Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/April 5 to 11, 2015

Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 5 to 11, 2015)

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Furious domination: If it wasn't for Easter, Fast and Furious related articles would have taken the Top four spots this week. The latest installment of the movie franchise, Furious 7 tops the chart for the second straight week. And for real Furious aficionados, be sure to scroll down to see our Furious only chart, which reveals that all seven movies were ranked among the 200 most popular articles this week.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of April 5 to 11, 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 Furious 7   2,617,928
 
A second week at #1, and up from 1.8 million views last week. The seventh installment of this long-running series, whose grip on sanity has decreased as its profitability has increased, opened on April 3. In keeping with tradition, this movie is so insane it shook off the death of its lead actor midway through and kept on trucking. And, again in keeping with tradition, it has outgrossed its predecessors, taking $67 million on its first day – more than The Fast and the Furious 3 earned in its entire run.
2 Paul Walker   2,236,641
 
Up from #5 and 875K views last week. See #1.
3 The Fast and the Furious   1,317,476
 
Up from #6 and 748K views last week. See #1.
4 Easter   993,500
 
Up from #7 and 718K views last week. It's hard to remember these days, under the onslaught of bunnies, chocolate eggs and marshmallow peeps, that Easter, not Christmas, is the most sacred date of the Christian calendar.
5 Vin Diesel   769,895
 
Up from #22 and 456K views last week. Vin Diesel, a.k.a Mark Vincent a.k.a Melkor (his D&D name, and before you say that's irrelevant, he had it fake-tattooed on his stomach while filming XXX) is the nominal star of Furious 7, though Paul Walker (#2) has been in most people's thoughts. He also recently became a father for the third time, so between that and Furious 7's grosses, he has a lot to smile about, even if he will doubtless be remembering his departed friend. By the way, his new daughter's name is Pauline, after Paul Walker.
6 Game of Thrones (season 5)   738,303
 
Up from #19 and 476K views last week. And it's baa-aack. I am not the world's greatest fan of Game of Thrones, but I swear, even if you thought it was televisual swill, after curating this list for three years solid you'd have the dadadadaDUM! dadadadaDUM! dadadadaDUM! crashing around your skull too.
7 Daredevil (TV series)   714,339
 
The first season of this new Netflix series created by Drew Goddard (pictured) and based on the comic book character debuted on April 10. Critical reaction has been generally favorable.
8 Better Call Saul   593,396
 
Up from #23 and 456K views last week. The season finale of this television show spinoff of Breaking Bad (a former chart favourite on Wikipedia) starring Bob Odenkirk (pictured), debuted on AMC on April 6.
9 Zlatan Ibrahimović   570,145
 
After a recent loss, this Swedish footballer with Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG) ranted that "In 15 years I’ve never seen a [good] referee in this shit country ... [they] don’t even deserve PSG". (I've seen the video and he said it in French, but I guess that is what he was saying.) He later apologized, but was criticized by French politicians, and Ligue 1 imposed a four-match ban.
10 Interstellar (film)   564,409
 
The science fiction blockbuster holds steady at #10 for a second week, down slightly from 586K views last week.
11 Jordan Spieth   554,374
 
This American golfer's stellar performance in the 2015 Masters Tournament the latter part of the week drew much attention. On April 10, Spieth broke the 36-hole Masters scoring record by posting 14-under 130 through two rounds, and on April 11 he broke the 54 hole record at the Masters by shooting a 200 total (16 under par).
12 Deaths in 2015   551,092
 
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550,000 (which it broke by 1,092 views this week, an uncommon deviation albeit very minor), apparently heedless of who actually died.
13 Game of Thrones   529,779
 
See #6.
14 The Flash (2014 TV series)   514,883
 
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.
15 Alan Rickman   513,144
 
He may be a highly regarded English actor, but Reddit was more excited to learn this week that he "has been with his first girlfriend since 1965 - when he was 19 years old."
16 Dwayne Johnson   492,179
 
Down one slot from last week. Another Furious 7 actor.
17 Facebook   471,451
 
A perennially popular article.
18 Mike Krzyzewski   460,725
 
Krzyzewski's 2014–15 Duke Blue Devils men's basketball team won the U.S. college basketball title game on April 6, for his fifth national championship. Though rated a "start" article, this subject has more template boxes at the bottom for his various teams than any article I've ever seen.
19 Kanye West   438,187
 
Yes, "loser.com" still redirects to his Wikipedia page, but his most recent rise in views may relate to his visit with wife Kim Kardashian to Armenia.
20 Frankie Valli   421,687
 
A jump in popularity starting around April 3 seems legitimate, but the exact reason is unclear. Valli is the lead singer of The Four Seasons, first formed in 1960, which was the most popular rock band in history prior to The Beatles. Unlike the Beatles, they were still performing live shows last week.
21 Frank Kaminsky   408,764
 
Although Kaminsky's Wisconsin Badgers men's basketball team was defeated by #18 Mike Krzyzewski's team for the title, Kaminsky won the title of National College Player of the year.
22 Siblings Day   408,218
 
Pay no mind to the fact that you'd never heard of this holiday before, but social media such as Facebook and Twitter exploded on April 10 with people posting nice comments about their siblings for "National Siblings Day." Being the curmudgeon I am, I saw that this article was only created on April 10 in 2013, and stats.grok.se only recorded 14,917 views for the month of April 2013. In April 2014, that tool's views rose to 165,257. But this is the year that Siblings Day apparently took off. And I guess that's not really a bad thing. Saying a few nice words about a sibling, even one you may have tortured or been tortured by as a youth, probably makes the world a better place. Though I do wonder who made this holiday suddenly popular? Who is trying to make money off this? (There I go again ...)
23 Michelle Rodriguez   387,613
 
The actress reprises her role of Letty Ortiz in Furious 7.
24 Prince Rupert's Drop   386,985
 
This imgur gif posted around April 9 has over 2 million views, and is the likely source for the recently popularity of this article. These drops are glass objects created by dripping molten glass into cold water. Though the head of the drop can be hit with a hammer with no problem, as the gif shows, explosive disintegration will occur if the tail end is even slightly damaged.
25 Lizzie Borden   380,931
 
Borden was tried and acquitted for the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Massachusetts, and her story is still remembered in this age's pop culture. The television miniseries The Lizzie Borden Chronicles starring Christina Ricci debuted the Lifetime network on April 5.

Exclusions

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  • 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.
Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.