Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 7 to 13, 2014)
edit← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Summary: There is no unifying theme we can slap on top article popularity this week. A Google Doodle for Leo Tolstoy's birthday propelled that 19th century author to the top spot, followed by the thirteenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Current events, including the suspension of American footballer Ray Rice after release of video footage of a domestic violence incident, and the release of the video game Destiny, followed close behind. And in the slightly quirky category, another alleged reveal of the identity of Jack the Ripper, a mystery which has remained unsolved since 1888, took up spots 6 and 9.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of September 7 to 13, 2014, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Leo Tolstoy 
755,226 
A Google Doodle on September 9 commemorating the 186th birthday of this Russian writer of War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) was enough to put this article in the top spot for the week. 2 September 11 attacks 
745,804 
Last year this article was #1 for the week on the Top 25 Report, so it is not surprising it is bested only by a Google Doodle this year. Views are about 240,000 lower this year, but that could be due in part to competition from the current world conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (#5). Last year, this solemn anniversary only had to compete with twerking. 3 Ray Rice
655,572 
On September 8, footage was released by TMZ of this American football player sucker punching his fiancée unconscious on an elevator, leading to the issuance of an indefinite suspension the same day. The world has known about this event of domestic violence for months, and the National Football League's decision in July to only suspend Rice for two games for assault caused much public outcry. It seems letting the world see the video of the encounter, which was sent to the NFL months ago but not released, made it too hard for them to keep downplaying this event. 4 Destiny (video game)
573,518 
This video game was released on September 9, and by the next day publisher Activision claimed that it was the most successful new gaming franchise launch of all time, with more than $500 million USD in sales to retail stores and consumers worldwide. 5 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
553,631 
Down from #3 last week. The world continues to struggle with how to assess and treat this brutal group. Less importantly the world also struggles with what to call it. Politicians rotate among "ISIL" (the abbreviation of this article title), ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), and simply the "Islamic State." In Syria, ISIS's detractors use the term "Daʿesh", which sounds like "Dash", based on the Arabic letters for the Arabic ISIL name. 6 Aaron Kosminski 
481,805 Kosminski has long been one of the persons suspected of being the infamous 1888 London killer Jack the Ripper. A claim by author Russell Edwards this week to have proven Kosminski's guilt using DNA evidence caused much internet attention. It is an interesting and remarkable claim, and thus somewhat likely to fade away if disproved, leaving people with the vague impression that it was true, like most sensationalistic claims of this type. Head on over to Jack the Ripper suspects if you want to see the gallery of all possible suspects. 7 Deaths in 2014 
446,753 
The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. Deaths this week included: Fanny Godin (pictured at left), the oldest living Belgian, at age 112 (September 7); American fast-food restauranteur S. Truett Cathy (September 8); Scottish guitarist and former member of the band Primal Scream, Robert Young (September 9); 1960s Japanese track athlete Yoshinori Sakai (September 10); German actor Joachim Fuchsberger (September 11); former Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Ebeid (September 12); and Serbian footballer Milan Galić (September 13). 8 Richard Kiel
444,110 
The most viewed death of the week. Kiel, who died on September 10, was an American actor best known for his role of the steel-toothed Jaws in the 1970s James Bond movies The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. 9 Jack the Ripper 
441,407 
See #6. 10 Joan Rivers
435,784 
Down from #1 last week. The brassy, pioneering comedian died on September 4. 11 Chernobyl disaster
434,876 
This article about the catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine drew attention this week due to a Reddit "Today I Learned" thread, which highlighted three men who sacrificed their lives by diving through contaminated waters to open drain valves, reducing the real risk of a far more devastating nuclear explosion. The volunteers were already suffering from radiation sickness when they emerged from their mission, their colleagues overjoyed that they had succeeded. All three died from radiation poisoning and were buried in sealed lead coffins. 12 August 2014 celebrity photo leaks
