The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (August 7 to 13, 2016)

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Summary: This week marked Wikipedia's hosting of the 2016 Summer Olympics; the first since this list was begun. With only Super Bowls and Oscar nights to compare it to, we didn't have much in the way of precedent. And, while not exactly staggering, the numbers are fairly eye-opening. Fully 17 slots were devoted to the Olympics, probably a list record for a single event, and the entry point was the highest since last December, which featured the return of another beloved cultural institution, Star Wars. The groundswell was so big it not only knocked Donald Trump of the list for the first time in months, but almost knocked the death list off, a virtually unprecedented occurrence. Personally, I know nothing about sports, and have no ties to any sports stars, so I have to say I'm a bit bemused by the tribalism this list reveals. en.wikipedia likes to think of itself as the English language Wikipedia, not the American Wikipedia, but there's no denying which country was the main focus of people's attention. Don't get me wrong; I don't blame Americans for this- I live in London and you can bet the popular press there are fawning over British winners exclusively. But I have to ask, whatever happened to "Well played!"?

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of August 7 to 13, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from Topviews Analysis were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Michael Phelps	5,428,201	Numbers have increased ninefold for the most decorated Olympian of all time, who came out of retirement for the 2016 Summer Olympics and swept the pool, as it were, with five gold medals and one silver, before finally calling it quits for good. In a world currently short of sporting heroes, Phelps has proven an inspiration; after each of his prior Olympic meets, pool attendance in the United States increased by more than 10%, and the press have made much of a photo of him standing next to an awestruck then-9-year-old Katie Ledecky (#6), who dominated the women's pool.
2	2016 Summer Olympics	2,281,692	As I said, I know next to nothing about sports, but I do know about Rio, the city where I lived for a time and for whom I have the kind of guarded love one reserves for that wayward family member who has never lived up to your expectations. When it won the right to host the games seven years ago, I was ecstatic. Finally, it seemed Brazil was ready to ditch its old habits and assert itself as a global power. How different things are now, or rather, how like they were. The news that everything had gone, well, Rio-y in the lead up to the games left me feeling deflated. The almost comical string of disasters that had thrown the world for such a loop were old hat to anyone who had sat through the city's numerous other attempts to host major world events. And yet... I'm relieved. Relieved, because so far the only major scandal has been a discoloured diving pool. If that's all the press is concerned with, maybe this won't be a disaster after all.
3	Suicide Squad (film)	2,150,660	DC Comics' ramshackle crew of press-ganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, are the stars of one of the most anticipated films in the nascent DC Cinematic Universe, which was released on August 5 to generally negative reviews. Nonetheless, it grossed $267 worldwide in its opening weekend. Despite the overwhelming presence of the Olympics this week, star Margot Robbie also landed the #18 spot, just above her character, Harley Quinn.
4	Simone Biles	1,832,829	The 19-year-old Olympic first-timer secured two gold medals in artistic gymnastics this week.
5	Aly Raisman	1,400,901	It's hard to know what has placed the two-time captain of the US artistic gymnastics team farther up this list, her gold and silver medal wins, or the viral video of her mother's increasingly frantic head motions. It says something about the stresses of Olympic life that her performance is considered a comeback after "only" winning a gold and a bronze in London.
6	Katie Ledecky	1,022,491	The only person Katie Ledecky ever races against is herself. No one races her. The 19-year-old swimmer secured four golds this week, breaking two world records in the process, both her own, in the 400m and 800m freestyle. In the 800m, she not only broke her own world record by nearly 2 seconds, but finished nearly 12 seconds ahead of the silver medallist, Britain's Jazz Carlin. 12 seconds. That's enough time to update her Wikipedia article on your cellphone.
7	Nicole Johnson (Miss California USA)	912,940	Surprisingly, her appearance on this list has nothing to do with Donald Trump, who owned the Miss USA pageant until last September, but simply that she happens to be the wife of Michael Phelps (see #1).
8	Stranger Things (TV series)	855,038	This Netflix science-fiction series is basically an 8-hour homage to early 80s kid-centric flicks like E.T., The Goonies and Explorers, though aimed mostly at adults. It has been a smash hit for Netflix, out-rating even its other big fantasy shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones, both of which have topped this list in the past.
9	No Man's Sky	819,437	Let's be honest here; this game was never going to live up to the hype. Made by a small indie developer under intense time and budget constraints, No Man's Sky has had players slavering for over four years with its promise of 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets crammed with procedurally generated alien life that you could travel to and from seamlessly in your procedurally generated starship. The question of what you would be expected to do with all that freedom to explore has always been at the front of players' minds, and something the developers have been remarkably coy about. Now that the game has finally been released, it turns out it's basically a cross between Elite Dangerous and Minecraft. To some, that's fine; to most, it's a disappointment.
