The Top 25 Report
Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 21 – April 27 2013)
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Summary: A slow week, dominated by pop culture, previous entries, Google Doodles and Reddit threads. The popularity of Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby augur well for future reports, when their movies are finally, fully released.
For the week of April 21 to 27, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Rank Last Wks Article Views Notes 1 – – Ella Fitzgerald 1,902,708 2 – – Iron Man 3 652,309 As per usual in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the third installment in the Iron Man series was released internationally a week early, triggering interest before its release in its home country on May 3. 3 9 8 Game of Thrones 543,047 This epic fantasy TV series launched its third season on March 31, and has seen its ratings almost double on its premiere episode. 4 - - Munich massacre 503,257 An attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany on the Israeli Olympic team by the Palestinian group Black September. Underwent a massive spike in views on April 25, after a 4-0 victory by Bayern Munich over Barcelona FC was referred to in the press as a "Munich massacre". 5 10 16 Facebook 488,397 A perennially popular article. 6 - - Hemlock Grove (TV series) 474,142 Produced by schlockmeister Eli Roth, who also directed the pilot, this predictably gory werewolf series, based on a novel, was released in its entirety via Netflix on April 19. 7 7 2 Oblivion (2013 film) 466,461 Despite narrowly losing the weekend top spot to Michael Bay's sociopathon Pain & Gain, this Tom Cruise star vehicle still handlily beat it in the Wikipedia stakes, garnering more than twice its views. 8 11 26 Deaths in 2013 426,855 The lists of deaths in the current year is always a quite popular article. 9 - - Socotra 407,165 10 - - George Jones 404,786 11 - - The Great Gatsby 401,638 12 17 8 Google 401,002 A perennially popular article 13 20 28 World War II 380,743 14 19 2 Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act 376,926 Otherwise known as CISPA, this hugely controversial act passed the US Congress with little comment from the media, despite its potentially dramatic impact on personal privacy. Thankfully beaten in the Senate. 15 – – Arsenal F.C. 371,419 The world's fourth-richest football club came to notice with a 1-0 victory against Fulham, and an impending match against Manchester United (which they held to a 1-1 draw). 16 - - Earth Day 365,612 17 1 2 Chechnya 361,449 18 16 2 Daft Punk 357,847 19 21 3 Game of Thrones (season 3) 351,362 see #3 above 20 - 28 YouTube 351,135 Another perennially popular article 21 3 2 Boston Marathon bombings 348,429 22 - 2 List of Game of Thrones episodes 337,118 see #3 above 23 5 2 420 (cannabis culture) 323,110 24 – - Aashiqui 2 320,848 Bollywood blockbusters like this occasionally score highly enough with Indian diaspora to register on English Wikipedia 25 - - Edith Macefield 318,947
- This list is derived from the WP:5000 report. It excludes the Wikipedia main page (and "wiki"), non-article pages, and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish. Standard removals this week include:
- G-force; this has been in the Top 25 since the list was started at the beginning of the year. The continuing popularity of this article, which jumped in June 2012, has been without explanation. Articles on popular scientific concepts get nowhere this level of viewing based on our analysis to date, e.g., Gravitation (49,516 views from March 3–9), and therefore we have decided to remove it from the list as most likely caused by non-human views.
- Cat anatomy; explanation still unknown for its continuing high view counts
Specific removals this week (those articles for which no reason for any sudden popularity could be located):
- Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 318,947. Last week: 341,598
- Almosts: 2013 NFL Draft (317,000 views); Defiance (TV series) (305,013 views); United States (301,506 views)
- The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create list: [1]