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DiggYour Top 10 most-viewed Wikipedia articles for the weeks of August 28 – September 3, September 4–10, September 11–17, and September 18-24, 2016.
For the full top-25 lists (and archives back to January 2013), see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles every week, see WP:MOSTEDITED.
Lull: The end of the Olympics has brought a bit of a lull this week. Actor Gene Wilder's death (#1) received significant attention and 3.5 million views, also lifting his second wife Gilda Radner (#8), who died of ovarian cancer in 1989, into the Top 10. Netflix's Stranger Things continues to show strange staying power, at #3 this week. The 2016 MTV Video Music Awards also propelled a number of performers into the Top 25, and Rihanna to #9. Oddly though, after our commentary on Reddit last week, a full six articles apparently fueled by Reddit made it into the Top 25 (all outside the Top 10). This includes slots 22–25, which wouldn't have made it last week when the threshold to make the Top 25 was a bit higher. And though I happen to know that #25, Thomas Day, was actually the subject of the "Stuff You Misssed in History Class" podcast the day before its Reddit thread, so that was no doubt the original inspiration for the post.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of August 28 to September 3, 2016, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly revamped WP:5000 report were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gene Wilder | 
|
3,500,029 |  |
The American comedian, born Jerome Silberman (a fact I just learned), very popular in a number of 1970s and 1980s films, died at home in Connecticut on August 29. He had been out of the spotlight for a number of years and died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, a condition he had kept private. |
| 2 | Colin Kaepernick | 
|
1,294,476 |  |
This American football player is getting a lot of attention for choosing to sit during the national anthem, as a protest against the treatment of people of color, see Colin_Kaepernick#National_anthem_protest. There's a lot of strong opinions going around America about this, so I'll leave mine out for once. |
| 3 | Stranger Things (TV series) |
|
999,668 |  |
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, evidenced by its continuing appearance on this chart – seven straight weeks. Netflix recently ordered a second season. |
| 4 | Juan Gabriel |
|
925,762 |  |
This Mexican singer and songwriter died of a heart attack at his home in California on August 28. He was clearly very popular in the Spanish-speaking world, as the Spanish version of his article got well over two million hits in the same timeframe. |
| 5 | Queen Victoria | 
|
848,142 |  |
Not a Google Doodle or a significant anniversary, but the debut of the British television show Victoria. |
| 6 | Killing of Harambe | 
|
664,596 |  |
What began as a heartfelt reaction to what some felt was the unnecessary killing of a silverback western lowland gorilla (pictured, though not him specifically) has morphed over the last three months into online trolling and racist abuse, along with the standard targeted misogyny. What the troll army hopes to accomplish is never clear, but whatever it is it doesn't involve helping gorillas. |
| 7 | Deaths in 2016 | 
|
663,187 |  |
The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day to day basis. It was consistently higher in the first half of 2016 with a string of highly notable deaths. |
| 8 | Gilda Radner | 
|
625,108 |  |
The Saturday Night Live original cast member, film actress, and wife of #1 died in 1989 from ovarian cancer. |
| 9 | Rihanna |
|
605,079 |  |
The singer was featured at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards. |
| 10 | Pablo Escobar |
|
601,802 |  |
Narcos is back. |
Plata y mas plata: Wikipedia's viewers seem determined to tune the real world out this week, with pop culture in overwhelming dominance once again. And leading the charge is, of course, Netflix's series Narcos, which was similarly dominant during its first season last year. A close runner up is Clint Eastwood's hero hagiography Sully, which, like his previous American Sniper, came with a spicy touch of controversy to turn eyeballs its way. Even the real world seemed focused on the departed, since two of the non-media generated entries were both dead icons: Mother Teresa and Steve Irwin. The only genuine bit of real world horror was the troubling early release of Brock Turner, over which many of our users likely felt a very personal fear.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of September 4 to 10, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly revamped WP:5000 report were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pablo Escobar |
|
2,309,885 |  |
Narcos is back. And apparently people weren't sufficiently informed about its subject last year, because numbers are up fourfold on last week and he's reclaimed his throne at the top of this chart. A suspiciously high 75% mobile count, but there's no reason for it not to be here. |
| 2 | Mother Teresa |
|
1,155,944 |  |
The Albanian missionary, who, depending on your point of view, was either the modern paragon of holy virtue or a hideous amalgam of all the faults of organised religion, was canonised this week as Saint Teresa of Calcutta before a crowd of thousands. |
| 3 | Ann Coulter |
|
987,975 |  |
It must have looked good on paper. Have not-quite-has-been actor Rob Lowe over for a celebrity roast and get professional aggressor Ann Coulter to lead the attack. Unfortunately, after years of bilious vitriol spewed through various media at basically everyone who wasn't her, it seems Ann had reached some kind of critical mass, because the tide of battle turned, and everyone decided to roast her instead. |
| 4 | Stranger Things (TV series) |
|
846,657 | |
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, evidenced by its continuing appearance on this chart – eight straight weeks. Netflix recently ordered a second season. |
| 5 | Narcos |
|
752,660 |  |
