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Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/July 27 to August 2, 2014

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Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 27 to August 2, 2014)

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Summary: Serious news continues to predominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with Ebola virus disease far and away in the top spot, and related articles Ebola virus at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19. Articles concerning the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict remain in high demand for another week, including Gaza Strip (#5), Hamas (#6), as well as Israel (#12), Israeli–Palestinian conflict (#20), and Palestine (#24). Two films also made the Top 10: the American film Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Hindi Kick.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of July 27 to August 2, 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 Ebola virus disease   2,031,341
 
 The continuing growth of the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak of this serious disease, which began in March in Guinea, is causing great interest in this article. Views began growing on 23 July (18,000+ views), and by 30th have been usually exceeding 300,000 views per day. As of August 1, the World Health Organization has reported 1603 suspected cases and 887 suspected deaths from the disease. Data from Guinea through mid-June indicate the outbreak has a probable fatality rate of about 64%. Figure includes hits for the redirect Ebola page.
2 Guardians of the Galaxy (film)   640,568
 
 Up from #16 last week, this 2014 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics series opened in the U.K. on 31 July and the United States on 1 August. As of 5 August, the film's worldwide earnings are over $170 million.
3 World War I   576,281
 
 Fighting in World War I began one hundred years ago this week, causing the normal round of press coverage we see at such big anniversaries. What were people occupying themselves with in 1914 before war broke out? Check out 1914 and peruse the many links in the infobox.
4 Kick (2014 film)   381,965
 
 Up from #11 last week, this Hindi action film starring Salman Khan (pictured) was released on 25 July. The film has received mixed reviews, but has set several domestic box office records. One reviewer at Bollywood Hungama, while noting that Khan's movies are "critic proof", concludes that Kick "is a paisa vasool, seeti-maar entertainer." That means you get your money's worth (paisa vasool), and you'll "blow the whistle"--meaning enthusiastically cheer--(seeti-maar) if you go see it.
5 Gaza Strip   426,854
 
 The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, part of a very long and complicated history of conflict, keeps this article on the list for the third straight week.
6 Hamas   365,631
 
 Also seeing continuing popularity due to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
7 Susanne Klatten   353,063
 
 German billionaire Susanne Klatten is one of the top 50 wealthiest people in the world, and the richest woman in Germany. On 30 July, a Reddit "Today I Learned" thread noted that she met her husband while she worked at BMW (which she owned a stake of, via her father) under an assumed last name; he didn't know she was filthy rich until after they were sure about each other.
8 Laura Prepon   340,514
 
 The bulk of views on the article about this Orange Is the New Black actress came on August 1st, and though we cannot find a precise cause, it is the type of article (an attractive current American actress) that will get the occasional intense burst of popularity.
9 Deaths in 2014   324,661
 
 The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. Deaths this week included British politician Christine Oddy (July 27), American journalist Margot Adler (pictured) (July 28), Sierra Leone physician Umar Khan (July 29) (died of ebola, headed the country's efforts to combat the outbreak), Argentine football executive Julio Grondona (July 30), Indian actor Mukku Raju (July 31), Norwegian writer Jan Roar Leikvoll (August 1), and Olga Voronets (August 2), a popular Russian singer of the 1960s and 70s.
10 Facebook   322,490
 
 A perennially popular article.
11 2014 Commonwealth Games   320,169
 
 The 2014 edition of the Commonwealth Games kicked off on 23 July in Glasgow, Scotland, and will run through 3 August. Check out Chronological summary of the 2014 Commonwealth Games for a day by day rundown of events and winners.
12 Israel   298,252
 
 Continued popularity due to the ongoing conflict.
13 Lucy (2014 film)   285,682
 
 This French action film starring Scarlett Johansson (pictured) debuted in the United States on 25 July, where it was the highest-grossing film for that weekend ahead of Hercules (2014 film) (#21).
14 Fifty Shades of Grey   279,725
 
 Down from #2 last week. This 2011 erotic romance novel by E. L. James (pictured) is one of the biggest best sellers of the past decade. It is being adapted into a movie directed by Sam Taylor-Wood so that even more people can experience it. On July 24, the movie trailer for the film was released.
15 List of Bollywood films of 2014   253,352
 
 Not unusual to see this make the Top 25.
16 Eid al-Fitr   240,238
 
 The "Sugar Feast" to celebrate the end of the Ramadan fast fell on July 28 this year, and returns to the Top 25 as it did this time last year.
17 Hideki Tōjō   238,190
 
 A Reddit TIL thread linked to this redirect spelling of this World War II prime minister of Japan. Reddit noted: "Japanese war criminal, Tojo Hideki, attempted suicide after the surrender. He was saved and resuscitated by Allied forces, who then hanged him."
18 Ebola virus   222,581
 
 This is a separate article from Ebola virus disease (#1), but surely also popular due to the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak.
19 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak   215,896
 
 See #1, #18.
20 Israeli–Palestinian conflict   215,216
 
 Down from #17 this week, but clearly the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict continues to be a dominant global hard news story.
21 Hercules (2014 film)   212,447
 
 This American film starring The Rock was released on the 25th of July. As with most big action films, it had mixed critical reviews. And if you're wondering how many films can be made loosely based on the story of Hercules, you can always check out Hercules in popular culture
22 Google   211,955
 
 Always a fairly popular article.
23 Commonwealth Games   210,462
 
 The broader article on the history of this competition saw higher activity, no doubt due to the ongoing 2014 Commonwealth Games.
24 Palestine   205,634
 
 Another article of interest due to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
25 Eid Mubarak   205,303
 
 The traditional Muslim greeting used during #16 apparently got some people searching to find out what it meant.

Notes

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From the raw WP:5000 stats, some notes:

  • 113 articles exceeded 100,000 views this week, the last being 2013 videogame The Last of Us, coinciding with the release of updated version for the PlayStation 4 called "The Last of Us Remastered".
  • Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (#3 last week and #2 two weeks ago) dropped all the way to #99 (109,717) as the press apparently ran out of angles to cover the lack of progress at the crash site.
  • 17-year old Kazakhstani volleyball player Sabina Altynbekova was #105 with 106,948 views. But the article was subsequently removed via Articles for Deletion, as she was primarily in the news because her coach is complaining her attractiveness is causing too much distraction. There's precedent for this deletion, but nothing we can easily cite because, well, it was deleted.
  • Two weeks ago, 2014 FIFA World Cup was #1. It is now down to #133 (90,870 views).
  • Twitter went crazy this week about Sharknado 2: The Second One which debuted on the SyFy Channel on July 30. On the WP:5000, it made #275 (62,814 views), though its prequel Sharknado hit #168 (79,655 views), also due to due the hoopla.
  • The last article to hit 50,000 views was Elon Musk (#422); Joan Rivers (#1647) was last to break 25,000; and German footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger (#5000) was last to make the list with 13,494 views.

Exclusions

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  • 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.
  • Malware. A frequent exclusion.
  • Java. Currently under some bot-fuelled spike not seen on other language wikipedias. This is our article on the island, though one might guess the non-human views have something to do with the programming language.
  • History of Bălţi. This has been excluded for inexplicable spikes in the past; it's back this week.
  • Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
  • Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
  • Undefined. A common error message in computing, these are automated visits by a buggy computer program.
  • Amazon.com. As discussed in last week's report, we've been a bit skeptical about the recent large jump in viewcounts for this article. The spike seems to be dying down now, but we're still not sure if the counts are legitimate enough, though it would only have grazed the bottom of the top 25 had we counted it this week. We're keeping an eye on it.
Specific exclusions this week
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