The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (April 10 to 16, 2016)
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Summary: Let me be clear: I do not get sports. The very fact that I am currently writing commentary in the back-pages of Wikipedia should be evidence enough of that, but even so, I was born physically disabled, so the virtues of physical competition have always been somewhat alien to me. I mean yes, back in the day when people were expected to train for combat, cheering on athletes made sense. But today, when most combat is conducted via drone and people are more likely to die from diabetes than from enemy action, the whole thing smells of hypocrisy to me. So when a confluence of events brought numerous sports-related topics to the fore (ha) I'm left somewhat stranded as to what to say about them. I do, however, get movies, and the kickoff of the summer movie season in both the US and India has meant that our viewers have embraced the far more honestly sedentary activity of filmgoing, much to my relief.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of April 10 to 16, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from WMF's TopViews, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Kobe Bryant 
1,393,551 
Well he said he would do it, and now he's done it. The career-long LA Laker and 18-time NBA All-Star played his last professional game on April 13, outscoring the entire opposing team in the fourth quarter. And that despite a long series of injuries that led him to make the call to finally retire. Despite being best known outside the sport for a damaging sexual assault allegation in 2003, he appears to have gone out on a high with fans, with numbers double his last appearance on this list, when he made his announcement in November. 2 The Jungle Book (2016 film) 
1,036,211 
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 debuted in the US on April 15 to a stellar $103 million weekend and rapturous reviews (the film currently has a 94% RT rating). Despite being described as a "live-action reboot", the film is really more of a CGI cartoon, with nearly everything onscreen except the lead child actor Neel Sethi composed of computer graphics. 3 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 
890,582 
By any measure, except perhaps, its own, Warner Bros's attempt to counter the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a success. It has crossed the $800 million mark worldwide, which means that, even given its gargantuan production and marketing budget, it is now in profit, and is likely to generate a tidy sum once the ancillaries are counted. And yet, the mood over at DC/Warner is tense; with its rapidly declining earnings, it is unlikely to enter the "$1 billion club" currently occupied by Marvel's two Avengers films, and has already been outgrossed by Zootopia, released just three weeks earlier. How this will portend for the planned DC Cinematic Universe is uncertain. All eyes are now on Suicide Squad. 4 Danny Willett
811,305 
The little-known English golfer came out of nowhere to unseat the favourite Jordan Spieth at the 2016 Masters Tournament. After his first majors win, you can safely assume that his article won't be marked "Low importance" for much longer. 5 Doctor Strange
991,468 
Marvel's next big introduction is the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth-616, charged with defending our reality from mystic threats. Yes, I just wrote that. The illusive if less than illustrative trailer for the new film, due this fall, premièred this week, and has already garnered a combined ~20 million YouTube views. You might think this marks a jarring shift in tone from Iron Man and Captain America, but hey, compared to working in Thor, this should be easy. The suitably intense Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured, on set) will be assuming the cape. 6 Donald Trump
762,586 
With no Republican primaries this week and little in the way of public awkwardness to push his numbers, Trump seems to be in the list on the strength of his pure, unadulterated Trumpness. Expect him to shoot up again next week after his stomping victory in his home state of New York. 7 Fan (film)
725,098 
This Bollywood hybrid of The Fan and Single White Female, in which a Bollywood star and an obsessed lookalike (both played by Shah Rukh Khan (pictured)) gradually become entangled in a game of revenge, was made on a relatively hefty budget of ₹850 million ($13 million) but has already earned more than ₹1.31 billion ($19 million) in just five days. 8 Deaths in 2016 
668,908 
The annual list of deaths has always been a fairly consistent visitor to this list, and often in the Top 10, averaging about 650,000 views a week at this point. 9 Captain America: Civil War
646,147 
With the relative disappointment of Dawn of Justice, all eyes are turning to the next big comic blockbuster released this year which, despite the Captain America headline, is being marketed as another Avengers movie (with Spiderman!). Whether this will see it over the $1 billion hurdle remains to be seen, but omens are good. 10 Suicide Squad (film)
562,067 
DC Comics' ramshackle crew of pressganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, have garnered far more buzz in the buildup to their August release than Batman v Superman ever managed, thanks to some decently snarky trailers, the latest of which was released this week, and the first live-action appearance of DC fan favourite Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie. 11 David Gest
513,892 
The music producer and reality TV star died this week at the age of just 62. 12 Panama Papers
512,922 
Numbers are down two thirds for this monumental leak as the number of allegations slows. 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. 13 Stephen Curry
498,112 
This week, the basketball player for the Golden State Warriors not only broke the record for the most three-point shots in a season, he also led his team to 73 wins; surpassing the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls' 72-win season record. 14 Will Smith (defensive end) 
588,903 
The defensive end for the New Orleans Saints was fatally shot on April 9 during a road rage incident. 15 Gloria Vanderbilt
441,044 
A documentary on HBO about the American heiress and mother of television journalist Anderson Cooper titled Nothing Left Unsaid debuted on April 9. 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. 16 Descendants of the Sun
430,185 
This is a fairly unique entry for the English Wikipedia -- a South Korean television series. The Korean drama has been widely popular in Asia, including in China, which is creating a wide enough audience wishing to read about it in English. The Korean version of the article had only 48K views last week compared to 382K in English, though the Chinese version had 422K views. The military theme of the series is part of its appeal in South Korea, and in China it's such a success that it has spawned tabloid reports "of a woman who nearly went blind binge-watching the show and another drama, when her 18-hour marathon session triggered acute glaucoma." Song Joong-ki (pictured) is a star of the show, to the chagrin of jealous husbands in China. 17 B. R. Ambedkar
420,526 
The principal architect of India's constitution, who encouraged Untouchables to convert to Buddhism celebrated what would have been his 125th birthday on April, leading to much eulogising and debates about his legacy across India. 18 Game of Thrones (season 6)
403,792 
The next season of this eternally popular TV series will premiere on HBO on 24 April. 19 Michael Jordan 
391,155 
After his 73-win season record was broken by Stephen Curry (see #13) the legendary player texted him a note of congratulation. 20 Jordan Spieth
391,070 
After looking like he might become the next Tiger Woods, the golfer apparently corpsed at the US Masters, leading to victory for the virtually unknown Danny Willett (see #4). 21 Jackie Robinson
381,448 
April 15 is Jackie Robinson Day, marking the day he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers, a date augmented by the release of a documentary about his life, directed by Ken Burns 22 Bernie Sanders
388,018 
Despite continuing to trail in the delegate count, Bernie Sanders remains more popular on Wikipedia than his rival, Hillary Clinton. 23 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
358,316 
This article has remained fairly popular since the film was released in December 2015, and has reappeared likely thanks to its release on DVD this week. 24 Theri (film)
357,947 
This Tamil language action film starring Vijay and British star Amy Jackson (pictured) has a steep ₹1 billion ($15 million) budget and is banking on a simultaneous worldwide release. 25 United States
356,919 
This article is often just outside the Top 25, but only occasionally makes it.
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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.