The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 1 to 7, 2016)
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Underdogs: The triumph of Captain America: Civil War at the box office and #1 on the chart this week is not surprising, but otherwise our top 10 has a number of improbable entries this week, all things considered. Donald Trump (#3) returns to the Top 10 (though he's remained solidly in the Top 25 in the past few weeks), having now essentially clinched the Republican nomination for U.S. President. Anyone who says they honestly predicted this when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower last June to announce his candidacy is simply lying. Even more improbable and happy news, however, comes from the world of English football, where Leicester City F.C. (#4) won the Premier League after starting the season with 5000 to 1 odds. Meanwhile, citizens of London may not see their new mayor Sadiq Khan (#9) as an underdog, but being the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital is not something much of the world would have predicted.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of May 1 to 7, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages (WP:5000), were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Captain America: Civil War 
2,303,444 
The United States premiere of this movie finally came on May 6, and had the fifth-largest opening weekened all-time in that country. With the relative disappointment of Dawn of Justice, the film industry's eyes are turned to this big comic blockbuster which, despite the Captain America headline, is being marketed as another Avengers movie (with Spider-Man!). Whether this will see it over the $1 billion hurdle remains to be seen, but its box office has now already exceeded $678 million. 2 Cinco de Mayo
2,114,216 
One of our annual most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia returns, a celebration of Mexican-American culture originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French. Among those taking advantage of the holiday was this Report's dear friend and constant companion Donald Trump (#3), who stirred controversy by tweeting a photograph of himself eating a taco bowl with the exclamation "I love Hispanics!" 3 Donald Trump 
992,406 
On Tuesday May 3, Trump handily scored a big win in the Indiana primary, leading his last opponents for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, to suspend their campaigns. This means that the real-estate mogul and reality-show star is really now slated to go head-to-head against Hillary Clinton in November (though technically Bernie Sanders has not yet conceded to Clinton) in the election for the Presidency of the United States. What a time to be alive. 4 Leicester City F.C. 
930,859 
The world loves a good underdog sports story, and this week may have seen the most improbable triumph in all of sports history. Coming from 5,000 to 1 odds at the start of the season, this club won the Premier League on May 2, bringing global attention to the team. Jamie Vardy (pictured), one of team's stars, was also named FWA Footballer of the Year. When it comes to rising up against the odds, the promotion and relegation rules of the English football league system has a lot going for it. And speaking of underdog stories, though I don't watch a lot of English football, many are also rooting for AFC Wimbledon (which started in the ninth tier of English football in 2002) to get promoted to Football League One (the third tier) this year, which they can do if they prevail in their playoffs. 5 Sigmund Freud
856,399 
A Google Doogle celebrated the birthday of the famous father of psychoanalysis. 6 Prince (musician)
799,673 
After two weeks in the top slot, Prince's recent death remains a subject of news coverage. 7 Payback (2016) 
733,920 This wrestling event was held on May 1. 8 Jane Jacobs
713,542 
A Google Doogle celebrated the 100th birthday of the urban studies activist and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 9 Sadiq Khan
705,457 
In the long history of London, it is now a fact that one-third of all its mayors have been Muslim. That's because Khan is only the third mayor of London (a position created in 2000), and he's Muslim. And just when you think a subject couldn't be infected by Donald Trump (#3), some of the coverage of the election in England suggested that Khan wouldn't be able to travel to the United States if Trump is elected, a reference to Trump's suggestion that Muslims should be barred from entry. 10 Game of Thrones (season 6)
675,351 
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. 11 Deaths in 2016 
642,188 
The annual list of deaths, always a fairly consistent visitor to this list, saw its average views jump after the death of David Bowie, and another jump after the death of Prince. Down from 718,585 views last week. 12 Game of Thrones
637,473 See #10. 13 Baaghi (2016 film) 
525,711 
This Indian action film starring Tiger Shroff was released worldwide on 29 April 2016. 14 Views (album)
520,818 
The latest album from rapper Drake (pictured) was released on 29 April. 15 Karan Singh Grover
520,377 An Indian movie industry celebrity wedding to Bipasha Basu with some manufactured controversy thrown in. 16 Lemonade (Beyoncé album)
516,323 
The latest album from Beyoncé, released exclusively on her husband Jay-Z's streaming service, Tidal, has been something of a marketing masterstroke- drawing mainstream attention via an accompanying 60-minute film release on HBO (ala Michael Jackson's Thriller) but also triggering a viral storm with an insinuation that her husband had cheated on her with "a Becky with good hair" (supposed code for a white woman). 17 Claudio Ranieri
472,913 
The manager of Leicester City F.C. (#4) 18 Mother's Day
455,343 
The second Sunday in May (that's May 8 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year to celebrate Mother's Day. 19 Fort McMurray
443,474 
In the news due to the immense and ongoing 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. 20 Mario Miranda
438,060 
Another Google Doodle, for this Indian cartoonist and painter who died in 2011. This doodle's reach was limited to only a few countries, including India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, and Iceland (an odd selection beyond India?), but that was more than enough to make the Top 25 this week. 21 The Jungle Book (2016 film)
433,603 
This American film based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, previously adapted to screen in a 1967 animated film, has made over $779 million worldwide since it premiered on April 4. With rapturous reviews (the film currently has a 94% RT rating), the film looks to remain in the public consciousness for some time. Despite being described as a "live-action reboot", the film is really more of a CGI cartoon, with nearly everything onscreen except the lead child actor Neel Sethi composed of computer graphics. 22 Elizabeth Olsen
525,589 
A year since her last appearance in the Top 25, Olsen appears in Captain America: Civil War (#1), the only cast member of that movie to appear on the chart this movie. 23 List of The Flash (2014 TV series) episodes
413,577 
This article keeps popping up on the lower rungs of the Top 25. 24 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
404,562 
By any measure, except perhaps, its own, Warner Bros's attempt to counter the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a success. It has crossed the $800 million mark worldwide, which means that, even given its gargantuan production and marketing budget, it is now in profit, and is likely to generate a tidy sum once the ancillaries are counted. And yet, the mood over at DC/Warner is tense; with its rapidly declining earnings, it is unlikely to enter the "$1 billion club" currently occupied by Marvel's two Avengers films, and has already been outgrossed by Zootopia, released just three weeks earlier. How this will portend for the planned DC Extended Universe is uncertain. All eyes are now on Suicide Squad. 25 List of Bollywood films of 2016
400,115 Generally a popular yearly list article, often slightly below the Top 25.
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Exclusions
edit- 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 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. Since WP:5000 and WMF Topviews use different exclusion algorithms, articles that appear in one but not the other can also safely be excluded as false. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.
Specific exclusions this week: Abu Dhabi (emirate) (redirect article, 3 day desktop view spike May 2-4)
- Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.