Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 13 to July 19, 2014)

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

Summary: Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over - but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on July 13, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, 5 of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics. However, this week also focuses on much more serious news including the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine and the ongoing fighting in and around the Gaza Strip, which is the cause of increased viewership of a number of related articles.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of July 13 to 19, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	2014 FIFA World Cup		916,405	Down from 1,179,986 views last week, but still enough to lead the list. And since we've also determined that the views which Amazon.com has recently been getting (and put that article #1 last week) seem to be bot-influenced, its been taken out of the running.
2	Malaysia Airlines Flight 17	NA	887,329	The tragic shooting down of this passenger aircraft over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 aboard, makes it to #2 on the list this week with only three days of views. While Russian-backed media is frantically trying to offer alternative and even absurd explanations for this event, it seems quite likely that Russian-backed insurgents, who had recently downed some Ukrainian planes in the same area, mistook the Boeing 700 for a Ukrainian military plane (through Ukraine would like to call it a "terrorist act" like U.S. President Ronald Reagan did regarding Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983). We can all agree it was a tragedy, however. A full investigation will need to take place, though that is being hampered by the lack of government authority and ongoing fighting in the region.
3	Buk missile system		840,636	A missile fired from this Russian-developed surface to air missile system is the suspected cause of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. View counts of this article spiked very understandably on July 17, and remain well above normal. Interesting, though the normal daily view counts for this article were in in 200s-300s range in the two months prior to the crash, they did rise to the 600-900 view range in the three days before the crash, likely as a result of reporting that the insurgents in eastern Ukraine had recently obtained and were using this weapon.
4	FIFA World Cup		831,347	The broader article on the history of the World Cup competition continued to be accessed by people looking for World Cup information.
5	Germany national football team		641,544	Germany has now won four World Cups (1954, 1974, 1990, and 2014).
6	Lionel Messi		587,197	The Argentine forward and captain of the national team is a contender for the title of "best footballer on the planet", though he was unable to lead his team to victory in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13. Somewhat as a consolation, he was controversially given the Golden Ball award for being the best player of the tournament.
7	Gaza Strip		505,588	The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, part of a very long and complicated history of conflict, is no doubt the cause of the popularity of this article this week. The military operation is dubbed Operation Protective Edge by Israel. Hamas probably has a different term, I expect; indeed the Arabic Wikipedia version of the Operation Protective Edge article is called "The War on Gaza (2014)".
8	Nelson Mandela		504,588	July 18 was Nelson Mandela International Day, which was also celebrated this year with a Google doodle.
9	Mario Götze		500,377	This German footballer with the stylish neckbeard scored the championship-winning goal for the German national team at the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13. This was good enough to make the Top 10 this week.
10	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes		467,674	This American science fiction film, the sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, was released in Australia on July 9 and the United States on July 11, with largely positive reviews from critics. It is up from #13 last week.
11	Weird Al" Yankovic		456,898	With the release of his new album Mandatory Fun, featuring parodies such as "Word Crimes" of "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, Weird Al appears in Top 25. It is rather surprising that this satirist can still toss off humorous recordings using the same basic formula after close to 40 years.
12	List of FIFA World Cup finals		396,131	This has been on the Top 25 already, but was also the featured list on July 14.
13	Deaths in 2014		377,739	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article.
14	Israel		367,806	As with #7 above, the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas is no doubt the cause of the popularity of this article this week.
15	Facebook		349,233	A perennially popular article.
16	Microsoft Bob		340,926	A recent popular "today I learned" thread on Reddit caused a burst of interest in this article about this ill-fated 1995 Microsoft software. Oddly enough, Microsoft later traded its ownership of "bob.com" in order to obtain the rights to "windows2000.com", the name it had chosen for its new planned version of the Microsoft operating system.
17	Hamas		336,653	As with #7 and #14 above, the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas is no doubt the cause of the popularity of this article this week.
18	Iggy Azalea		315,192	A very popular pop singer from Australia right now, as even the author of this week's report can admit knowledge of "Fancy", which interestingly is also one of the songs parodied on #11's new album.
19	Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	NA	306,127	The crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (#2 this week) led to renewed interest in the disappearance of this other Malaysian Airlines' flight in March. At this time, there still has not been any confirmed finding of flight debris or a crash location for Flight 370.
20	Transformers: Age of Extinction		287,515	This action film, the fourth in the live-action Transformer film series, is down from #10 last week, and #3 two weeks ago.
21	Johnny Winter		287,158	The American blues guitarist, ranked 63rd best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2003, died on July 16.
22	Iran Air Flight 655		282,736	This Iran Air civilian flight was shot down by United States Navy using a surface to air missile on July 3, 1988, which the navy had mistaken for an Iranian F-14. The views of this article spiked after news of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (#2) spread. Many other flight incidents had increased views this week, including Korean Air Lines Flight 007, #65 on this week's raw WP:5000, Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 (#190), and TWA Flight 800 (#238), but this was the highest.
23	Derek Jeter		280,637	This very accomplished baseball player for the New York Yankees is currently playing in his 20th and final season in Major League Baseball in the United States.
24	List of Bollywood films of 2014		278,106	A return appearance on the Top 25.
25	Israeli–Palestinian conflict		271,026	As with #7, #14, and #17 above, the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas is no doubt the cause of the popularity of this article this week.

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 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.

Subaru Justy. A massive view spike of 4,186,902 views from July 18-21, with only 128 views on July 17 and 220 views on July 22, is a classic case of non-human viewcounts.
Amazon.com. As discussed in last week's report, we've been a bit skeptical about the recent large jump in viewcounts for this article. The spike seems to be dying down in the days after the period covered by this list, in fact. Also, other large wikipedias (such as the German, Spanish, and French) do not show the same variation in views of our version, which is another good indicate of non-human views.
Kurt Russell. A huge view spike on 17 July that seems unexplained by human interest, and is not duplicated on other language wikipedias.
Analytical Marxism. Huge view spike on July 14-15 that seems unexplained by human interest, and is not duplicated on other language wikipedias.
Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
Undefined. A common error message in computing, these are automated visit by a buggy computer program.
Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
Anilides. A redirect to Aniline with a bot-driven spike in views on July 15.