The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 27 to December 3, 2016)
edit- Prepared with commentary by Serendipodous.
← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Breathe steady: What's this? A two million view cap? A ~400,000 entry? Television shows? Movies? Reddit threads? Google Doodles? Recently dead people? Could it be that Wikipedia has finally returned to normal? Well not exactly. There's a remarkably shallow curve at the top, meaning viewership is still up on previous weeks, mostly due to news events such as the appointment of James Mattis as US Secretary of Defense, or the tragic crash of LaMia Airlines Flight 2933. But if things keep going the way they are, this job might just get boring again.
For the week of November 27 to December 3, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Fidel Castro 
2,401,418 
Numbers are up by nearly a million on last week, so obviously people still cry for la revolucion to vivir, even though el revolucionario está muerto. 2 Associação Chapecoense de Futebol 
1,406,474 
The football team that tragically lost most of its members in the crash of LaMia Airlines Flight 2933 (see #11) 3 Jagadish Chandra Bose
1,385,705 
The Indian biologist who invented the crescograph received a Google Doodle on his 158th birthday on November 30. 4 James Mattis
1,059,661 
Amid a string of controversial Trump appointments, the former general's appointment as Secretary of Defense feels almost normal. About the only thing controversial about him is a mildly hawkish stance on Iran. 5 Louisa May Alcott 
1,047,171 
The author of Little Women and Little Men got a Google Doodle on her 184th birthday on November 29. 6 Westworld (TV series)
920,398 
Numbers are up for the penultimate episode of the season, which saw the realisation of a number of long-held fan theories and bodes well for next week's 90-minute season finale. A second season has been greenlit, so expect even more water cooler moments next year. 7 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film)
830,774 
Down from #2 last week. This cinematic spinoff to the Harry Potter series, set in 1920s New York, and scripted by the books' author herself, JK Rowling (pictured), opened this week to decent notices (a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a solid, though unspectacular, $75 million US opening. 8 Elizabeth II 
825,747 
For the fifth consecutive week, the longest-reigning British monarch in history places on this list thanks to The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy. 9 Deaths in 2016 
773,350 
The deaths list has always acted as this list's lodestone; it is so consistent on a day-to-day basis that where it appears is an indication of the weekly traffic levels. That said, we may have to recalibrate our mathematics, since its numbers have been slowly going up over the last few weeks. 10 Donald Trump
717,438 
Numbers continue to drop since the November 8 United States presidential election, 2016 (#11), but they can be expected to rebound in January. Also, Trump continues to tweet. 11 LaMia Airlines Flight 2933
706,722 
The latest air crash in the Andes saw the loss of 71 out of the 77 people on board. This story has strange echoes of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571; another South American football team lost in the Andes, though it is arguably more tragic since, despite the latter's gruesome details, far more survived. 12 United States presidential election, 2016
637,500 
Still popular as people refresh their screens occasionally to make sure Wikipedia was not vandalized. 13 Che Guevara
630,468 
The Latin American revolutionary and T-shirt logo of a million college kids worldwide saw views spike upon the death of Fidel, whose Revolucion he played a small role in. 14 Hazel Keech 
623,286 
The British girl made good in Bollywood married cricketer Yuvraj Singh on November 30. Or maybe you could say he married her. He's down at #201 on the raw list. 15 Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
596,965 
The only sibling of Queen Elizabeth II, she is portrayed by Vanessa Kirby in The Crown television series. 16 Moana (2016 film)
574,543 
Surprisingly low entry for a film that just had an $84 million opening. Believe it or not, its take is actually tracking higher than Frozen's, which was one of the top entries in our annual list for 2014. 17 Dolly Parton
601,836 
The beloved country music singer's TV biopic, Coat of Many Colors, shot her onto the list last year, so it's not surprising that its sequel, Christmas of Many Colors, would do the same. 18 Gilmore Girls
552,713 
This American television series ran from 2000-2007, but was resurrected this week with a new season on Netflix, as Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which premiered in its entirety on November 25. 19 Dear Zindagi 
540,610 
The Bollywood drama starring Alia Bhatt (pictured) opened on November 23 and has so far made ₹1.2 billion ($17.6 million) worldwide. 20 Spite house
505,340 
This unique form of architecture, in which usual considerations such as aesthetics, functionality or even livability are abandoned in favour of annoying the neighbors, usually by blocking sunlight, is the first Reddit topic to drive an article onto this list twice; the last being in 2014. 21 Final Fantasy XV
502,054 For a while there it was looking like the ur-text series of the JRPG would finally live up to its name. But this instalment has received a decent critical and commercial reception. Maybe there's room for a XVI someday. Just not next year. Or with an action spinoff. Or something called "Versus XVI". Keep it simple guys. 22 John Christie (murderer)
499,631 
American serial killers like to range wide, but British serial killers prefer to keep things in the home, as was the case with this putrid scumbag, who gassed, murdered and raped eight women at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill. As if that wasn't enough, an innocent man was found guilty of two of his murders and hanged, a miscarriage of justice that ultimately led to the abolition of the death penalty in the UK. The events were dramatised this week in a three part BBC serial Rillington Place, the first of which aired on November 25. 23 Ron Glass
456,955 
The actor who played the preacher man Derrial Book in the cult scifi series Firefly died this week of respiratory failure at the age of 71. 24 Shigeru Miyamoto
441,102 
The creator of such classic video game characters as Mario, Donkey Kong and Princess Zelda has a habit of guessing the measurements of things, and then checking them with a roll of measuring tape, as learned in a Reddit thread this week. 25 Nico Rosberg
438,478 
The German Formula 1 racing driver announced his retirement on December 2.
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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 (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% 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.