Wikipedia readers turned to Pneumonic plague at 329x the usual rate

What this article is

Pneumonic plague is a severe lung infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Symptoms include fever, headache, shortness of breath, chest pain, coughing, and coughing up blood. They typically start about three to seven days after exposure. It is one of three forms of plague, the other two being bubonic plague and septicemic plague.

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

Where editors were working

Wikipedia editors made 6 edits to this article on 2026-10-06, concentrated in these sections. This is evidence about the surge, not an explanation of it.

• Russia

What changed that day

The article grew by 18 characters that day. The largest single addition was 17 characters. See everything that changed on 2026-10-06 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.