[WikiEN-l] Wikicharts

[Gwern Branwen]

"C.J. Croy" <cjcroy at gmail.com> writes:
...
> -I have no idea why Naruto is so popular on Wikipedia, or 
   really,
> anywhere.  I will point out that it's the #4 search term on 
  Lycos,
> below only Poker, Paris Hilton, and Myspace, so it's not an
> exclusively Wiki phenom.
> http://www.animationinsider.net/article.php?articleID=856 The
> preceding article says that Naruto is a relatively new Japanese 
  import
> that is very popular among kids.  Looking through the edit 
  history,
> the main Naruto received a few edits a month from May 2003 to
> mid-March 2005.  Something happened and Naruto started receiving 
  about
> 1-2 edits a day.  As the above-article aludes to, it began to 
  show
> here in the United States in late 2005, which is when the Wiki
> article's popularity exploded and it began to be edited multiple 
  times
> per day.  Looking at it today, it would seem its popularity is 
  waning.
>  My guess is that 90% of the Naruto articles will be purged with 
   such
> highly informative deletion rationales as 'nn fancruft' some 
  time in
> 2008-2009.
...

Unlikely. The last anime convention I went to (last week or so), 
Naruto was alive and well. The drop off you see is probably very 
real, but a reflection of production more than anything; Naruto is 
notorious a little bit because the anime caught up to the manga, 
and so the last 90 or so episodes were just made up 'filler' (and 
really bad in addition to their non-canonicity). That sort of 
thing tries the patience of even the most loyal fan. But the new 
episodes based on manga released since (the 'Shippuden' episodes 
if I remember aright) are just starting to be released in Japan, 
which means they'll be over here in (a few) months, which will 
likely bring back all the old fans as the plot begins moving again 
and the characters continue growing up.

-- 
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.