Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 25 to 31, 2015)
edit← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Summary: The American heartland appears to dominate the Report this week, with Chris Kyle leading for another week and the film about his life at #3, and our #2 slot filled by the Royal Rumble wrestling event. A lot of other American topics including American football fill the list this week, though India contributes the new film Baby at #13 and its annual Republic Day at #16.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of January 25 to 31, 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 Chris Kyle 
2,653,157 
Down 50% from an astounding 5.3 million views last week, but still far and away enough to top the Report for another week. I find it rather surprising that Kyle's article and the American Sniper article have been quite so popular. Like the many occasions where wrestling events I've never heard of make the Top 25, these articles are tapping a segment of the American populace that is somewhat disconnected from the rest of the world and other cultural topics. 2 Royal Rumble (2015) N/A 1,245,749 
When I made the wrestling analogy above, I did not even know that #2 was going to be a wrestling event. This WWE pay per view event was held on January 25, 2015 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Roman Reigns (#22), who I have never heard of, won the "Royal Rumble" match. 3 American Sniper (film) 
807,758 
Consistent with the drop in views in #1, this is down from 1.5 million views last week, but still quite popular. 4 Stephen Hawking
653,915 
The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 13th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. Was Albert Einstein this consistently popular in his day? 5 Barack Obama 
653,661 
The president of the United States was more popular than usual this week, probably thanks to his trip to India, with views rising particularly around January 27, when he attended the funeral of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, to a fair amount of criticism. 6 Samuel Adams
609,610 
A big jump in views for this American founding father, starting January 26, probably due to the Sons of Liberty three-part American miniseries. 7 Auschwitz concentration camp 
595,834 
In the news due to the 70th anniversary of its liberation. 8 Marshawn Lynch
560,125 
Star American footballer for the Seattle Seahawks, who does not like dealing with media, but popular in the run-up to Super Bowl XLIX held on February 1. 9 Facebook
542,557 
A perennially popular article. 10 Harald Bluetooth
536,985 
Reddit learned (as did I) that "the symbol for bluetooth is a bind rune made from the pre-viking runes of the tenth century king, Harald Bluetooth's name." 11 Mia Khalifa 
522,063 This Lebanese porn actress gained attention recently by becoming the most popular porn star on Pornhub.com, and with her Middle Eastern background being fodder for additional news coverage. 12 Super Bowl XLIX
521,826 ... which was held this year on February 1 at the University of Phoenix Stadium, and will no doubt appear much higher in next week's report. Up from #18 and 436K views last week. 13 Baby (2015 film)
521,684 
Hindi film starring Akshay Kumar released on January 23. 14 Lil Wayne
510,294 
A very high mobile count (93% last week, 91% this week) implies that last week's release of Sorry 4 the Wait 2, the latest mixtape from Lil Wayne, might not be generating solely human interest. So these views may be artificially inflated, though we've made no conclusion requiring exclusion at this point. 15 Alan Turing
498,219 
It is sobering to recall one who accomplished so much, only to be so utterly destroyed for so little. After laying the foundations for the philosophy of artificial intelligence, essentially inventing the programmable computer, and shortening World War II by an estimated two years by cracking the Enigma code, he was outed as a homosexual and forced to undergo a chemical castration, an ordeal which eventually drove him to suicide. As an added insult, his life's work became the subject of two films, U-571 and Enigma, neither of which saw fit to mention him. So the Oscar buzz Benedict Cumberbatch has received for portraying him in his first true cinematic biopic, The Imitation Game, carries some fairly historic undertones. The film has proven popular, earning over $132 million worldwide to date. 16 Republic Day (India)
477,459 
An annual holiday in India celebrating the Constitution of India, celebrated on January 26 17 Deaths in 2015 
471,293 
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. 18 List of Super Bowl champions
459,689 This list invariably pops up once a year, as Americans scramble for facts to determine which team will win the Super Bowl; the foremost of all football fiestas (at least in the US- most of the rest of the world has never heard of it). 19 2015 Pro Bowl
437,118 The Pro Bowl is the American football all-star game, and it was held on January 25 this year. It is now the sixth year that the game has been scheduled to take place before the Super Bowl to attract more attention. 20 Fifty Shades of Grey
421,592 
This 2011 erotic romance novel by E. L. James (pictured) is one of the biggest best sellers of the past decade. The film of the same name will be released in mid-February. 21 Dying Light
409,412 
This horror video game was released last week. 22 Roman Reigns
407,217 See #2. 23 Serena Williams
395,239 
Williams won the Women's Singles title at the 2015 Australian Open. 24 United States
390,064 
A consistently rather popular article. 25 Morgan Freeman
383,585 
A big jump on views on January 30, the day after a Reddit post noting his criticism of Black History Month.
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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.
- Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.
Specific exclusions this week:
- None