The second season of the TV series about the rise of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (see #1) premiered in its entirety on Netflix on September 2. |
| 6 | Harley-Davidson |
|
675,195 |  |
The standard toy for middle-aged, middle class white guys to enact their rebellious and countercultural fantasies got a boost this week thanks to Harley and the Davidsons, a three-part drama that aired to middling reviews but stellar ratings, giving the Discovery Channel their best week in years. |
| 7 | Deaths in 2016 |
|
647,054 | |
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. |
| 8 | 2016 Summer Paralympics |
|
644,210 |  |
The Olympics's less heralded encore got underway this week in Rio de Janeiro. We in the UK are good at Olympic events because we spend lottery money on them, but in recent years we've given special notice to the Paralympics, mainly because we did them so well last time. |
| 9 | Rob Lowe |
|
615,920 |  |
The former Brat Packer and West Wing star was the intended target of a celebrity roastonComedy Central this week, but the format eventually collapsed when the team turned on Ann Coulter (see #3). |
| 10 | Killing of Harambe |
|
554,465 | |
What began as a heartfelt reaction to what some felt was the unnecessary killing of a silverback western lowland gorilla (pictured, though not him specifically) has morphed over the last three months into online trolling and racist abuse, along with the standard targeted misogyny. What the troll army hopes to accomplish is never clear, but whatever it is it doesn't involve helping gorillas. |
Anniversaries: The anniversaries of historic events are frequent visitors to this Report, but instead of being led by the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks (#4) this week, as we expected, we have the 11th anniversary of the Corrupted Blood incident (#1) video game event, which occurred in World of Warcraft and in which literally no one died, even the game's characters which can be reincarnated. We can all scratch our head over that one, but the ways of the internet are complex. See the chart comments for more on that. And the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Murder of JonBenét Ramsey comes in at #10 because of a new miniseries.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of September 11 to 17, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly revamped WP:5000 report were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corrupted Blood incident |
|
1,636,405 |  |
Like professional wrestling, gaming is an activity that is very popular among a group of the population, yet most of the rest of us are not very aware of the goings-on in that area. And while wrestling events often reach the top of this chart (SummerSlam 2016 hit #1 three weeks ago), gaming events simply don't. Yet, the 11th anniversary of this "virtual plague" in World of Warcraft drew a great deal of attention on September 13–14 (and 1.4M views on Sept 13, the actual anniversary). In this event, a game update included a new character that could inflict a "corrupted blood" disease that damaged characters over time. It could spread to nearby characters, but was not intended to spread out of the area where it was introduced. A programming error allowed the disease to spread, and it caused death and mass mayhem for a week. A primary driver of traffic was a Reddit thread on the /r/gaming subreddit. Normally only Reddit threads from the todayilearned subreddit can direct enough traffic to this chart, but the gaming thread already has over 5700 upvotes. Of course, the fact that this event got more views than the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks (#4) does not mean the this virtual plague got more worldwide attention. Instead it is just another example of how Wikipedia article popularity is only a proxy for measuring cultural attention. |
| 2 | Pablo Escobar |
|
1,494,049 | |
Down from 2.3 million views last view, but Narcos is back on your television screens for another week. Mobile views are on the high side again (73%) but nothing suggests these views are not legitimate. |
| 3 | Alexis Arquette |
|
1,320,202 |  |
Arquette, part of the Arquette family of actors, and known for transitioning her gender to female, died on September 11 at age 47 of undisclosed causes. |
| 4 | September 11 attacks |
|
1,155,678 |  |
The fifteenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in world history fell this week. It fell on the first day of the week, so that may be why it is only #4 for the week this year, as compared to #2 the last two years. |
| 5 | Roanoke Colony |
|
870,775 |  |
The sixth season of American Horror Story, dubbed American Horror Story: Roanoke debuted on September 14. It invokes the story of England's failed attempt to establish a colony in America in the 1580s, where by 1590 all inhabitants had disappeared and could not be located. The only clue left behind by the "lost colony" was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a post. |
| 6 | Yma Sumac |
|
811,712 |  |
Google ran a Doodle on what would have been the 94th birthday of the Peruvian soprano. The Doodle only appeared in the United States and certain South American countries (of course including Peru). |
| 7 | Donald Trump |
|
688,121 |  |
Press coverage in the United States is at 25% Donald Trump every day, it seems. On September 16, Trump promised to give a press conference regarding his current views on birtherism. Starting in 2011, Trump had led the charge into the specious claims that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. At the press conference, Trump mostly touted his new D.C. hotel (where the event was held) and endorsements from some veterans, and concluded the conference by quickly admitting Obama was born in the United States, and then claiming Hillary Clinton had been the one pushing the rumor, apparently to deflect any implications of his years of obvious and absurd lying about the subject. The press has been highly critical of the event, with CNN anchor Jake Tapper even calling it a "political Rick roll". |
| 8 | Edward Snowden |
|
671,125 |  |
The film Snowden was released in the United States on September 16. |
