Aldon Smith saw 1,971x more Wikipedia readers than usual

What this article is

Aldon Jacarus Ramon Smith was an American professional football player who was an outside linebacker and defensive end for six seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Missouri Tigers and was selected by the San Francisco 49ers with the seventh overall pick in the 2011 NFL draft. Smith was a first-team All-Pro and a Pro Bowl selection with the 49ers in 2012. He was also a member of the Oakland Raiders, Dallas Cowboys, and Seattle Seahawks.

Summary text from the Wikipedia article "Aldon Smith", available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article.

Where editors were working

Wikipedia editors made 29 edits to this article on 2026-06-14, concentrated in these sections. This is evidence about the surge, not an explanation of it.

• Death
• Early life
• 2011 season
• College awards and honors
• Pre-draft

What changed that day

The article grew by 2,051 characters that day. The largest single addition was 614 characters. See everything that changed on 2026-06-14 in Wikipedia's own diff view — that is where the reason for a surge is usually visible, written and sourced by the editors who were following the story.

How this was measured

Views are Wikimedia's own pageview counts for en.wikipedia, filtered to agent=user so automated traffic is excluded. The baseline is the median of the previous 60 days, which is used instead of the mean so that an earlier surge cannot flatten a later one. The multiple is the day's views divided by that median.