The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 15 to 21, 2016)
edit← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Slow Ride: It only took 321,173 views to make the Top 25 most-viewed articles this week, the lowest this year to date by over 35,000 views. Captain America: Civil War leads the chart for a third straight week, though its 1.28 million views is also the lowest #1 view count for the year, and well below the very respectable 3.33 million views it got last week. What seems odd is that EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, does not appear at all in the Top 25. It is only #30. Anecdotally, it seems to have received far less press coverage than recent disasters like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which remained on the chart for five weeks after occurring in March 2014. This is not a case of a disaster happening at the end of a week such that it only shows up the following week, its views were highest on May 19, and have dropped daily since. If I had to guess a cause, I would suggest that Donald Trump (#8) and the American presidential election is sucking up a great deal of the press bandwidth in the United States.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of May 15 to 21, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the Top 5000, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Captain America: Civil War 
1,284,748 
Though views are down over half from last week's 3.3 million, this movie hangs on to the top spot for a third straight week. Not too surprising, since it has already earned over one billion dollars in worldwide revenue. 2 X-Men: Apocalypse 
1,009,485 
Hopes were high for this 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. How this will affect its box office performance when it opens over the next few weeks is uncertain, but Fox must be somewhat tense right now. 3 Yuri Kochiyama 
940,581 Seeing this name, one previously unknown to me, with a 26% mobile view rate, I knew it would be due to a Google Doodle. Yet, the lead sentence of her article describes that she was "a Japanese American political activist influenced by Marxism, Maoism, and the thoughts of Malcolm X. She is notable as one of the few prominent non-black Black nationalists." That seems quite controversial for a Doodle, but Google's statement celebrating what would have been her 95th birthday describes her as "an Asian American activist who dedicated her life to the fight for human rights and against racism and injustice." This seems fairly noble, and Google also notes she lived in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. The Doodle did cause some controversy among American conservatives. 4 Eurovision Song Contest 2016
690,458 
Returning for a second week. For the first time in history, Americans were able to watch the annual sequinfest in all its interminable, trashy, gaudy glory, and no doubt come out of it wondering what all the fuss was about. Well here's what it's about: Europe's in a mess. We've got Russia making moves on Ukraine, Greece in seemingly permanent crisis, a flood of refugees bringing out the worst in us, and Britain thinking about leaving. In all that, we need something that brings us all together, no matter how corny. And here is the one chance the nations of Europe have to buoy each other up (unless they're the UK, in which case, a hug from Ireland is all we generally get). Nonetheless, this year's contest (Held at the Stockholm Globe Arena, pictured) ultimately boiled down to a battle between Russia and Ukraine, which, thanks to some passive-aggressive tactical voting in the former Soviet bloc, Ukraine won with the pointedly anti-Russian song "1944". 5 Game of Thrones (season 6)
676,916 
The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. I don't watch Game of Thrones, but I usually know when it is on due to cryptic tweets of distress and disbelief during each episode. 6 Deaths in 2016 
642,063 
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 (who departed the Top 25 this week after four straight appearances). 7 Mohammad Azharuddin
607,098 Up from #11 and 458K views last week. The once-beloved cricket captain turned politician was brought low in 2000 after a match-fixing scandal, dramatised recently by the Bollywood film Azhar (#25) 8 Donald Trump
568,970 
Like Deaths in 2016 (#6), Donald Trump seems to have permanently set up camp in the Top 10. If he gets elected, he might be a permanent number one. Ahem. I can't say anymore. 9 Game of Thrones
566,744 See #5. 10 Morley Safer
550,159 
The longtime journalist and reporter for the American television show 60 Minutes died just a week after announcing his retirement. 11 UFC 198
471,987 
This event only got 38,000 more views than UFC 197 did last month (and which hit #20), but in a slow week, it was almost enough to crack the Top 10. This 198th edition of UFC was subtitled Werdum vs. Miocic. Miocic won. 12 Deadpool (film)
388,483 Back on the list for another week. One thing Fox can take pride in is their supposedly risky decision to back an R-rated Deadpool film, which managed to make $762 million worldwide on a $58 million budget, and is back in the list thanks to its release on Blu-ray. 13 X-Men (film series)) 
387,874 Views rose most every day this week, probably due to X-Men: Apocalypse (#2). 14 Robert Hanssen
382,071 
Reddit fueled by headline "TIL that in 1987, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was tasked by his superiors to find a mole within the agency after the FBI's moles in the KGB were caught. In reality, he was the mole, working with the KGB since 1979." 15 List of Bollywood films of 2016
379,385 
Generally a popular yearly list article, often slightly below the Top 25. 16 List of The Flash (2014 TV series) episodes
368,382 
This article keeps popping up on the lower rungs of the Top 25. 17 Disappearance of Bobby Dunbar
365,024 
Reddit fueled by headline "TIL a 4 yo kid named Bobby Dunbar disappeared on a family trip, 8 months later they rescued him and reunited him with his family and they lived happily ever after. Nearly a hundred years later, DNA proved conclusively that the kid they rescued wasn't Bobby Dunbar." 18 List of Game of Thrones episodes
364,450 See #5, #9. 19 United States
360,465 
In a slow week, it is not surprising that this always popular article creeps into the Top 25. 20 Stephen Curry
359,743 
Last week, the basketball player for the Golden State Warriors won the title of MVP for the second straight year, and became the first player to win the title unanimously. 21 Sangeeta Bijlani
350,476 
Former wife of #7. 22 2016 in film
348,923 
Only a 35% mobile view count, it is possible something is inflating these numbers a bit. 23 Doom (2016 video game)
346,257 
This video game reboot of the Doom series was released on May 13. 24 UEFA Euro 2016
327,140 
The first matches of the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe begin on June 10. 25 Azhar (film)
321,173 See #7. The film was released on May 13.
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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.