The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 29 to June 4, 2016)
edit← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Another One With Sports: Sports seemed to dominate the pop culture mishmash of the chart this week, with the death of Muhammad Ali leading the chart, basketball star Stephen Curry at #6, and two football topics UEFA Euro 2016 (#7) and Copa América Centenario (#9) also placing in the Top 10. But Game of Thrones also had two slots in the Top 10 as well, and probably will until their season finale. Sadly though, the mighty AFC Wimbledon who I have mentioned before, and who amazingly did get promoted to the English Football League One last week, still failed to get near the Top 25. But their day is coming, I just know it.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of May 29 to June 4, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Muhammad Ali 
4,425,310 
There was no question that the death of the iconic and unique American boxer would be a huge news story. He had been in very poor health more recently, and news reports in America that he was seriously ill quickly became news of his death. For purposes of this Report, the timing of his death did raise the question of whether it occurred too late to lead the chart (which runs from 0:00 UTC Sunday to 23:59 the following Saturday each week), but it did not. Almost all of 4.4 million views this article received occurred on June 4, the last reporting day of this Report. 2 X-Men: Apocalypse 
1,086,685 
Hopes were high for this movie after the rapturous critical and commercial reception given to Bryan Singer's previous X-Men film, Days of Future Past; unfortunately the reviews for the followup have been largely negative, with the film struggling to reach a 60% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet, this is its third week in the top 2 (it was #1 last week), and fourth week in the top 10. 3 Game of Thrones
873,355 
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. And with last week's shock revelation, people turned to Wikipedia. With three episodes left in this season, we can expect it stay up on the chart. 4 Game of Thrones (season 6) 
836,979 See #3 5 Memorial Day
762,385 
The last Monday in May (which was May 30 this year), the day that the United States chose to honour its war dead, is perhaps better known as the traditional beginning of US summer vacation, and is thus eagerly anticipated by millions of people too young to serve but old enough to stand in line for action movies. 6 Stephen Curry
735,356 
Curry's basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, are now in the 2016 NBA Finals. 7 UEFA Euro 2016
671,655 
The quadrennial international football event kicks off in France on June 10. 8 Deaths in 2016 
628,824 
The annual list of deaths, always a fairly consistent visitor to this list, is often in the Top 10 this year. The views of this article are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis, with close to 100,000 views a day. Views went up slightly with the news of the death of Muhammad Ali (#1) on June 4, to 125,826 views for that day. When Prince died, views did substantially jump to 275K for one day (April 21). But substantial jumps like that are not driving the solid regular popularity of the article, which makes it a regular part of the Top 25. 9 Copa América Centenario
614,036 
The 45th edition of the Copa América football tournament is being held in the United States this year, the first time the competition has been held outside its South America territory, and began on June 3. This horde of non-Americans crossing the southern border generated an Argentinian advertisement lampooning Donald Trump. 10 Lotte Reiniger
591,857 
A Google Doodle/ on June 2 celebrated the birth (in 1899) of German film director Lotte Reiniger, a pioneer in animation, and best known for silhouette animation. Her film The Adventures of Prince Achmed was released in 1926, over ten years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 11 Captain America: Civil War
524,612 Down from #3. 12 Amber Heard
519,753 
Down from #6 last week, based on continuing celebrity news of Heard's acrimonious divorce from Johnny Depp. 13 Bicycle Race
471,848 Reddit learned a fun fact about this song by Queen. 14 X-Men (film series) 
457,101 The ever-more convoluted film series looks safe for now, and, thanks to the rather boring but still perplexing post-credits tease, people want to know what happens next. 15 Hess triangle
450,342 
This has got to be Reddit as well (and it is), as it is exactly the kind of quirky thing that doesn't seem quite as quirky when you've been doing this list for a few years and see the formula for the type of "quirky" thing that draws attention on Reddit. Someone could make a book of the 1,000 quirkiest things that will sell on Reddit, and keep recycling them over time. In fact that book may already exist but be a huge secret. A quirky secret that would do very well on Reddit. 16 Johnny Depp
448,368 
Last week Depp trailed Amber Heard (#12) by only one slot. The divorce is making them grow apart. 17 List of Game of Thrones episodes
445,027 See #3, #4. Part of the beauty of Wikipedia is the ability to either get a surface understanding of a subject, or stick around and lose entire days of your life in a quest for knowledge. 18 Donald Trump
418,524 
Down about 22,000 views from last week. Trump's position in this list is likely secure at least until the convention, but the numbers keep falling, despite a seemingly endless stream of controversy surrounding him. 19 List of Bollywood films of 2016
416,411 
Generally a popular yearly list article, often slightly below the Top 25. 20 Marilyn Monroe
406,172 
The American actress and model would have turned 90 on June 1 if she was still alive (and not dead for the past 53 years). 21 Warcraft (film)
392,742 
This American fantasy film directed by Duncan Jones (pictured) is set for release in the United States on June 10. 22 Klay Thompson
735,356 
A teammate of #6 on the Golden State Warriors. 23 Garbiñe Muguruza
392,289 
This tennis player won the 2016 French Open – Women's Singles title last week. 24 Emilia Clarke
388,926 
Holding steady for a second week. A.k.a Game of Thrones' Daenerys Targaryen, she has always been the breakout star of the show, which might explain why she's on the list this week (again), given that the Mother of Dragons had barely a line in the actual episode. Of course, she had her new film Me Before You (#29) which came out on June 3. 25 Razak Khan 
387,265 
This Hindi film actor died on June 1.
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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.
- Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.