The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 13 to 19, 2015)

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

The Force We Expected: Not surprisingly, Star Wars: The Force Awakens tops the list, with over five million views, one of the highest weekly view counts we've seen this year. And eleven of the Top 25 entries are Star Wars-related, clearly one of the top pop culture events of the year. (The record of related topics on a single report is 15, which the Super Bowl did in February.) Outside the Star Wars universe, Yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar hit #3 on the strength of a Google Doodle, and fighter Conor McGregor came in #4 after a big win at UFC 194 (#12). And Adele is still going strong, rising back 10 spots this week up to #5 in her ninth consecutive appearance on the chart.

Followers of Wikipedia article statistics should be sure to check out the new Hatnote Top 100, a daily report of the 100 most viewed articles for thirteen different language Wikipedias. This daily report includes mobile data (which stats.grok.se does not), and is updated daily just a few hours after midnight UTC. As an automated report it does not exclude non-human entries (as this report strives to do), so beware oddities like Java (programming language) which get afflicted by bots. I enjoyed using the Hatnote reports this past week to know in advance that Star Wars: The Force Awakens would top the chart this week. The Hatnote report is derived from Wikimedia's new pageview API, and WMF Labs has already released a Demo Article stats tool that is worth checking out, as it also includes the mobile views which are now a large segment of all Wikipedia views.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of December 13 to 19, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	5,164,168	Over 38 years after the release of Star Wars in 1977, the pop culture domination that the franchise has enjoyed is undeniable, now again reinforced by the debut of the latest film. Many people who saw the first film as teenagers could well be grandparents by now. Though just released, this is already the article's ninth appearance on the Top 25 in 2015. It is hard to think of any other pop culture franchise that has had such a long lasting and pervasive effect as Star Wars. For example, the stories of Sherlock Holmes appeared over a forty-year period as well (1887-1927), and have generated a large legacy, but cannot compete with the powers of our mass media age. The Force Awakens has already grossed $517 million worldwide in its opening weekend (as of December 20) - just shy of the worldwide opening record of $524 million set by Jurassic World earlier this year. The U.S. opening of $238 million easily beat the $209 million which Jurassic World racked up. The movie has also received very good reviews, though it should be kept in mind that many reviewers in 2015 probably saw the first film as children, creating a powerful force of nostalgia.
2	Star Wars	2,643,442	See #1
3	B. K. S. Iyengar	1,165,101	Iyengar, who died in 2014, was one of the foremost yoga teachers in the world, and is often called "the father of modern yoga." A Google Doodle celebrated what would have been his 97th birthday.
4	Conor McGregor	1,139,804	Up from #17 last week. On December 12, at UFC 194 (#12), the Irish MMA star became the UFC Featherweight Champion after knocking out José Aldo in 13 seconds, capping a pretty good last few weeks for his country in combat sports.
5	Adele	863,442	"Hello, it's Adele, if you're wondering, after nine weeks yes I'm still here." And will no doubt stay in the Top 25 for a bit longer. Up from #15 last week, with over double the views of the prior week, primarily propelled by the American TV special Adele Live in New York City which aired on December 14.
6	Dilwale (2015 film)	841,772	This Indian film, including Kajol (pictured) among its starring actors, debuted on December 18. Dilwale grossed around ₹150 crore (US$22 million) worldwide in its opening weekend, the third highest of the year for an Indian film.
7	Martin Shkreli	772,581	On December 17, the then-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals was arrested by the FBI on charges of securities fraud. The 32-year-old Shkreli was already the prime target for dissatisfaction with corporate greed these days (represented by the devil pictured at left). Shkreli received widespread criticism in September when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for an antiparasitic drug and jacked up the price by over five thousand percent.
8	Daisy Ridley	765,459	The English actress stars in #1 in the role of Rey.
9	Star Wars (film)	750,021	See #1. The first movie in the series, released on May 25, 1977 in only about 30 movie theaters.
10	Donald Trump	720,311	The improbable U.S. Presidential campaign of Mr. Trump continues. Every Republican party debate generates more attention for him, and he stood center stage again at the last debate on December 15. Trump continues to ride the top of national polls of Republicans by a wide margin, though the fact that the actual party nomination system in the United States is a state-by-state contest and not a national one will now become more of a focus. The Iowa caucus to be held on February 1, 2016 will be first, and not easy for a cult-of-personality candidate to win, followed by the New Hampshire primary on February 8 and South Carolina primary on February 20. If Trump actually does well through those first three contests, the reaction within the party and by the press is going to be something incredible to behold.
11	TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs (2015)	681,761	This professional wrestling even was held in Boston, Massachusetts on December 13. Sheamus (pictured) beat Roman Reigns in the main event.
12	UFC 194	681,500	See #4.
13	Carrie Fisher	661,832	The actress who played Princess Leia in the first three Star Wars films reprises her role in #1.
14	J. J. Abrams	648,569	The director of #1, who was 10 years old when the first movie came out. His debut appearance as an individual entry on the Top 25 Report.
15	Ludwig van Beethoven	648,569	A Google Doodle celebrated the composer's 245th birthday. Or technically his baptism, as the Doodle appeared on December 17; there is no record of his exact birth date, though it was likely December 16.
16	Deaths in 2015	576,464	The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 475 and 575 thousand on average, apparently heedless of who actually died.
17	Mark Hamill	661,832	The actor who played Luke Skywalker in the first three Star Wars films reprises his role in #1.
18	Star Wars sequel trilogy	560,097	This article refers to the third film trilogy in the Star Wars franchise, of which #1 is the first film made, but the fourth in plot order. Though actually pretty simple, the order issues have created worldwide confusion since the late 1970s.
19	Return of the Jedi	532,449	This was the third film released in the Star Wars series, in 1983. Plotwise, this film is the immediate predecessor to #1.
20	Bajirao Mastani (film)	499,156	This Indian historical drama starring Ranveer Singh (pictured at left) was released on December 18. It the fifth-best opening of the year for an Indian film, though behind Dilwale (2015 film) (#6).
21	Adam Driver	765,459	The American actor star in #1 in the villain's role of Kylo Ren.
22	The Revenant (2015 film)	483,287	A western thriller movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio (pictured), The Revenant had a Los Angeles debut on December 16; it will expand into a wide release in early January 2016.
23	Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace	481,516	The fourth film released in the Star Wars series (in 1999), but the first plot-wise. Both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic list this as the lowest-rated film in the series.
24	José Aldo	463,049	The Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter lost to #4 at #12.
25	Ted Cruz	459,054	The U.S. Republican presidential candidate is rising in the polls, surging to first place over Donald Trump (#10) in a recent Iowa poll. Iowa is where the first state contest for delegates will occur on February 1.

Just missing the list #26 Harrison Ford; #27 Joy (film), #28 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, #29 Darth Vader, and #30 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

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 also 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. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.

Specific exclusions this week:

Google and Facebook were excluded last week, but saw a big drop below the Top 25 this week. Facebook was #71 (284,587 views) on the raw WP:5000, while Google was #88 (253,889).

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.