Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/February 12 to 18, 2017

WP:25

The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 12 to 18, 2017)

Prepared with commentary by Serendipodous

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

A Feeble Song in the Heart

This year, the return of Valentines Day coincided with the broadcast of the 59th Grammy Awards; two annual celebrations widely seen as a joke. Does anyone truly care about the Grammys? I mean seriously, watch this Simpsons clip. There are just too many of the friggin things. Can you imagine if, say, Kate Winslet had won 19 Oscars, including two this year, but people felt she hadn't been recognised enough? Well that's exactly what was said about 19-time Grammy winner Beyoncé when she lost to Adele this week. The Grammys are, bluntly, debased currency. They never really ignite this list either, unless nerd favourites like Macklemore or Daft Punk are involved. This year didn't even see the traditional Kanye outburst. What are the Grammys coming to when people can just accept their awards without Kanye jumping the stage? In other news, the ongoing carnival of carnage that is the Trump administration continued to provide much fodder for further reading. Oh, and tens of thousands of people are at risk of death.

For the week of February 12 to 18, 2017, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Valentine's Day		1,519,240	The annual greeting-card consumption festival returned to the top of the chart this week, though with a fairly anaemic view count compared to past years (see 2013 and 2014 and 2015).
2	Oroville Dam		998,789	"We're in the middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns!" goes the memorable line from Chinatown, "Only in LA!" Well the Oroville Dam isn't in LA, but it seems California can outdo fiction for irony, as recent epochal rainfall during the worst drought in the region's history has slowly begun to overwhelm this dam, meaning a lot more than just the water commissioner are in danger of drowning. In fact 188,000 people were evacuated as a precaution. One of Wikipedia's less heralded uses is providing up to the minute information during periods of crisis, so it's not surprising people turned to it.
3	Michael T. Flynn		959,948	On February 13, 2017, Michael T. Flynn became the shortest-serving National Security Advisor in US history upon resigning his position after just 24 days. Turns out getting caught lying does have consequences for politicians. Particularly when it involves lying about treating with an unfriendly foreign power. Given how deeply connected the Trump administration is to said foreign power (Russia), and how rapidly the revelations on this topic have been breaking, I don't think this is the last we'll see of him.
4	Donald Trump		862,573	WDDD? What Did Donald Do this week? Well judging from the headlines specific to this time frame, "White House chaos" seems to be the dominant theme, as many of his ... controversial appointees either didn't get confirmed (yet), were confirmed under dubious circumstances, or resigned. Apparently to remedy this, the President decided to call a last minute press conference so bizarre that late night comedians made montages of cable news talk show hosts opening their commentary with "... Wow".
5	Chance the Rapper		839,710	The, er, rapper won three awards at the Grammys this week, including "Best New Artist", the award most widely regarded as a poisoned chalice, having in the past been awarded to such nascent icons as Sheena Easton, Men At Work, Marc Cohn and Evanescence. Still, for every one of those there's an Adele, Amy Winehouse, or Bobby Darin, and Meghan Trainor remains popular for some reason, so call it a 50/50 shot.
6	Bruno Mars		774,985	He didn't win (that was last year) but his tribute performance of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" in full Purple Rain getup, including ruffles and eyeliner, wowed both the audience and the critics.
7	Elimination Chamber (2017)	n/a	771,938	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was staged at the Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix, Arizona on February 12.
8	Justin Trudeau		739,930	The Prime Minister of Canada and head of government everyone in the Western world secretly wants as their own met with Donald Trump this week, leading to a number of "bae" memes, including a shot of Trump's daughter Ivanka apparently giving him the eye.
9	Deaths in 2017		727,657	After the annus mortalis that was 2016, the "Deaths in... " list seems to have settled down to its stable, comforting thrum, albeit at a far higher average number of views. Again, because its numbers vary so little from week to week, it acts like a barometer of traffic levels, and the fact that it has shot up 7 slots shows just how pallid the view count is this week.
10	Adele		703,229	The British belter is no stranger to Grammys- she's won 14, five of which were awarded this year, for her album 25 and song "Hello". Not bad for a girl from Tottenham who released her first album less than a decade ago.
11	Beyoncé		697,755	The 19-time Grammy winner took two more home this week. Some felt that wasn't enough. Dunno. I'm sure she has room on her mantelpiece for a few more, but her career is far from over.
12	59th Annual Grammy Awards	n/a	650,355	... were held on February 12 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
