The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 3 to 9, 2016)

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Summary Sports dominate again this week, with the traditional return of Wimbledon joining the lead-up to the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament, the latest UFC event, and, for some inexplicable reason, the NBA transfer window. But it was a sport of an entirely modern kind, Pokémon Go, that led the pack, and before you ask, yes, Pokémon is an esport. Traditional summer distractions such as movies and television round out the list, with the inclusion of political oddballs Donald Trump and Andrea Leadsom to remind us (barely) of the real world.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of July 3 to 9, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Pokémon Go	1,371,390	For most people born before the Clinton administration, Pokémon will always be about as comprehensible as the religious customs of some lost Pacific island or the codes and shibboleths of some ancient secret society. Which, by the way, is exactly why your kids love it so much. It's too complicated to explain quickly but if you can imagine going on a scavenger hunt to build up your baseball card collection, only to have the school bully beat you up and steal them from you, except the baseball cards are fighting monsters called Pokémon, and it's not real, it's all in a video game, then that's about as close to the Pokémon experience as makes no odds. Pokémon has always been popular, but this latest iteration has exploded into the public mind almost overnight (astoundingly, it currently has more users than Tinder in the US, despite only being in release for 5 days) due to its unique, and uniquely dangerous, gameplay. You see, thanks to the wonders of augmented reality, Google Maps and GPS, the scavenger hunt is no longer just in the game; it's everywhere you go. Hold up your iPhone to a tree, there's a Pokémon sitting in a crook, waiting to be captured and sent to the death ring. Look down on the pavement, and there's a Pokémon staring cutely up at you. And hey look! There's one swimming in that deceptively close and surprisingly deep pond! And there's one across that very busy street! Yes, Pokémon Go-related accidents have already happened, as have related muggings, since the game alerts any other players to your current location. Thankfully none of this has proven fatal, though it's only a matter of time before a health official is forced to remind the general public that real people do not get extra lives.
2	Sultan (2016 film)	1,152,393	One big difference between Hollywood and Bollywood is that in Bollywood, stars still matter. And Salman Khan (pictured) rules the roost right now. His last big film, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, dominated Eid al-Fitr weekend and went on to make nearly $100 million. And now he's done it again. His latest, a wrestling drama, was also released on Eid and has taken in nearly ₹1.96 billion ($29 million) in its first six days.
3	Independence Day (United States)	1,142,261	This is the fourth US Independence Day we've seen since we started this list, which means it's time to look for patterns, and one that stands out is that while this article's numbers keep climbing year on year, it has never been the top article for its week. Some have speculated that Americans already know enough about their founding holiday and don't need to look it up.
4	UEFA Euro 2016	988,687	Numbers are down slightly for the quarter- and semi-finals, which saw the darlings of the tournament (Wales and Iceland) predictably knocked out by France and Portugal. This list's timeframe ends before the 10 July final so expect numbers to shoot up again next week.
5	Juno (spacecraft)	960,161	Not all NASA missions need to be glamorous; this one, which began a slow, winding descent towards Jupiter on 4 July, won't be gracing us with grand vistas of the jewels of the Jovian realm. No; this one is hardcore, pick-to-the-cliff science. Have you ever seen a cutaway image of the inside of a gas giant? Well if not, here's one. Thing is, up until now, it's basically educated guesswork. We don't have any hard evidence of what's under those clouds. But we will, thanks to Juno, which will get the info by mapping Jupiter's gravitational field. But to do so, it has to get close. Real close. As in, close enough to be fried by Jupiter's 12,000-Chernobyls-per-second radiation belts. Needless to say, it's a tough little bugger, but its creators don't expect it to be producing useful science for more than 18 months before it's toast.
6	Nettie Stevens	896,719	This pioneering geneticist and discoverer of the XY sex-determination system got a Google Doodle on her 155th birthday on 7 July.
7	UFC 200	872,178	The latest in the mixed martial arts tournament series was held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (pictured) on 9 July. Headliner Amanda Nunes defeated Miesha Tate in the first round.
8	Serena Williams	857,452	The world women's number 1 tennis champion clinched yet another record on 9 July when she beat Angelique Kerber in straight sets to clinch her 22nd major singles title at her natural home, Wimbledon. Two more titles and she will equal Margaret Court's career record.
