The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (October 30 to November 5, 2016)

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Asleep at the wheel: Despite facing what could very well be the most important election since the civil rights era, Americans seem to want to think about anything but politics. Obviously the 2016 election is on people's minds, but not as much as macabre holidays, improbable wins by oft-ridiculed baseball teams, comic book sorcerers and, most tellingly of all, perhaps, a melodrama about royalty. Given the responsibility they're about to take on, it's not surprising that democracy isn't high on their totem pole at the moment. Still, get in gear guys. It's not like we're not all watching you or anything.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of October 30 to November 5, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Day of the Dead		1,889,902	Mexico's carnival of the cadaverous, the living dream of any kid who ever wished Halloween could last three days, is the beneficiary of Wikipedia's incurable interest in those holidays not routinely celebrated in the US. It's the same reason Boxing Day always charts higher than Christmas on this list. Despite the list covering both these holidays' dates, and despite Halloween being boosted by that greatest of Wikipedia flypapers, an interactive Google Doodle, Day of the Dead's grim fandango still beat latter's monster mash. It only just loses even if Halloween's numbers from last week are added in.
2	Halloween		1,558,776	Whatever happened to the Transylvania Twist?
3	Doctor Strange (film)		1,077,855	Marvel Studios continue their roll. Their attempt to bring their unashamedly psychedelic superhero into the earthier realms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has apparently paid off, with a 90% RT rating and an $84 million opening, no doubt aided by the international star power of a certain Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured).
4	Chicago Cubs		1,030,619	The American baseball team has not won a World Series since 1908, but managed it this year, beating the Cleveland Indians 8-7. Turns out Back to the Future II was only off by a year.
5	Huma Abedin		1,021,942	A top adviser to Hillary Clinton, views started to rise on October 28, and remained high for most of the week. This probably is related to Clinton-related emails allegedly being found on the laptop of her husband Anthony Weiner; a subject of little substance of which little has yet been revealed, save that Hillary was cleared at the last minute.
6	Ae Dil Hai Mushkil		994,767	This Indian romantic film whose cast includes Aishwarya Rai (pictured) had its debut on October 28 (Diwali weekend).
7	Donald Trump		949,709	For someone in significant imminent danger of becoming the next President of the United States, you'd think numbers would be higher. But they're not significantly up on last week, and significantly DOWN on two weeks ago. Is this a sign? I don't know, and I refuse to tempt fate.
8	Curse of the Billy Goat		949,092	Apparently, legend has it that in 1945 the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern was asked to leave Wrigley Field because his pet goat's smell was bothering fans, and proclaimed that "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." And that's why the Cubs didn't win a World Series until this week. The moral of the story, children, is that people will make up any piece of boondoggle to rationalise a bad situation.
9	Meghan Markle		864,425	The fact that this American mixed-race actress may be dating the third in line to the British throne has raised some fairly awkward questions in the British press, like whether the situation would be the same if she'd dated Prince William. Keep in mind this is the same Royal Family that nearly collapsed because the heir to the throne wanted to marry an American divorcee. Personally, I think the whole lot's an outdated anachronism anyway, so I couldn't care less.
10	Elizabeth II		822,254	The longest-reigning British monarch in history is bound to draw attention whenever the British Royal Family becomes a topic of interest, but this week she gets an additional boost from her appearance in The Crown, a $100 million melodrama about her early years where she is played by Claire Foy.
11	United States presidential election, 2016		794,951	I wish I could say it will be over soon, but I doubt it will be.
12	2016 World Series		733,202	The day the Cubs ceased to be a joke.
13	Westworld (TV series)		719,149	To be clear: this is not based on a novel by Michael Crichton: Crichton was a filmmaker as well as a novelist, and Westworld was a film he both wrote and directed back in the 1970s. But whereas that was a straightforward "monsters on the loose" movie, about a Western-themed amusement park staffed by hyperrealistic robots who go insane and start murdering the guests (sound familiar?), this series looks like it will be taking a more thoughtful, hard scifi approach, with the robots' gradual evolution from programming to quasi-consciousness forming the main plot thread. With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings of just under 2 million (roughly what Game of Thrones received when it began), it's off to a solid start, though whether it will be the show to carry HBO past Game of Thrones's end remains to be seen.
14	Doctor Strange		710,306	Marvel Comics' mystical warrior (whose name actually is Dr. Stephen Strange) has always cut a fine figure among the pantheon, even if he'd never really had an impact outside comic readers' circles. Born of the psychedelic era when the hippies were exploring inner space, he has struggled to find relevance in the modern era. Judging by the opening grosses of his new movie though, he seems to have found it.
15	Shivaay		696,428	The action thriller directed by Ajay Devgan (pictured) premiered on Diwali weekend, the same day as Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, but hasn't quite kept pace with it, earning ₹102.4 million ($1.53 million) in its first three days.
16	Theo Epstein		660,376	Despite not actually being manager, but rather "president of operations" (Does that mean he sells tee-shirts?), Wikipedians seem to have credited him with engineering the Chicago Cubs's resurrection from undeath this year. Makes more sense than a smelly goat.
17	Deaths in 2016		607,839	The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis. It is consistently higher in the first half of 2016 with a string of highly notable deaths, but things seem to be calming down a bit. Where the article appears in this chart is entirely dependent on how many subjects in a week happened to exceed this bellwether in views.
18	Hillary Clinton		580,309	Clinton continues to be less interesting to our readers than Trump, she really needs to start saying some crazy stuff if she wants to win the Wikipedia ratings wars.
19	Hell in a Cell (2016)	N/A	569,316	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held on October 30 at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts
20	David Ross (baseball)		558,821	On November 2, 2016, during Game 7 of the World Series, Ross hit a home run in his final major league game, making him the icon of the Cubs' rise to glory.
21	Diwali		609,104	The Hindu festival of light, which draws attention to the inner light beyond the material body, the Atman, fell on October 30 this year.
22	Black Mirror		620,816	Series 3 of the British cyber-satire, created by Charlie Brooker (pictured) debuted in its entirety on Netflix on October 21.
23	George VI		534,555	Queen Elizabeth's dad made an appearance The Crown, in which he is played by Jared Harris.
24	List of Black Mirror episodes		506,464	See above
25	Ben Zobrist		498,606	The second baseman for the Chicago Cubs was named MVP for helping take the team to their first series win in over a century.

Exclusions

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.

YouTube: A one-day spike on October 23, all desktop views. Although a relatively popular article on a day-to-day basis, it would not be in the Top 25 without that artificial spike.

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.