10	Olympic Games	892,180	People are probably looking for this Olympic Games, rather than seeking knowledge of the event's venerable history, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
11	Ryan Lochte	795,295	The best swimmer in the world who isn't Michael Phelps won the gold in the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay.
12	List of Steven Universe episodes	814,186	It's not often that kids' cartoons get on this list; My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic hasn't managed it in 6 years. But then, Steven Universe isn't exactly a kids' cartoon. In fact I'm not entirely sure I can explain what it is, but if you can imagine a magical girl anime remade in English with a gender-swapped lead, you can get some idea. The show has in the past been notorious for its patchy release schedule, and, as if in contrition, Cartoon Network are releasing new episodes of the show every day during the so-called "Summer of Steven". This has necessitated much checking of release times, hence the list's appearance here.
13	Ilona Staller	790,641	As learned in a Reddit thread this week, this Italian porn star, better known as Ciccolina, became a member of the Italian Parliament, though she was still making hardcore porn during her tenure and would give speeches with one breast exposed.
14	List of Olympic Games host cities	772,817	A great compendium of information you can review while waiting between whichever sports your country is good at.
15	Gabby Douglas	745,101	Another member of the artistic gymnastics team who has been mercilessly tortured on social media, which may go some way towards explaining why she failed to clinch an individual medal.
16	All-time Olympic Games medal table	736,339	Guess which country's on top. No really, you'll never guess. Afghanistan! Because the list is alphabetical. But if you arrange it according to who won the most Summer Olympic golds, it's the US, by a positively Jovian margin. Which may go some way to explain why it's up here, given the warm bath America is giving itself.
17	Kerri Walsh Jennings	729,099	The 38-year-old Olympic champion has dominated this time round against frequently much younger competitors, but that hasn't stopped social media from partaking in some good old fashioned slut shaming, with one troll claiming he could see her "side boob". Seriously, what side boob? That's projected sexual frustration worthy of the Malleus Malificarum.
18	Margot Robbie	713,997	Critics have blasted the new Suicide Squad movie, but most seem to agree that a redeeming feature is Robbie's performance as Harley Quinn. Speaking of...
19	Harley Quinn	591,063	Believe it or not, since 2012 the mentally (and often physically) broken "girlfriend" of The Joker has quietly overtaken Wonder Woman as the most popular female comics character. It's not as weird as it sounds; the fact that she's crazy and clearly suffering from battered woman syndrome has given her flaws that women find relatable. She's also Jewish, bisexual, an animal lover and, in her most recent comics incarnation, finally liberated from her tormentor and assuming a life of her own.
20	2024 Summer Olympics	505,297	The host for the games to be held eight years from now is not due to be announced until September 2017. Its been in the news a bit in America due to speculation that the election of Donald Trump might hurt the Los Angeles bid for the games. The 2020 games are farther down the list at #24. The farthest out Olympics for which we current have an article is the 2028 Summer Olympics. There have been attempts to create future distant Olympic articles in the past (up to 2100!), though they get deleted, see, e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2032 Summer Olympics (4th nomination) (August 2015), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2040 Summer Olympics (August 2006); Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2015_October_18#2060_Summer_Olympics (October 2015, deleting redirects going through the 2100 games).
21	2012 Summer Olympics medal table	664,835	Yes, America, you did indeed do very well last time. Probably will do very well this time too. Bless.
22	Joseph Schooling	656,016	Singapore has a population of 5.4 million; if it were a city instead of an independent country it would rank 38th in size. So when a Singaporean suddenly shows up during the week of the English language Wikipedia's Olympics I have to wonder, what could have ticked Americans off about him? I mean yes, pretty much everyone in Singapore speaks English, but then, so does everyone in England, and their topics almost never chart here. Well it turns out that when a 21-year-old who looks like his voice hasn't cracked yet beats Michael Phelps to the gold, people want to know about him.
23	India at the 2016 Summer Olympics	414,228	Of course, the world's second-largest Anglophone population indulged in its own nationalistic self-petting. They haven't won any medals yet, but there's still time.
24	2020 Summer Olympics	637,424	The next summer Olympics will be in Tokyo in 2020. Interestingly, this article has existed since 2005, when it survived a deleted discussion. Eleven years later, the article is completely different, and continues to document the approach toward the next summer games.
25	Deaths in 2016	614,688	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.

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 (~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. Since WP:5000 and WMF Topviews use different exclusion algorithms, articles that appear in one but not the other can also safely be excluded as false. 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.