Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (August 24 to 30, 2014)

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Summary: Holding Pattern: This week we saw three of the top 10 articles remain in place, with the Ice Bucket Challenge at #1, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at #2, and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at #5, all for a second straight week. The death of English actor Richard Attenborough was apparently the most notable of the week, as that article entered the list at #3. Top news subjects of recent weeks, including Ebola virus disease (#7) and Robin Williams (#9), also continued to remain popular.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of August 24 to 30, 2014, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Ice Bucket Challenge	1,773,522	Number 1 for the second week in a row. This global viral phenomenon to arise awareness and funding for research on ALS was not launched by any particular charity, but seems to have grown on its own. While it certainly has achieved its goals, some have criticized the whole movement as feeling more like an act of slacktivism by many participants. But most viral phenomena have absolutely no redeeming social value (has Grumpy Cat raised millions for disease research?), so things could be much worse. Wikipedia did its part to keep things focused on substance by deleting the celebrity-fest page "List of Ice Bucket Challenge participants" on 29 August, after a lengthy deletion debate.
2	Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis	880,652	Like #1, it's #2 for the second week in a row.
3	Richard Attenborough	794,061	This popular English actor died on August 24, at age 90. Attenborough won two Academy Awards as director and producer for Gandhi in 1983. He also won four BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globe Awards during his career. As an actor, memorable appearances included roles in Brighton Rock (1947), The Great Escape (1963), 10 Rillington Place (1971), and Jurassic Park (1993). He is survived by his wife of almost 70 years, former actress Sheila Sim.
4	Ariana Grande	589,596	Up from #19 last week, the popular singer released her second album, My Everything on August 25.
5	Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant	448,261	Holding steady at #5 for a second week. This almost absurdly brutal jihadist group proudly posts mass executions it carries out on Twitter, and has been disowned even by al-Qaeda. The recent execution of journalist James Foley is among the reasons for the continued popularity of this article.
6	Deaths in 2014	361,006	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. Deaths this week included Leonid Stadnyk (August 24), a Ukrainian formerly listed by Guinness as the tallest man in the world; Swedish comic strip artist Lars Mortimer (August 25); Nigerian pastor Samuel Sadela (pictured at left), unverified claimant to being the oldest male alive (August 26); American particle physicist Victor J. Stenger (August 27); Former Soviet spy John Anthony Walker (August 28); Singaporean comedian David Bala (August 29); and 18-year old Belgian cyclist Igor Decraene, who died in a train accident (August 30)
7	Ebola virus disease	356,594	The 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak continues to draw attention to this horrific disease.
8	Pseudoscorpion	334,956	Reddit noted this week that "tiny pseudoscorpions (about 4mm) live inside old books, effectively protecting them by eating booklice and dustmites", a hook exciting enough to make reddit put this in the top 10 this week.
9	Robin Williams	332,653	Down from #3 last week. The unexpected death by suicide of this iconic comic on August 11 led to one of the highest spikes in views since this project began.
10	Facebook	328,386	Usually a fairly popular article; a slower news week allowed it to percolate back up into the Top 10 for the first time in awhile.
11	Iggy Azalea	314,353	The Australian pop singer has been in the Top 25 before, and probably returned this week with an extra bit of popularity driven by her appearance and nominations for the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards held on August 24.
12	66th Primetime Emmy Awards	311,388	This annual event to honor United States prime time television programming, hosted this year by comedian Seth Meyers for the first time, was held on August 25. Over 15 million tuned in to watch; others supplemented or replaced that by viewing this article. As is normally the case with award show articles like this, dedicated editors continually updated the page as winners were announced.
13	Ángel Di María	301,653	This Argentine footballer signed with Manchester United on August 26.
14	Guardians of the Galaxy (film)	293,190	This 2014 American superhero film has remained popular now for many weeks.
15	List of Bollywood films of 2014	289,328	A regular visitor to the Top 25
16	Breaking Bad	272,415	This American crime drama ended a successful five-year run in September 2013. On August 25, it won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards.
17	David Attenborough	266,350	David Attenborough is an English broadcaster and naturalist, whose elder brother Richard Attenborough (#3) died on August 24. In connection with that event, readers were also apparently interested in David's whereabouts. Yes, David is still alive and kicking. Last month he was one of 200 public figures who signed a letter to a newspaper opposing Scottish independence.
18	Althea Gibson	265,176	Gibson, the first black athlete to cross the color line of international tennis, died in 2003. A Google Doodle on August 25 honored her on what would have been her 87th birthday. Though Google Doodles can often catapult an article much higher in the Top 25, this one's geographic reach was limited only to the United States.
19	Google	259,771	Always a fairly popular article.
20	NASA Helios	249,495	There's a possibility the viewcounts for this article were affected by bots, but it has enjoyed some popularity between August 13 and August 30. Helios was the last in a series of unmanned aerial aircraft developed under a NASA program exploring technologies to develop long-term high-altitude aircraft for atmospheric research. The Helios prototype crashed into the Pacific Ocean on 26 June 2003. This sounds like the kind of science article that might get traction under a random reddit thread, though we've not identified one.
21	2014–15 UEFA Champions League	237,599	This is the current season of Europe's premier club football tournament. The second legs of the play off round were played on 26 and 27 August, and the draw for the group stage was held on 28 August.
22	Five Nights at Freddy's	234,685	Five Nights at Freddy's is a survival horror video game which was released on August 8 via Desura (a distribution platform focusing on independent game developers). It has proven popular, and has already led to a number of popular YouTube videos of folks playing the game.
23	Doctor Who	212,679	The British science-fiction television series has been around since the dawn of time (well, 1963), and is a regularly well-trafficked article. The eighth series of the program debuted on 23 August in the United Kingdom, now starring Peter Capaldi (pictured) as the Twelfth Doctor.
24	Joan Rivers	211,913	The longtime American comedian experienced serious complications during vocal cord surgery on August 28, and news of her declining status spread quickly. She subsequently died on September 4.
25	Bono	206,312	The frontman for U2 garnered attention on Reddit this week, where a "Today I Learned" thread noted "When Bono was 14, his mother died at her father's funeral."

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). Please keep in mind that the explanations given for these articles' popularity are, fundamentally, educated guesses. Just because one can't find a reason for an article to be included doesn't mean there isn't one; conversely, just because a plausible reason is found for a view spike, that doesn't mean it wasn't due to a bot.
There are a number of articles that reappear frequently in the raw top 25 for no determined reason, and have been excluded as likely being due to automated views. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.

Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
Undefined. A common error message in computing, these are automated visits by a buggy computer program.
Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
English alphabet and Alphabet. No legitimate reason for recent rise in views.
Amazon.com. Scepticism has been raised about the recent large jump in viewcounts for this article.
Rock music. No explanation for its continued popularity.

Additional removals this week:

Brainfuck: Esoteric programming language had unexplained massive spike in views.
Blackjack: Unexplained one day spike
External ballistics: Unexplained spike, not duplicated on other language wikipedias.
Lottery: Unexplained two day spike.