Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/April 26 to May 2, 2015

Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 26 to May 2, 2015)

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Summary: Like colliding ocean liners, rousing entertainment and harsh reality merged ungainly in this week's top 25 list. The much heralded pay-per-view pummelling of Manny Pacquiao by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. dominated the list's top slots, giving this list one of its highest total view counts in months. Box office behemoth Avengers: Age of Ultron, which had ruled last week's list, was sent to number 4, despite the fact that its views had actually increased. The film remained the most popular topic to research, with four slots in the top 25. However, just below, the death of Freddie Gray and the horrific earthquake in Nepal forced viewers' attentions back to the vagaries of human experience. The usual gang of popular TV shows, which days ago were top ten topics, now languish at the bottom, including the formerly invincible Game of Thrones, suggesting its rabid fan base may finally be feeling fatigue.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of April 26 to May 2, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao		2,631,206		Wikipedians love their combat sports, but this is the first time such an event has topped the list since it began in January 2013. This long-anticipated boxing match between Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (pictured) and Manny Pacquiao, and the latest fight to be dubbed the Fight of the Century (a somewhat presumptuous title, given that our century is currently 15 years old), was held on May 2 in Las Vegas. To say this fight has been highly anticipated is an understatement: this article was created in July 2013, and plans to get these two in the ring together date as far back to 2010. For all that hype, predictions of record revenues were more than lived up, with PPV revenues estimated to be as high as $400 million.
2	Manny Pacquiao		2,578,817		The current Filipino Congressman and boxing's only octuple champion suffered a fairly noble defeat to Floyd Mayweather, Jr. during the "fight of the century" on May 2.
3	Floyd Mayweather, Jr.		2,507,300		The quintuple champion upheld his undefeated record with his 48th straight win on May 2.
4	Avengers: Age of Ultron		2,407,812		The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premièred in Hollywood on April 13, and went on wide release on May 1. In any other year, the sequel to the billion-grossing Avengers would be the film to beat at the box office, but with the success of Furious 7, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ahead, no one is taking bets on who will come out on top. The movie's $188 million opening weekend failed to live up to its predecessor's $207 million, but when the numbers are this big, you're splitting hairs.
5	Death of Freddie Gray		2,093,596		America has seen a spate of young black men being killed under suspicious circumstances by police in the last 12 months, and in the confusion and politicised debate, viewers turned to Wikipedia for clarity. The death of Eric Garner and the shooting of Michael Brown topped this list for a combined three weeks running, and in a more typical week this latest death would top the list as well. The decision of the state's attorney Marilyn Mosby to charge the police who killed Freddie Gray with homicide has meant that the city of Baltimore has been spared the worst excesses of the riots visited upon Ferguson, Missouri.
6	Bruce Jenner		1,219,166		The former track and field Olympian and current honorary Kardashian remains the news this week, and views for his article have dropped just 25%. Jenner previously appeared on the Top 25 for two weeks in February, but his article would not include what the tabloids were reporting until Jenner said it himself, which he did in an April 24 interview on American television with Diane Saywer – that he is a trans woman. His gender transition will be the subject of an eight-part documentary series starting July 2015.
7	Nepal		1,192,053		Before today, this Himalayan country sandwiched between India and China was probably best known as the home (with Tibet) of Mount Everest, and also of the iconic Sherpa people, who guided the first Westerners to its summit. A onetime spot on the Hippie trail and home for disaffected westerners looking for an alternative way of life, it has seen tragedy, upheaval and civil war in recent years, but horror reached a climax this week with the hideous 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck its central region, including its capital, Kathmandu.
