The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (August 21 to 27, 2016)

← Last week's report – Next week's report →

We Need To Talk About Reddit: Hello again, Reddit. One of the discoveries the Top 25 project has made over the years is that the site Reddit, which bills itself as "the front page of the Internet" because Wikipedia doesn't, has been a major factor in driving traffic here. It has also proven to be a massive justification for every quirky, oddball page that manages to make it through the deletion process, as these are frequently the most popular. In the past I've made impassioned defences of Reddit and its role in aiding Wikipedia, pointing out that our site has done little to draw people's attention to the information it conveys, leaving that job to Reddit and Google Doodles. I still feel that way, at least, for the section of Reddit that nearly always makes it here: TIL, or "Today I Learned". Comments on TIL threads seem to be fairly civil and genuinely inquisitive, but those make up only a tiny fraction of Reddit's user base. It is not those threads that best exemplify Reddit however; rather it is the river of bile and toxicity that has flowed from the Killing of Harambe that best shows what Reddit has become. These days Reddit is mostly famous in the wider media as a den of race hate, misogyny, borderline paedophilia, and every other objectionable but not strictly illegal form of behaviour. The commitment of the site's owners to free speech has meant that many of their topic threads, or subreddits, have become echo chambers of vitriol, as those who disagree are shouted down or chased off. One writer for Time magazine has written Reddit off as unsalvageable. As such, I think Wikipedia would be better off taking on more of the job of spreading word of its content.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of August 21 to 27, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the newly-revamped WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	SummerSlam 2016	N/A	1,102,249	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held on August 21, 2016 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York with the headline bout "won" by Brock Lesnar (pictured)
2	2016 Summer Olympics		1,019,002	Numbers are down by half, but the article is still holding at #2. The closing ceremony was held on August 21, the first day recorded by this list, so interest in the Olympics has clearly faded quickly. It will be interesting to see what will happen when the Paralympics get underway.
3	Stranger Things (TV series)		933,503	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 -- six straight weeks. The Internet has seized on even the most mundane facets of the show, such as turning minor character "Barb" into a celebrity. Numbers have not shifted particularly since last week, but with the overall low view count it has let it rise four slots.
4	Suicide Squad (film)		776,092	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 $267M worldwide in its opening weekend.
5	UFC 202	N/A	759,740	The latest Ultimate Fighting Championship was held on August 20 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The headlining bout was a rematch between UFC Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor (pictured) and Nate Diaz, who had defeated McGregor at UFC 196. McGregor won this bout by majority decision.
6	Killing of Harambe		735,203	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	Blonde (Frank Ocean album)		722,611	The long-delayed album from rapper and R&B artist Frank Ocean was released exclusively on Apple Music on August 20 to near-universal acclaim.
8	Tic Tac		711,441	As learned on a Reddit thread this week, Tic Tacs are almost pure sugar, but small enough to be considered sugar-free per serving. Interestingly, the two other Reddit threads linked to this article also noticed the same thing.
9	Frank Ocean		697,461	See #7
10	Deaths in 2016		617,084	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.
11	Caster Semenya		597,294	The last Olympian to gain serious attention, Semenya gained the gold in the 800m sprint the day before closing. But it is likely a rather distasteful controversy surrounding her that has gained the most attention. Non-medal finishers have been hurling accusations that her condition, hyperandrogenism, which causes her body to overproduce testosterone, gives her an unfair advantage. Despite having no clear medical evidence to support it, this claim has led to some fairly bold sour grapes on the part of the losers, particularly Poland's Joanna Jozwik, who flavoured her tartness with some old-fashioned racism: "I'm glad I was the first European, and the second white", she said to Eurosport after the race. The world today being what it is, her remarks have led to equal amounts praise and condemnation from online commenters.
12	Donald Trump		572,600	Numbers spiked this week after a reported "softening" on his defining issue, immigration, though he would later backtrack rather quickly.
13	P. V. Sindhu		571,811	On August 18, Sindu became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic silver medal, in badminton. Sindhu was one of only two medallists from India, the second being a bronze won by female wrestler Sakshi Malik. Of course India's lack of medal haul regularly produces articles asking why.
14	Usain Bolt		568,683	On August 15, Bolt won gold in both the 100m and 200m, for the third straight time. And he also won his third straight gold in the 4 × 100 m relay. Being regularly called the "greatest sprinter of all time" is not hyperbole at this point.
15	Conor McGregor		550,307	See #5.
16	Gord Downie		550,213	The lead singer and songwriter for Canadian band The Tragically Hip (see #21)
17	Antonio Di Natale		548,334	As learned in a Reddit thread this week, this footballer took responsibility for the disabled sister of one of his teammates after his teammate's death on the pitch.
18	2024 Summer Olympics		681,471	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).
19	"Spy Hard" (song)		616,041	For all his nasal tomfoolery, when he wants to be, "Weird Al" Yankovic is an exceptionally talented singer, as learned in a Reddit thread this week. Whilst performing his style parody of James Bond-style power ballads for the spoof movie Spy Hard, he was able to hold the final, sweeping, Shirley Bassey note (comically lengthened to ludicrous effect) without looping it.
20	Juan Rivera (wrongful conviction)		498,740	For anyone stupid enough to believe that justice is blind, Reddit learned this week that the prosecutors attempted to get Juan Rivera back into prison by placing blood on a pair of shoes he supposedly wore. Shoes that weren't manufactured at the time of the murder. Sometimes the only thing protecting us from evil is stupidity.
21	The Tragically Hip		494,551	The defiantly Canada-centric band, who won the adoration of their compatriots at the expense of wider recognition, faced the diagnosis of their creative engine and frontman Gord Downie with terminal brain cancer by embarking on a final tour.
22	Ryan Lochte		492,622	Before the 2016 Olympics, Ryan Lochte's public persona was of a stereotypical dumb jock. Now he's still seen as a dumb jock, but also as a coward, a liar and a delinquent, for creating a heroic role for himself as the lead combatant against a non-existent mugging, invented to cover up his role in the trashing of a gas station, and for flying back home before he could be caught, leaving his two accomplices to face harsh Brazilian justice. I'd like to get all snarky, touch the side of my nose and offer some kind of life coaching tip about how lying is for smart people, but the fact is, even though he's lost all his endorsements, he's already being eyed for the next season of Dancing With The Stars, because there is no such thing as bad publicity unless you're Tonya Harding. And if that fails, he can always become a wrestling heel. I'm sure our readers would welcome him.
23	Don't Breathe (2016 film)		481,904	This horror entry, essentially a cross between Wait Until Dark and First Blood, in which, instead of Audrey Hepburn as the blind victim getting her home invaded, it's a crazed vet with supernatural hearing who soon turns the tables on the poor schlubs, opened this week to stellar notices and a $26 million opening weekend. Which means, given the old "2.5" rule of thumb, that it is already in profit. Personally I'm a bit torn about this- on the one hand, as a horror fan, I always look out for the very occasional decent offering; on the other hand, as a disabled person, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to root for those idiots.
24	2018 Winter Olympics		564,866	Interest in the next Olympics, to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, spiked the day after this one ended.
25	Mo Farah		418,830	The local boy made good at the London 2012 Olympics repeated his triumph there this week with golds in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres.

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% 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.