Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/February 26 to March 4, 2017

WP:25

The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 26 to March 4, 2017)

Prepared with commentary by OZOO

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

An Evening at the Pictures

Wikipedia readers this week focused on one thing above all others: the land of undersized seats and over priced popcorn! A combination of the 89th Academy Awards and interest in current box office hits results in 19 out of 25 coming from the world of film; led by the sad death of actor Bill Paxton. All four acting award winners are represented here, as are 5 of the 9 Best Picture nominees.

Away from the world of film, rapper Remy Ma attracted interest for her new diss track and Ash Wednesday began the Christian fasting period of Lent. Before the fast begun, however, Reddit discovered an interesting fact about Rice. Also, Donald Trump continues.

For the week of February 26 to March 4, 2017, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Bill Paxton	4,823,745	The American actor, known for his roles in films such as Aliens, Titanic and Twister, died this week at the age of 61.
2	Moonlight (2016 film)	3,098,888	Winner of three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The first all-black Best Picture and the first LGBT Best Picture; the win was unfortunately overshadowed by an envelope mixup, resulting in La La Land holding the award for about five minutes. Director Barry Jenkins pictured.
3	89th Academy Awards	1,982,265	The main page for the week's big award show (pictured: host Jimmy Kimmel) was unsurprisingly popular, with readers likely trying to catch up on the list of winners or the envelope mixup.
4	Logan (film)	1,862,573	The 10th movie associated with the X-Men and the final appearance for Hugh Jackman (pictured) as Wolverine; Logan opened this week to near-unanimously positive reviews and almost $250m worldwide gross.
5	Casey Affleck	1,574,510	The American actor won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Manchester By the Sea.
6	Get Out (film)	1,400,249	Jordan Peele's directorial debut, the satirical horror movie has received, if anything, even more unanimous positivity from reviewers than Logan; and sits second in the US box office.
7	La La Land (film)	1,253,551	The other half of the envelope mixup (see #2); the incident did rather overshadow the rest of the night, which saw the musical pick up six Awards, including Best Director for Damien Chazelle. (pictured)
8	Mahershala Ali	1,217,057	Won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight (#2); Ali is the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.
9	Emma Stone	1,119,576	Another Academy Award winner, this time for Best Actress. It is interesting to note that Wikipedia readers seem more interested in the actors than the actresses, isn't it?.
10	Manchester by the Sea (film)	874,133	Rounding off our cinematic top 10, Kenneth Lonergan's drama won two awards from six nominations, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor.
11	Ash Wednesday	736,930	The first day of Lent in the Western Christian calendar was observed this year on March 1. Views have increased by 137,067 from 2016's occurrence.
12	Deaths in 2017	650,355	Wikipedia readers continue to keep an eye on the list of those no longer with us.
13	Remy Ma	654,281	The American rapper released ShETHER, a diss track against fellow rapper Nicki Minaj on 25 February. The interest does not yet appear to have transferred to sales, with Ma's song sitting 119th on the Billboard charts.
14	Warren Beatty	627,731	The fourteen-time Oscar nominee (and one-time winner) was given the responsibility of announcing the Best Picture Oscar winner alongside Bonnie and Clyde co-star Faye Dunaway. If anything went wrong, it was under-reported. Dunaway, incidently, sits 49 places below Beatty on the raw list.
15	Ryan Gosling	619,114	Best Actor nominee for his role in #7; lost out to #5
16	Donald Trump	612,530	Continuing our film theme, the star of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York remains President of the United States. This week, he made a speech to Congress and accused his predecessor of wiretapping him, very much running the whole gamut of Presidential behaviour.
17	Hacksaw Ridge	611,495	Based on the experience of Desmond Doss (pictured), Mel Gibson's war film won two Awards from six nominations, for Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing.
18	Damien Chazelle	602,783	The American director became the youngest person to win the Best Director Academy Award, for La La Land.
19	Mel Gibson	596,875	The... ahem... controversial Australian failed to win a second Best Director Award for his first film in a decade, beaten by Damien Chazelle.
20	O. J. Simpson	591,262	The former American footballer and current felon was the subject of O.J.: Made in America; winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
21	Lion (2016 film)	569,893	Despite being the best film yet made about Google Earth, Lion failed to convert any of its 6 nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Dev Patel (pictued), into wins.
22	Viola Davis	555,754	The winner of Best Supporting Actress for her role in Fences, Davis does not seem to have interested the readers as much as Affleck, Ali & Stone.
23	Rice	542,230	The good burghers of Reddit this week learned about the vital (and surprising) role water plays in the production of rice. And now, so can you!
24	Ben Affleck	535,548	The current Batman announced the winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; before sitting back and watching his brother (#5) pick up the Best Actor award. Ben didn't necessarily leave the weekend empty-handed, though; depending on how keen he is to pick up his Razzie Award for Worst Screen Combo.
25	Two Ocean Pass	513,849	Another Reddit boost, this time from the world of cartography! The Two Ocean Pass is a point in Wyoming where a stream splits into two tributaries - one heading to the Atlantic Ocean, the other the Pacific. A fish could therefore take advantage of this Pass in order to cross between the two major oceans. What is not yet known is why such a fish would want to.

In other news:

The rest of the Best Picture nominees: Arrival (film) (38th); Hidden Figures (42nd); Fences (film) (48th); Hell or High Water (outside top 200). Hell or High Water is the only one not currently showing in cinemas, which may explain that.

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.

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