| 9 | UFC 203 |
|
667,115 |  |
Stipe Miocic defeated Alistair Overeem is the featured match of this September 10 event held at the Quicken Loans ArenainCleveland, Ohio. |
| 10 | Murder of JonBenét Ramsey |
|
649,805 |  |
In addition to the O. J. Simpson murder case, the 1990s also brought us this second over-covered over-sensationalized and exploited murder. A new mini-series on American television 'The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey has brought another round of attention as we approach the 20th anniversary of the girl's death. |
J'Accuse! pour pauvre petit JonBenét: In the United States, hundreds of children are murdered every year, and, thanks to an average homicide clearance rate of 64%, will likely have their deaths unanswered. But we as a culture, and perhaps as a species, can't handle that. So instead we shine lights on specific examples particularly deviant or prurient in their details, dubbed "media friendly", allowing us to shelter in our moral outrage. And boy did the murder of poor JonBenét Ramsey give us the chance to do that. JonBenét was a product of that strangely American industry, child beauty pageants, which, with their overly made up contestants made to look like living Barbie dolls, gave her murder a slightly paedophilic cast despite having no proven connection to her murder. And with the media having anointed her as their icon of shattered innocence du jour, it is unsurprising that, with the approaching 20th anniversary of her death, the media have again chosen to anoint themselves the sole arbiters of truth and justice in her murder. Several television specials accounting the details of her death or offering new "evidence" have been shown or are in development, but the clear driver of views for this list is The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, a CBS "documentary" that aired on Monday and Tuesday this week. Unlike the more cautious (rational) approaches taken by other networks, CBS decided to flat out name their chosen suspect, JonBenét's then nine-year-old brother, Burke. Needless to say, they're now getting threatened with defamation suits, and in the ensuing lahar of speculation, people turned to Wikipedia for clarity. He're hoping we provided it.
Speaking of unfounded accusations, rumours are again flying around the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, with echoes of Brad Pitt's previous divorce coaxing the media to turn on poor Marion Cotillard, who still managed to get her own back online. Celebrity presence on this list was also due to actual accomplishment, however; the Emmys also featured.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of September 18 to 24, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Murder of JonBenét Ramsey |
|
1,155,334 | |
In the lead up to its 20th anniversary, the puzzling murder of this six-year-old beauty queen has become a topic of discussion thanks largely to the suggestions (as opposed to outright accusations, mind you) levelled by the CBS documentary The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey. |
| 2 | Angelina Jolie |
|
1,140,991 |  |
As I have said many times in the past, I care not a jot for the private lives of celebrities. Divorces are never pleasant, least of all for the children, of which she has many, so I hope that, once the walls of tabloid illusion are blown away in the wind, she'll be able to provide them with a stable environment in which to grow up. |
| 3 | Pablo Escobar |
|
1,091,369 | |
Narcos is back on your television screens, meaning Don Pablo is back on the list for another week. |
| 4 | Marion Cotillard |
|
884,417 |  |
You know who else cares not a jot about the private lives of celebrities? Marion Cotillard, who filmed the spy thriller Allied with Jolie's husband Brad Pitt in the lead up to the divorce. This led to speculation that an affair between the two was the catalyst for the proceedings, presumably on the grounds that she is the only woman on Earth with whom one could contemplate cheating on Angelina Jolie. Cotillard, who by all accounts is in a longterm and happy relationship with French actor Guillaume Canet, with whom she is currently expecting her second child, refuted the claims with a withering post on Instagram that included the delicious line, "This crafted conversation isn't distressing. And to all the media and the haters who are quick to pass judgment, I sincerely wish you a swift recovery." Burn! I'd like to call her wonderfully down to earth, but she also believes in the moon landing hoax and 9/11 conspiracy theories. |
| 5 | Brad Pitt |
|
851,307 |  |
Ever since starting this list I've had that abominable song by Shania Twain rolling through my head: "OK, so you're Brad Pitt! That don't impress me much!" It seems those words were a curse. A very, very, very, long-delayed curse, but a curse nonetheless. Not that Brad Pitt is likely to be lonely long. |
| 6 | Deaths in 2016 |
|
625,921 | |
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. |
| 7 | Pink (2016 film) |
|
593,314 |  |
This Bollywood drama, starring Amitabh Bachchan (pictured), about three girls falsely accused of prostitution and attempted murder by the boys who sexually assaulted them, grossed ₹210.5 million ($3.2 million) in its opening weekend. Despite its heavy subject matter, being Bollywood, it still has musical numbers. |
| 8 | Stranger Things (TV series) |
|
589,801 | |
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, evidenced by its continuing appearance on this chart -- ten straight weeks. Netflix recently ordered a second season. |
| 9 | Richard Garfield |
|
570,257 |  |
The creator of the first ever trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, is the great-great grandson of US President James Garfield, as learned in a Reddit thread this week. |
| 10 | Jennifer Aniston |
|
542,402 |  |
Despite having nothing whatsoever to do with her ex-husband's current breakup, the tabloids have latched her onto his every relational flutter for so many years that she's now back in the storm by sheer association. |
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