Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/July 10 to 16, 2016

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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 10 to 16, 2016)[edit]

Last week's reportNext week's report

Let it Pokémon Go: Pokémon Go leads the chart for a second week, with a very substantial 4.7 million views. This is almost a throwback to people's complaints about Wikipedia circa 2005 that the site was dominated with Pokémon articles. Well, the world finally caught up to our advance research. Aside from that, politics and sports are the dominating topics of the chart, with sports entries split among Ultimate Fighting Championship articles, football with the conclusion of UEFA Euro 2016, and tennis due to Wimbledon. The lack of any Google Doodle or Reddit "Today I Learned" threads anywhere in the Top 25 this week seems unusual.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of July 10 to 16, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Pokémon Go Start-class 4,778,652
Way up from 1.37 million views last week, to lead the chart for a second week. Many not playing the game simply enjoy reading the stories of the ridiculous things happening due to it, such as accidents, people wandering into places like cemeteries not really appropriate for gaming, neighbor's yards, etc. Until and unless someone dies, it is mostly harmless fun, right?
2 Theresa May B-class 1,738,109
The new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. May had previously been the British Home Secretary since 2010, but the shockwaves of Brexit have been to May's benefit. That's the way history goes for individual people, mostly unpredictable except in hindsight.
3 Mike Pence C-class 1,651,153
Don't tell Donald Trump (#23), but his newly announced vice-presidential candidate got far more views than him. Trump used his media skills to generate a great deal of interest in his VP pick, though there was some suggestion that he almost tried to back out of the Pence pick at the last minute. Though more conservative than Trump on social issues, the Governor of Indiana is generally considered a safe and stable selection by the Republican party, more so than the other reported finalists for the VP slot, Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie.
4 Sultan (2016 film) Start class 1,220,923
Second week on the chart, with about 70,000 more views than last week. One big difference between Hollywood and Bollywood is that in Bollywood, stars still matter. And Salman Khan (pictured) rules the roost right now. His last big film, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, dominated Eid al-Fitr weekend and went on to make nearly $100 million. And now he's done it again. His latest, a wrestling drama, was also released on Eid and took in nearly ₹1.96 billion ($29 million) in its first six days.
5 UFC 200 Start class 1,139,080
Second week on the chart, as is typical of these UFC Saturday events. The latest in the mixed martial arts tournament series was held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (pictured) on 9 July. Headliner Amanda Nunes defeated Miesha Tate in the first round.
6 Bastille Day Start class 977,775
The French national holiday has never made it on the Top 25 before, so sadly, its appearance must be due to the 2016 Nice attack.
7 Cristiano Ronaldo B-class 946,953
Up from #21 last week. Playing for the Portugal national football team (#24), the man sometimes called the world's most famous athlete led his team to victory in the final of UEFA Euro 2016 (#10) over France, and earned the Silver Boot award.
8 Andy Murray Good Article 831,169
The men's singles winner at Wimbledon on July 10 over Milos Raonic (#12).
9 Brock Lesnar Good Article 750,002
Lesnar defeated Mark Hunt in the heavyweight match at UFC 200 (#5).
10 UEFA Euro 2016 C-class 744,132
Numbers are down again this week, but its been a long run in the charts for this football tournament. Portugal won the tournament for the first time, on July 10.
11 Ghostbusters (2016 film) C-class 738,255
For some reason, the fact that a female-fronted reboot of the 1984 film Ghostbusters was being made caused a fair amount of complaining that struck many as absurd and misogynistic. The Internet likes to complain. It's just a fictional comedy movie about catching ghosts, it is not turning Fight Club into a feminist manifesto, and it cannot ruin anyone's childhood unless time travel is possible. With a cast featuring Melissa McCarthy (pictured), the film debuted on July 15 to mixed reviews and mixed returns ($75.4 million to date on a budget of $144 million), but it has already been indicated that a sequel is likely.
12 Milos Raonic Good Article 727,247
The world number 7 did what few people ever do and beat Roger Federer to reach the men's final at Wimbledon, only to be beaten by Andy Murray (#8) on July 10.
13 Pokémon C-class 709,488
See #1.
14 Deaths in 2016 List 575,500
The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis, with close to 100,000 views a day, though it is down a bit this week.
15 Éder (Portuguese footballer) Start class 569,412 Éder scored the only goal in the UEFA Euro 2016 Final, the final match of UEFA Euro 2016 (#10).
16 David Cameron B-Class 522,700
The British Prime Minister stepped down on July 11 in the continuing Brexit fallout, with Theresa May (#2) succeeding him.
17 List of Pokémon List 516,619
See #1.
18 Antoine Griezmann C-class 502,361 Griezmann was the top scorer and Player of the Tournament at UEFA Euro 2016 (#10), where the French were runners-up on their home soil.
19 D. B. Cooper Featured Article 457,890 "D. B. Cooper" is the unidentified man who hijacked a plane in the United States in 1971 and parachuted out with $200,000 in ransom, and was never caught. He caught the public's imagination, however. The FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case this week, after 45 years.
20 Mr. Robot (TV series) Start class 455,992 The second season of this American television series debuted on July 13.
21 Serena Williams B-class 435,562
The world women's number 1 tennis champion clinched yet another record on 9 July when she beat Angelique Kerber in straight sets to clinch her 22nd major singles title at her natural home, Wimbledon. Two more titles and she will equal Margaret Court's career record.
22 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt C-class 433,770
An unsuccessful attempted coup in Turkey began on July 15, capturing attention in the last day of this week's report.
23 Donald Trump B-Class 422,223
Trump's pick of Mike Pence (#3) didn't translate to more attention to Trump, as pretty much everyone in the world knows him by now. But we should expect a big bump in views on next week's chart, due to the 2016 Republican National Convention.
24 Portugal national football team C-Class 409,389
See #7, 10, and 15.
25 Niantic, Inc. Start class 407,797
The creators of #1.

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 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.