391,061 
Down from #2 last week (and with a title change: "hack" is now "leaks"). The hack into dozens of personal files that celebrities (including Jennifer Lawrence, pictured) unwittingly stored on Apple's iCloud led to the mass publication of their private nude selfies. Though Reddit eventually banned its forums serving as a centralized discussion area for the Internet to swap these pictures, the site reportedly made enough money off the event to run its servers for a month before the shutdown. 13 Ariana Grande
362,985 
Down from #5 last week. The singer and onetime Nickelodeon actress released her most recent album My Everything on August 25, and was also another victim of the photo leak scandal. 14 Facebook
356,762 
A perennially popular article. Stories about the social media behemoth this week included reports that it was testing a Snapchat-like feature allowing users to put expiration times on their posts so they can self-destruct. As the internet ages meaningfully, i.e., when saying something "happened on the internet 15 years ago" becomes more commonplace (like Mahir Çağrı!) and is no longer a reference to some mythical time when a few hundred people knew about the internet, at least some are questioning whether they really want every mundane comment they made back then to be forever preserved. 15 2014 in film
333,014 
Up from #22 this week. Yearly articles like become more comprehensive as the year progresses, they can really be quite amazing compilations of information. 16 Culpable homicide
332,275 
News that Oscar Pistorius might be found guilty of this offense instead of murder sent readers scrambling to figure out what "culpable homicide" really means. As with many legal terms, the phrase itself is not self-explanatory. The word "culpable" derives from the Latin "culpa", which means fault. So "culpable homicide" simply means a killing we'll blame you for. In South Africa, this is apparently legally defined as "the unlawful negligent killing of a human being". 17 Brittany Murphy
315,204 
The biopic The Brittany Murphy Story about this American actress who died in 2009 debuted on television this week. The movie was widely panned, and no one has even edited the article to try to mention it yet. 18 Killer whale
560,678 
A Reddit "Today I Learned" thread propelled this into the Top 25. The hook that got it there: "TIL that a captive killer whale at MarineLand discovered it could regurgitate fish onto the surface of the water, attracting sea gulls, and then eat the birds. Four others then learned to copy the behavior." 19 List of Bollywood films of 2014
307,538 
A regular visitor to the Top 25. Only 3,000 less views than last week, so fairly steady popularity. 20 Google
292,347 
Always a fairly popular article. 21 Scottish independence referendum, 2014
290,441 
News that this vote to determine if Scots want to break free from the United Kingdom might actually be successful has drawn increasing attention to this event scheduled for 18 September. 22 UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying
288,132 
The current season of Europe's premier club football tournament is now in this round. 23 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup
277,883 
Down from #9 last week. 24 Cards Against Humanity
273,425 Another Reddit thread drew attention to this party game first released in 2011. Redditors found it amusing that Black Friday 2013, the game's creators had an "anti-sale" where they increased the product price, but still enjoyed robust sales. 25 MAGIC
273,206 
Did magic help this redirect to a disambiguation page slip into the Top 25? Perhaps. The page enjoyed a jump in popularity between September 7-11. Otherwise the TV series The Leftovers would have been #25.
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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). Please keep in mind that the explanations given for these articles' popularity are, fundamentally, educated guesses. Just because one can't find a reason for an article to be included doesn't mean there isn't one; conversely, just because a plausible reason is found for a view spike, that doesn't mean it wasn't due to a bot.
- There are a number of articles that reappear frequently in the raw top 25 for no determined reason, and have been excluded as likely being due to automated views. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.
- Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
- Undefined. A common error message in computing, these are automated visits by a buggy computer program.
- Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
- Amazon.com. Scepticism has been raised about the recent large jump in viewcounts for this article.
- Rock music. No explanation for its continued high popularity.
- Specific exclusions this week
- less (Unix): Massive view spike commenced 9 Sept without explanation.
- Online shopping: Massive view spike commenced on 6 Sept without explanation.