The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 3 to 9, 2016)
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A Fortune, A Leak, A Scandal: Panama: Though Wrestlemania's annual event topped the chart, as it is intensely popular among fans of professional wrestling, the release of the Panama Papers (#2) was clearly the top international news story of the week. It is not easy to get a grasp on the scope of these disclosures, though List of people named in the Panama Papers (#7) is useful in that endeavor. These events combined to knock Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (#3) out of the top spot. And in other movie news, the release of a trailer for Rogue One pushed that article up to #6. The most notable death of the week was musician Merle Haggard (#5), and down the chart, the season finale of The Walking Dead took up four slots.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of April 3 to 9, 2016, 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 WrestleMania 32 
1,895,563 
Up from #7 last week. WWE's annual pay-per-view pantomime took place on April 3, 2016 (the first day of this week's chart), at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, featuring Roman Reigns (pictured), who defeated Triple H and the inauguration of the Women's Championship, which was won by Charlotte. 2 Panama Papers 
1,644,672 
The Panama Papers are a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies listed by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, including the identities of shareholders and directors of the companies. The first news reports based on the papers went public on April 3. The Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (pictured), was among those exposed in the papers, and announced his resignation on April 5. 3 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
1,387,901 
The views are halved from last week, but still another strong showing after two weeks at #1. Warner Bros might have cause to breathe again for the first time in three years, as their tent-pole gamble and hopes for an entire franchise have, it seems, paid off. Maybe. With $783 million earned worldwide through April 10, the official founding stone for DC's cinematic universe has gone down a storm, with the studio's highest ever domestic opening weekend. Having cost an estimated $400 million to make and market, this movie will have to make $800 million worldwide just to break even, which it appears it will do. 4 Donald Trump 
1,021,206 
You'll have to applaud Donald Trump, because I really can't recall the last time he wasn't on this chart. His article was the 17th most viewed in 2015 with over 14 million views, and he has already more than doubled that in 2016. 5 Merle Haggard
991,468 
The American singer and songwriter died on his 79th birthday on April 6 at his ranch in Northern California. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, he had 38 number one hits on the U.S. country charts. 5 Rogue One
979,685 
This Star Wars-universe movie, but not part of the main series, will be released on December 16, 2016. The release of a teaser trailer on April 7 successfully propelled this article into the chart for the first time. (It almost made the Top 25 in December 2015 during the peak of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens (#21) frenzy.) Felicity Jones (pictured) will star in the film. 7 List of people named in the Panama Papers 
926,251 
See #2. Wikipedia can be very good at preparing detailed articles like this, attempting to usefully organize massive amounts of worldwide press reporting. Argentine President Mauricio Macri (pictured) is the first headshot of many on this article at the moment. 8 Ravi Shankar 
751,268 
The famous Indian musician died in December 2012, but a partial-world reach Google Doodle celebrated his 96th birthday on April 7. 9 1896 Summer Olympics 722,779 
After a hiatus of fifteen-hundred years, the Olympics were restarted in 1896; the games began on April 6, 1896, 120 years ago. And a wide-reach Google Doodle was there to remind us of this. 10 Deaths in 2016
648,626 
The annual list of deaths has always been a fairly consistent visitor to this list, and often in the Top 10, averaging about 600,000 views a week at this point. 11 The Walking Dead (season 6)
608,892 
The season's finale aired on April 3, and views jumped from 459K last week. 12 Negan
608,016 
Jeffrey Dean Morgan (#18) debuted as this Walking Dead character in the season finale of #11. 13 Pratyusha Banerjee 
591,235 
Down from #5 and 762K views last week. The popular Indian television actress was found dead on April 1, an apparent victim of suicide at age 24. She first found popularity in India on the show Balika Vadhu. Typically, high-profile deaths only appear on this chart on the week of the death, and the second appearance here shows her death has been the subject of continuing news coverage in India. 14 The Walking Dead (TV series)
588,903 See #11. 15 The Jungle Book (2016 film)
521,474 
This American film based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, previously adapted to screen in a 1967 animated film, had its world premiere on April 4. It was released in 15 countries on April 8, and will have a U.S. debut on April 15. It has received positive reviews from critics. A mixture of live-action and CGI, the voice of Bill Murray (pictured) is among the prominent talents in the film. 16 Cédric Villani
476,809 
Somehow Serendipodous figured out that a comment in this Reddit thread was the source of this article's popularity. This is really crazy. The Reddit thread is titled "If magic and wizards were revealed to be a real thing, who would you not be surprised to see come out of the magical closet?" and is simply a springboard for discussion. One of the top comments link this article, saying "He's a Fields medallist who looks like he jumped straight out of a Tim Burton movie." This comment has 5,444 upvotes on Reddit. The internet is WEIRD. 17 O. J. Simpson
467,289 
American Crime Story, the true-crime spinoff of American Horror Story, continues. 18 Jeffrey Dean Morgan
460,381 See #12. 19 Villanova University
436,870 
On April 4, the Villanova Wildcats men's basketball team (coached by Jay Wright (pictured)) won the 2016 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship Game against the North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team, when Kris Jenkins hit the game-winning shot as time expired. 20 Blac Chyna
422,341 On April 5, it was announced via Instagram that this American model was engaged to Rob Kardashian. 21 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
418,118 
This article has remained fairly popular since the film was released in December 2015. It seems likely that the attention to Rogue One (#6) was sufficient to bring it back into the Top 25 again this week. 22 Gloria Vanderbilt
513,404 
A documentary on HBO about the American heiress and mother of television journalist Anderson Cooper titled Nothing Left Unsaid debuted last week. That thumbnail is a photo of Vanderbilt at age 24 in 1958, from the Carl Van Vechten collection at the Library of Congress. In finding thumbnails for this chart, it is always intriguing to the see the spottiness of our photographic collection. It is nice when we have post-1923 public domain photographs, though none of the ones of Vanderbilt date past the 1950s. In my head, Gloria Vanderbilt is always wearing her trademark jeans, but we don't have any photographs of that. 23 List of The Flash (2014 TV series) episodes
388,003 
The American television show The Flash is on a three week-break before its next scheduled episode will air. 24 Descendants of the Sun
385,071 
See last week's report (#23) for my discussion of this fairly unique entry for the English Wikipedia -- a South Korean television series so popular, it is appearing on this English Wikipedia chart. 25 Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016
383,944 
Bernie Sanders's spirited fight against Hillary Clinton is keeping this article popular.
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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 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.
- Specific exclusions this week: World War II, India, United States, France, Canada, Germany, Australia, United Kingdom, Japan. For unknown reasons, bots inflated the views of these articles from April 2-6.
- Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.