Wikipedia readers turned to Steve Gleason at 188x the usual rate

What this article is

Stephen Michael Gleason is an American former professional football player who played as a safety with the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Washington State Cougars. Originally signed by the Indianapolis Colts as an undrafted free agent in 2000, he played for the Saints through the 2006 season. As a free agent in 2008, Gleason retired from the NFL after eight seasons.

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

Where editors were working

Wikipedia editors made 2 edits to this article on 2026-10-06, concentrated in these sections. This is evidence about the surge, not an explanation of it.

• Personal life

What changed that day

The article grew by 508 characters that day. The largest single addition was 508 characters to Personal life. 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.