare was a small blip on a strong news week. But it did remind people that the space station exists, and prompted a bump in pageviews at the Wikipedia page for International Space Station. On the 14th, the day of the glitch, daily pageviews jumped from 3,773 to 15,969. As of January 16th, it looks like pageviews have reached a similar level prior to the glitch, with about 4,196 pageviews on the 16th.

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.

Last Week: 1/4/15-1/10/15

Article: Bank

Category: Business, Science, and Technology

Owner: Farticles (Team 4)
Pageviews in January 2014: 73,418

What happened: Many important things happened in the world this week. None of them will be discussed on this page. The most relevant event for Fantasy Wikipedia last week was the completion of a software tool to help us determine everyone's current score. 

Much gratitude to the man behind the team "Farticles." His new spreadsheet lets all the Fantasy Wikipedia participants get an easy view of their current performance.

After looking through every article's performance, the biggest surprise to me was an article on team Farticles. Farticles has Bank, the article for the short word that someone would check on Wikipedia to understand what banks do. Bank is doing well. It has been getting more pageviews since March 2014, but I have no ideas why (feel free to leave comments).

According to the tool from Farticles, Bank has had 27,658 pageviews to date in January 2015. If this performance continues, Bank is projected to have 107,174 pageviews this January, well over last year's 73,418. This would give Farticles 8 points for Bank, a strong performance for a simple article.

The Coming Week: 1/4/15-1/10/15

Articles of the Week: Mitch McConnell and Veto

Article: Mitch McConnell

Category: Geography, Politics, Religion, and History
Owner: Giant Clam (Team 1)
Pageviews in January 2014: 21,663

Article: Veto

Category: Geography, Politics, Religion, and History

Owner: The Google, The Veto, and the Mr. Mom (Team 6)

Pageviews in January 2014: 22,404

What's coming: Mitch McConnell begins his term as the Senate Majority Leader this week. McConnell had a big month in November 2014: he won reelection to the Senate, the GOP captured the Senate for the first time since 2006, and McConnell became the new Senate Majority Leader. 

All of this led to more pageviews on Wikipedia, especially comparing November 2014 to November 2013. These November pageviews were important in our draft. To assist with our draft, I developed an algorithm to determine which articles would have the most additional pageviews in 2015, with November 2014's pageviews as the most important input. Mitch McConnell topped the list. Team 1, led by the only participant absent for the draft, used the algorithm as an "auto-draft" and picked Mitch McConnell first overall.

It's unclear what McConnell will be able to do. In December, after meeting with President Obama, McConnell said, "I don’t know what we can expect in terms of reaching bipartisan agreement." A few weeks later, he seemed interested in making headlines in 2015, stating, "All of us from time to time make a point... But it is time now to make a difference."

If McConnell and the Republican Congress pursue partisan legislation to "make a point," expect some action from the Wikipedia article veto. Last week, President Obama said, "I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office." With the upcoming Republican Congress, he said "Now, I suspect, there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out." This would be good news for Team 6, who drafted veto. But the biggest winner could be Team 1, who has not only Mitch McConnell, but also the articles for Republican Party (United States) and Democratic Party (United States). News of partisan bickering would probably be bad for America, but good for Team 1's Fantasy Wikipedia team.

Last Week: 1/1/15-1/3/15

Article: Shanghai

Category: Geography, Politics, Religion, and History
Owner: None
Pageviews in January 2014: 118,168

What happened: Anything in the news will probably get more pageviews on Wikipedia. One of the grim realities of our world is that it's usually horrible things that make the big news. The sad news from New Year's Day was a stampede at Shanghai's waterfront party, reportedly resulting in 36 deaths. Let's remember there are people involved, and keep our thoughts on the families affected throughout East Asia. 

This blog could get ugly. I hope the winner of Fantasy Wikipedia is celebrating good news instead of a series of unexpected horrors.

During the draft, none of us expected Shanghai to be a big mover in 2015, so it ended up in the pool of undrafted articles. For the record, this type of thing does cause people to check out Wikipedia. I checked the data for New Years and saw that Shanghai's page got much more traffic on 1/1/2015 than in 1/1/2014, especially compared to similar cities in Asia: