Is the world learning about sex — from Wikipedia?

Published on August 28th, 2006

Wikipedia posted an article, Sunday, 27 August — about their new experiment learning about what is searched on their site — using Wikicharts for analysis.

5 of the first 10 topics are about sex. At least:

List of gay porn stars, Oral sex, Sexual intercourse, Wii, Human sexuality.

OK, Wii probably isn’t about sexuality. Make it 4.

17 users responded in " Is the world learning about sex — from Wikipedia? "

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# 1 Geoff said, on August 28th, 2006 at 3:28 am

Woo-hoo! Stan Lee beat out oral sex!

# 2 2xbob said, on August 28th, 2006 at 3:54 am

Woo-hoo! Pluto beet Stan Lee!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist that.

# 3 RTaylor said, on August 28th, 2006 at 3:57 am

I find the gay porn star query odd at number three. I could see just porn star, but why is gay specifically so high on the list? The most generous guess of percentage of gay men is about 5% of the population, many consider it closer to 1%. May be just curious kids.

# 4 J said, on August 28th, 2006 at 5:19 am

I would love to know the religious status of the people doing the searches. That would make this REALLY interesting.

# 5 Doug said, on August 28th, 2006 at 5:31 am

I am flabbergasted. People are interested in sex? And I thought all they cared about what American Idol and Britiney Spears.

# 6 PillCounterD said, on August 28th, 2006 at 5:56 am

And you think Britiney Spears has/had nothing to do with sex?

# 7 James Hill said, on August 28th, 2006 at 6:23 am

Wii. Ha!

# 8 Matt H said, on August 28th, 2006 at 7:15 am

I’m wondering how accurate that search engine is.

# 9 Floyd said, on August 28th, 2006 at 9:59 am

4: I knew a guy once who went to my Catholic church, and was an outspoken anti-porn crusader. Ran into his son around 10 years after I left that church (he was dating the very pretty young woman who lived upstairs from me). It turns out tht that his dad had kept a huge collection of heterosexual porn magazines (before home videotape) in his basement “for research purposes.” Needless to say the son considered his dad to be a hypocrite.

# 10 Rand al'Thor said, on August 28th, 2006 at 10:02 am

Wii? Can we not stop joking about the name already??

# 11 James Hill said, on August 28th, 2006 at 11:05 am

Oui Oui!

# 12 Angel H. Wong said, on August 28th, 2006 at 2:37 pm

Help the cause, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_community

# 13 joshua said, on August 28th, 2006 at 8:45 pm

why David Bowie?

# 14 saurabh said, on August 29th, 2006 at 10:58 am

Dude, I don’t think that thing works. Check out the numbers it shows:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/wikicharts/index.php?ns=articles&limit=10&month=08%2F2006&wiki=enwiki
They’re way too round to be real. Plus, it’s only been running for a day or so, so even if it WERE real, the statistics would be heavily biased and non-representative.

# 15 dee said, on August 30th, 2006 at 10:23 am

and…as always americans show their unique way of saying “i love being ignorant and i don’t care”. a few months agos everything was american idol and britney…but…britney’s been dead for months

greetz

BTW: Pluto indeed has more important things to doiscuss than anal sex anyways

# 16 Myles said, on December 20th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

So I want to know does any body else use wikipedia and what for?
what was the most informatibve artical you found there?
What was the wierdest one you found?
I use wikipedia mostly durring my lunch time at work to just read up on stuff. the most informative artical I found was on the mineing and refineing
process for copper (because I learned about the job I have, and got to show off to co-workers ;p) the most interesting was probably on cheese witch I
actualy e-mailed to my self so I could finish reading it after work.
oh well, got wiki?

# 17 Woody said, on March 11th, 2007 at 10:10 am

the comment made by saurabh on 8/29/06 is compelling because it highlights a basic flaw in our understanding of such data. i have never heard of stan lee. so if i hear he is a top hit on wiki, i’m probably going to go there and look him up. and if i hear that every one is checking out the gay porn stars wiki-page, i’m going to check that out too. i’ll wait till no one is looking though, of course. it is simply a matter of cause and affect, as opposed to effect. we don’t think for ourselves any more. its much easier to let some one else do that for us. so now one days sampling of wiki-search stats has created a monster. they should have done the first sample on Martin Luther King Day. maybe things would be different now. less controversial, but probably more healthy.

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