8	2015 Nepal earthquake		908,375		The grinding push of India into Asia that is slowly raising the Himalayas has meant that the Nepali people are no strangers to geological tragedy; even so, the horror they woke up to on April 25 was the worst they would have known in more than eighty years. A combination of size (7.8) depth (a relatively shallow 15 km) and duration (twenty seconds) made the quake particularly devastating; generating a death toll of 7,500, with hundreds still missing. Entire villages near the epicentre were wiped out. Temples that had stood for centuries were flattened. But perhaps the greatest tragedy is that the poor state of transport infrastructure in the country has meant that many of the more remote villages have still received no aid.
9	Vision (Marvel Comics)		825,378		The sentient AI and foil for the villainous Ultron became the breakout star of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and allowed actor Paul Bettany (pictured) to finally step out of the voice-only shadows of his J.A.R.V.I.S. character into full acting.
10	Furious 7		660,138		After burning through the global box office like a brush fire for its first three weeks, this latest instalment in the Fast and Furious franchise is apparently winding down, taking only $6 million in its latest weekend; however such was the overwhelming gravitational pull of Avengers: Age of Ultron that Furious 7's meagre gross still placed it at no 2 in the charts.
11	Bali Nine		634,511		The controversy over these nine convicted Australian drug smugglers, sentenced in Bali on April 29 to either death or life imprisonment, highlights the widening ideological gap between the West's relaxing attitude towards the failing drug war and the hardening attitude of many rapidly developing countries.
12	Extreme Rules (2015)	Future	623,226		It says something about Wikipedia readers' love for the WWE that an article about yet another annual PPV wrestling event could garner upwards of 600 thousand views in the same week as the most anticipated boxing match in decades.
13	May Day		601,670		The highly paganistic celebration of the coming of the northern hemisphere's spring with its own assortment of traditional oddments appears every year on the list like floral clockwork.
14	Avengers (comics)		597,541		The comic book originals of the current film stars are a constantly shifting roster, including many new recruits mentioned in the film.
15	Deaths in 2015		563,180		The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550,000, apparently heedless of who actually died.
16	The Grey (film)		548,758		As noted in a Reddit thread this week, the Liam Neeson-vs-wolves survival action movie from 2011 was apparently so affecting for Roger Ebert that it caused him to walk out of his next screening. "It was the first time I've ever walked out of a film because of the previous film", he said; "The way I was feeling in my gut, it just wouldn't have been fair to the next film."
17	2015 NFL draft	Future	536,800		American football's annual débutante ball, in which the cream of the college crop is selected for the professional leagues, fell from April 30 to May 2. Top pick was Jameis Winston for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (pictured).
18	Game of Thrones (season 5)		527,788		Is the Iron Throne losing its lustre? Time was this show would drive all before it as it carved its path to the top of this list. Comparisons with last year suggest numbers are down, though not by much. It will be interesting to see if the views pick up by the finale.
19	Elizabeth Olsen		525,589		The critically acclaimed, award-winning younger Olsen sister got her big break playing Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
20	The Flash (2014 TV series)		496,308		This spinoff from the hit series Arrow marks DC Comics' second attempt to create a TV universe, after the late and much lamented DC Animated Universe.
21	Daredevil (TV series)		482,054		The first of four projects started as part of a deal between Marvel Studios and Netflix, this TV series was released in its entirety on the service on April 10. It's impossible to gauge the public response to this ("ratings" don't really have meaning when applied to Netflix shows) but the critical response has been ecstatic (Rotten Tomatoes currently rates it at 98%) and if its Wikipedia position is anything to go by (down from #1 two weeks ago), the public appear to have taken to it too.
22	Paul Walker		481,299		Furious 7 will be the last, and definitely biggest, film of Paul Walker's career, and was completed despite his tragic death midway through production. How much of the film's current record grosses was in memoriam to a fallen star is impossible to say.
23	Facebook		472,966		A perennially popular article.
24	2015 Baltimore riots		471,915		The riots that erupted after the death of Freddie Gray have died down somewhat with the decision to charge his policeman assailant with homicide, but not before 250 arrests.
25	Game of Thrones		449,538		See #18.

Exclusions

• This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we also exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (~2% or less) or almost all mobile views (~95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.

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