"C.J. Croy" cjcroy@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.