9	Antoine Griezmann	849,627	Olivier Giroud may have scored two goals for France in the Euro 2016 semi-final, but it was Griezmann who scored the most goals in the tournament.
10	Kevin Durant	707,764	The seven-time NBA All-Star transferred from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Golden State Warriors this week for a reported $54 million two-year contract.
11	Deaths in 2016	613,495	The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis, with close to 100,000 views a day.
12	Milos Raonic	572,765	The world number 7 did what few people ever do and beat Roger Federer to reach the men's final this week, only to be beaten by Andy Murray.
13	Roger Federer	539,441	The man widely regarded as the best tennis player of all time bowed out of the Wimbledon's men semi-finals after being beaten by Milos Raonic (see above).
14	Game of Thrones	527,788	The traditional hangover begins. It will likely be a few weeks before this dies completely, and a long time before it reappears. Winter is here, and that means waiting for the snow to come before filming.
15	Venus Williams	487,694	The current second fiddle in the dominant force in women's tennis was knocked out of the Wimbledon women's semi-final by Angelique Kerber (see above) only to be avenged by her sister in the final. She and her sister still managed to secure the doubles crown this year.
16	Dwyane Wade	487,694	After 13-years with the Miami Heat, the incongruously named basketball star transferred home to Chicago this week.
17	David Reimer	533,278	A Reddit thread learned this week of the unbearably sad and deeply unfair life of this mutilated child who was abused in the name of science: after a botched circumcision, he was raised as a girl despite insisting throughout his life that he was a boy, while being "socialised" by a doctor in sexually tinged "experiments". Unable to find a role in life, he committed suicide at the age of 38.
18	The Legend of Tarzan (film)	457,845	The latest retelling the dated Tarzan mythos stars Alexander Skarsgaard in the title role, and Margot Robbie as Jane, and is directed by Harry Potter's David Yates. Despite a miserable critical reception (the film currently has a 37% RT rating), word of mouth has been strong for this film, which has managed to earn $81 million in just ten days.
19	Elie Wiesel	457,296	The globally renowned human rights activist, author and Nobel Laureate, who was one of the last chroniclers of the Holocaust to have witnessed it first hand, died this week at the age of 87.
20	Eid al-Fitr	453,015	The "Sugar Feast" to celebrate the end of the month-long Ramadan fast fell, by general agreement (it involves astronomical calculations, so it's complicated) on 6 July this year, after a one-year absence, likely caused by its having fallen on July 18, the last day of this list's catchment period.
21	Cristiano Ronaldo	435,864	Playing for Portugal, the man sometimes called the world's most famous athlete scored a goal against Wales in the Euro 2016 semi-final.
22	Donald Trump	435,864	With British politics dominating the last two weeks, our certain #1 for 2016 has suffered an unaccustomed absence. Of course, when he does show up, the question always is, "What did he do now?" Well, views suddenly spiked this week on 5 July, after a backlash erupted concerning one of his tweets. It featured Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of money with the caption, "Most corrupt candidate ever!" set in a six-pointed star. Needless to say, this particular juxtaposition of images has a certain undertone unlikely to be missed by anyone with an IQ higher than a lobotomised rat's. Trump, of course, played the crowd, proclaiming his innocence just ineptly enough to ensure continued coverage. He claimed it had been a sheriff's star, but in fact he had not created the image, which had been taken from an account on the neo-Nazi cyber-cesspool 8chan.
23	Independence Day: Resurgence	426,743	The 20-years-later sequel to Independence Day premiered in the United States on June 24. Domestic critical and public response to it has been tepid, but with $300 million grossed worldwide so far, it seems likely to recoup its $165 million budget (Hollywood rule of thumb: budget x 2.5= profit).
24	Andy Murray	421,161	You can bet that my home press milked our native son's winning Wimbledon for all it was worth. Suffice to say, we need some good news right now. Doesn't seem to have had much outside impact though, with most viewers still trying to figure out what happened to Roger Federer.
25	Andrea Leadsom	411,490	The last one standing against Theresa May in the competition to become head of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, initially appeared to be the favourite among the party faithful's rabid Brexiteers, but collapsed once the rest of the country realised she was a Christian fundamentalist; to most Brits a revelation only slightly less shocking than if she'd sloughed off her skin to reveal scales.

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 (~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. Since WP:5000 and WMF Topviews use different exclusion algorithms, articles that appear in one but not the other can also safely be excluded as false. 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.