Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 20 to July 26, 2014)

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Summary: We indeed moved far away from football this week, and further into much more serious issues of war and death. The Israel-Palestinian conflict continues to dominate the news, and the Top 25, with Gaza Strip (#4), Israel (#9), Hamas (#10), Palestine (#15), and Israeli–Palestinian conflict (#17). And death also lies behind the popularity of James Garner (#1), Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (#3), and Deaths in 2014 (#8).

We have Reddit to thank for some less serious topics of interest, including a funny story about songwriter Tom Lehrer (#5), as well as how Land mines (#7) in the Falkland Islands have become penguin sanctuaries. And actress Rose Leslie (#21) also made the Top 25 simply because Reddit noticed she grew up in a castle. So its worth noting that earlier this week The New York Times was asking "Can Reddit Grow Up?", about that site's efforts to develop a mature business model. Considering that Reddit and Google Doodles are without peer in their ability to direct traffic, at least to Wikipedia, it stands to reason that someone will figure out how to leverage that site's massive audience.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of July 20 to 26, 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	James Garner	1,160,042	This American actor died on July 19 at age 86 of a heart attack. Garner starred in several popular television series over more than five decades, including Maverick and The Rockford Files. He also starred in more than 50 films.
2	Fifty Shades of Grey	579,935	This 2011 erotic romance novel by E. L. James (pictured) is one of the biggest best sellers of the past decade. It is being adapted into a movie directed by Sam Taylor-Wood so that even more people can experience it. On July 24, the movie trailer for the film was released, which is no doubt why this article was so popular this week.
3	Malaysia Airlines Flight 17	576,750	The tragic shooting down of this passenger aircraft over Eastern Ukraine drops one spot this week. Although it seems likely that Russian-backed insurgents, who recently downed some Ukrainian planes in the same area, mistook the Boeing 777 for a Ukrainian military plane, a full investigation of the crash needs to be completed. That continues to be hampered by the lack of government authority and ongoing fighting in the region, leading to news reports about the efforts made to simply transport bodies out of the area, as well as disturbing claims of scavenging of passenger belongings by local residents.
4	Gaza Strip	508,624	The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, part of a very long and complicated history of conflict, keeps this article on the list for the second straight week. The military operation is dubbed "Operation Protective Edge" though our article on the conflict is now filed under 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
5	Tom Lehrer	507,403	This American singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician was the subject of a very popular Reddit thread this week. As Reddit noticed, when Lehrer was asked at age 84 by hip-hop artist 2 Chainz for permission to sample a song he wrote 60 years ago, Lehrer responded: "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"
6	2014 Commonwealth Games	487,610	The 2014 edition of the Commonwealth Games kicked off on 23 July in Glasgow, Scotland, and will run through 3 August. Almost 5,000 athletes from 71 different nations and territories will be competing in 18 sports, including Lawn Bowls.
7	Land mine	438,852	Reddit also caused a huge spike in the popularity of this article on 25 July, when a "Today I Learned" thread noted that areas around landmines laid near the sea during the Falklands War (1982) have become favorite penguins sanctuaries, as penguins do not weigh enough to detonate the mines, and can breed free of human interference. The sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that removal efforts have been opposed.
8	Deaths in 2014	408,553	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. In addition to James Garner (#1), deaths this week included (and this is a random sample, truly): Indian actor Kadhal Dhandapani (July 20), English female aviator and World War II military pilot Lettice Curtis (July 21), American football player Robert Newhouse (July 22), American swimmer and 1932 Olympics gold medal winner Helen Johns (July 23), South Korean vionlist Ik-Hwan Bae (July 24), American author Bel Kaufman (July 25), and Ukrainian mayor Oleh Babayev (July 26).
9	Israel	396,605	Up from #14 last week. As with #4, the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas is no doubt the cause of the popularity of this article this week.
10	Hamas	396,081	Up from #17 this week, giving the recent conflict 3 of the to 10 spots this week. Sadly, this popularity, and the bloodshed causing it, is likely to continue.
11	Kick (2014 film)	381,965	This Hindi action film starring Salman Khan was released on 25 July, and had the biggest opening day in India for any film so far this year.
12	Facebook	336,070	A perennially popular article.
13	Commonwealth Games	300,493	The broader article on the history of this competition saw higher activity, no doubt due to the start of the 2014 Commonwealth Games (#6).
14	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes	294,476	Down from #10 last week. This American science fiction film with a cast including Andy Serkis (pictured) is the sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It was released to theaters earlier this month.
15	Palestine	276,741	Another article of interest due to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
16	Guardians of the Galaxy (film)	276,173	This 2014 American superhero film had its Hollywood premiere on 21 July. It opens in the U.K. on 31 July and the United States generally on 1 August.
17	Israeli–Palestinian conflict	274,846	Up from #25 last week, clearly the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict is becoming, or has become, the dominant global hard news story.
18	Weird Al" Yankovic	274,369	Down from #11 last week. The release of his new album Mandatory Fun keeps this quirky song parody master in the Top 25 for a second week. Indeed, its his first number one album in the United States. Just when you thought you were done trying to avoid the endless repetition of Royals on the radio, now you have to content with his parody Foil as well.
19	Google	270,869	Always a fairly popular article, though viewcounts are slightly higher over the past few weeks.
20	List of Bollywood films of 2014	266,045	Not unusual to see this make the Top 25.
21	Rose Leslie	263,742	This Game of Thrones actress made her Top 25 debut due to a Reddit "Today I Learned" thread noting that Leslie grew up in a castle, and that her father is a Chieftain of Clan Leslie. If you're counting, that's 3 of the top 25 this week appearing due solely to the influence of Reddit.
22	James Rodríguez	263,661	This footballer played for the Colombia national football team in the 2014 FIFA World Cup and won the Golden Boot for scoring the most goals in the tournament. On 22 July, he signed with professional club Real Madrid.
23	Skye McCole Bartusiak	260,369	This young American actress of films including The Patriot died on July 19 at age 21. She'd been suffering from epileptic seizures prior to her death.
24	Iran Air Flight 655	256,105	This Iran Air civilian flight was shot down by United States Navy using a surface to air missile on 3 July 1988, which the navy had mistaken for an Iranian F-14. The views of this article rose after news of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (#2) spread.
25	Female genital mutilation	254,703	As if war and death wasn't already prevalent on this week's list, we close out the Top 25 with this topic, which was the subject of another round of increased press scrutiny due to attention drawn by the 2014 Girl Summit held in the United Kingdom.

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. Its massive view spike is not due to any explainable rise in human viewcounts; excluded for a second week
100. Unexplained spike in the year 100 article, due to a huge view spike over two days. It's unlikely people were looking up events like Hadrian's marriage to Vibia Sabina.
Undefined. A common error message in computing, these are automated visits by a buggy computer program.
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.
Java. Currently under some bot-fuelled spike not seen on other language wikipedias. This is our article on the island, though one might guess the non-human views have something to do with the programming language.
Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
History of Bălţi. This has been excluded for inexplicable spikes in the past; it's back this week.
Key of Solomon. One day spike on 23 July with no tails on either end; no similar spike on French or Spanish wikipedias.
Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.