13	O. J. Simpson		634,290	Why our readers have deemed the feckless Mr. Orenthal James worthy of inclusion in the top 25 for a second straight week is a bit of a puzzle. It could be the arrival of The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story on Netflix, or perhaps its strong showing at the NAACP Image Awards. Perhaps it is the announcement that he is due for parole in October. Either way, we can't seem to get rid of the guy.
14	Joy Villa	n/a	574,411	No, not a no-tell motel, but a singer apparently famous for her Grammy outfits. This year she wore a blue dress endorsing President Trump; the controversy that immediately resulted led to her latest single becoming the top download on Amazon and iTunes. Well. Someone seems to have grasped how the 21st century works.
15	Kim Jong-nam		557,237	When it comes to North Korea, anything one deems worthy of reportage must be prefixed with the phrase, "You might not believe this but...". So. You might not believe this but North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, having already committed some merciless purges against his old guard, is rumoured to have assassinated his elder brother and once favoured successor of his father Kim Jong-Il (until he tried to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland on a false passport). The alleged perpetrator was apparently tricked into spraying him with poison on the assumption that it was a TV prank.
16	Fifty Shades Darker (film)		552,964	Well, it happened. Made money too.
17	John Wick: Chapter 2		538,169	The Keanu Reeves-starring actioner John Wick came out of nowhere three years ago to wow critics and eventually gain a fervent following, enough to greenlight a sequel, which in just 11 days has already outgrossed its predecessor by a fair margin.
18	UFC 208		506,133	The latest UFC MMA TKO jamboree was held on February 11 at the Barclays Center in New York, with the headlining win going to Germaine de Randamie. Something just occurred to me; they hold about 10 of these a year; what's gonna happen when they hit 5 digits?
19	Jolly LLB 2		487,194	This black (by Bollywood standards anyway) comedy starring Akshay Kumar (pictured) has made ₹1.6 billion (about $24 million) in its first two weeks.
20	Bhagat Singh		454,433	This is a weird one. Views peaked on February 14, which was supposedly the date in 1931 on which this terrorist and assassin was executed for the revenge killing of a British officer. Thing is, it wasn't. He was actually executed on March 23, more than a month later. There seems to be a movement among Hindu nationalists to claim Singh as one of their own, which is odd because, as his name suggests, he was a Sikh. And a Communist. Apparently, one aim of this movement is to challenge the cultural infiltration of Valentine's Day by remaking it as Singh's death-day, thus reclaiming it for the Hindus (again, odd), even on Wikipedia, which resulted in his page being semi-protected for a week in 2011.
21	Saint Valentine		454,396	We know virtually nothing about this guy; we don't know who he was, his job description or why he was martyred. We don't even know if he was one person. All we basically know is that he was supposedly martyred on February 14. We know so little that the Roman Catholic Church actually removed his feast day from their official calendar. And yet, somehow, he has become in essence the modern Western world's god of romance. Which is ironic because "Valentine" is a pretty manly, warlike name (think Prince Valiant); not that you'll be seeing any boys named that any time soon. The last one I know of was this guy; one wonders if the voice was an overcompensation.
22	Legion (TV series)		452,028	This TV series stars Dan Stevens (pictured) as Legion, the son of Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men universe. The character has dissociative identity disorder (DID), and each of his many alternates control a different superpower. Still haven't seen it. Should check it out.
23	Laverne Cox		439,975	The transgender actress caused a minor media meltdown when she forgot to introduce Metallica at the Grammys. Her new TV series, Doubt, premiered two days later.
24	Turnspit dog		439,975	There are certain dogs, great Danes and pugs come to mind, for whom merely breeding them might be considered a form of animal abuse. But these are nothing compared to the life of the turnspit dog, whose entire laughable existence revolved (literally) around spinning in a wheel to keep turnspits moving evenly. This breed is thankfully extinct, and machines can now do it without the devious ethics, as learned in a Reddit thread this week.
25	Al Jarreau		437,572	The singer best known for the theme to Moonlighting died this week at the age of 76.

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 (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% 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

XXX, XXXX and XXX (film series): All three appearing on this list at once, particularly with XXX: Return of Xander Cage all the way down at #145, combined with a suspiciously high mobile count suggest artificial inflation.
Alexander Hamilton: OK, there's one obvious reason why he would be on here, but his mobile count again suggests he's being inflated.

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