Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (March 15 to 21, 2015)

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Summary: This week's list is very reminiscent of lists from the early days of this project; a preponderance of famous faces, Reddit threads and Google Doodles. Predictably, the arrival of St. Patrick's Day topped the list, while the arrest of Robert Durst proved surprisingly popular. Events of global significance, such as the devastation of Vanuatu, were pushed to the bottom or off the list entirely.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of March 15 to 21, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Saint Patrick's Day		2,783,603	Every man has his day, at least if he's a saint. And when your day happens to involve copious alcohol consumption and opportunities for gradeschool cruelty, it is bound to be popular. A Google Doodle doesn't hurt either.
2	Robert Durst		1,508,008	It's not often that a film documentary has an impact on an actual murder investigation; Errol Morris's 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line famously led to the exoneration of Randall Dale Adams, and now, the The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, the new documentary by Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans), has provided evidence leading to the re-arrest of Robert Durst, the wealthy son of a real-estate family suspected of, but never convicted for, three murders. It says something about the inner dynamics of the Durst family that his brother greeted the new evidence by saying he was "relieved" and "grateful" and that, "We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done."
3	Anna Atkins		953,069	The photographic and botanical pioneer (one of, if not the first person to illustrate a book with photographic plates) got a Google Doodle on her 216th birthday on March 16.
4	Alex (parrot)		941,143	If his trainer is right, then this African grey parrot, who died unexpectedly in 2007, could very well have been the most intelligent non-human animal in recorded history. Not only did he have a vocabulary of over 100 words, he apparently understood what those words meant and could identify objects by name, even if they were different colours or shapes. But one day, Alex appeared to take things to another level completely. He turned to his trainer and asked, "What colour am I?" the first existential question ever asked by an animal. This was noted in a Reddit thread this week, which quickly filled up with contributions from parrot owners telling tales their own pets' abilities. Note: in the name of honest journalism I should admit that the above grey parrot is in fact NOT Alex, but his actual photo is copyrighted. Still, he'd pass in a crowd.
5	Natalia Kills		902,335	That's a rather aggressive stage name, it must be said. Anyway, the British singer apparently lives up to her name (somewhat) because she is currently engulfed in a minor scandal over bullying a contestant while acting as a judge on the New Zealand version of The X Factor.
6	To Pimp a Butterfly	Unassessed	828,825	The latest album from Kendrick Lamar (pictured) was released on March 16.
7	Christian Laettner		811,567	How does a man named Christian Laettner respond to a TV documentary called I Hate Christian Laettner? Well if he happens to be the Christian Laettner who polarised fans throughout his college basketball career and stomped on rival team member Aminu Timberlake's chest during his career-defining match in 1992, he takes it in his stride and publicly apologises to his most famous victim, who promptly accepts it.
8	2015 Cricket World Cup		765,014	Down from 923K views last week as the tournament played through the quarter finals. With India still in, along with a raft of English-speaking countries, (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) do not expect it to leave this list any time soon.
9	Saint Patrick		740,598	It is perhaps not surprising that Ireland, the only predominantly Catholic country in the English-speaking world, would produce the English-speaking world's most popular saint. It is however somewhat surprising that he has been embraced by pretty much everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.
10	Monica Lewinsky		692,719	The former White House intern and owner of the dress that almost brought down the free world gave a TED Talk this week on a pertinent subject in which she is well-versed: cyberbullying.
11	Empire (2015 TV series)		675,492	Lee Daniels' TV drama about a family-run hip-hop label stars Terrence Howard (pictured) and has proven a hit for Fox, with consistent ratings in its debut season.
12	Kanye West		613,315	Yes, "loser.com" still redirects to his Wikipedia page, but the joke is apparently wearing thin, as numbers are falling precipitously.
13	Stephen Hawking		572,165	The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 20th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. That said, his numbers may finally be in decline; this was lowest-viewed appearance since December.
14	Bhutanese passport		538,561	Sometimes trawling Wikipedia will take you to strange places, as this Imgur user found out when he stumbled across the audio recording of this seemingly innocuous article. After posting it on his Imgur page, he managed to collect over 750,000 mildly shocked views. In fact, this was not the first time someone had drawn attention to that recording's ... unique delivery, nor is it the first time it has been nominated for deletion. However, the overwhelmingly negative response to the deletion requests suggests that, odd as the recording may be, Wikipedians have grown quite fond of it.
15	Willy Moon		537,339	The singer husband of Natalia Kills (#5) is also a fellow judge on New Zealand X-Factor, and was roped into her scandal when she accused a contestant of not possessing his style.
16	Vanuatu		511,007	The birthplace of bungee jumping (and one of the strongest UN voices against Apartheid), this tiny Melanesian archipelago was devastated by Cyclone Pam this week. While its death toll was thankfully low (11 at last count) the storm is estimated to have affected 132,000 people, or more than half the population.
17	Deaths in 2015		499,101	The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550,000, apparently heedless of who actually died.
18	The Flash (2014 TV series)		489,959	This spinoff from the hit series Arrow marks DC Comics' second attempt to create a TV universe, after the late and much lamented DC Animated Universe.
19	Solar eclipse of March 20, 2015		489,047	The first total solar eclipse since 2012 had a rather cumbersome path of totality, passing over such happening places as the Faroe Islands, Svalbard and the North Pole. Still, there's one in the Midwestern US in 2017, which should give a treat to a few million eyes.
20	The Walking Dead (season 5)		482,318	The latest episode of this popular TV series premièred on March 15.
21	Kendrick Lamar		477,337	See #6
22	Cinderella (2015 film)		471,395	Disney's new "franchise" of redoing its animated classics in live action began last year with the surprisingly successful Maleficent. After just 10 days, the next instalment, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Lily James in the title role, is keeping remarkable pace with its predecessor, with a worldwide gross of $253 million.
23	Facebook		468,435	A perennially popular article.
24	Interstellar (film)		437,851	In advance of the film's release on video at the end of the month, its screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan, revealed that his original ending had the main character, played by Matthew McConaughey, die. This coincided with the release of Emic, a documentary about life on Earth produced to tie in with Interstellar.
25	UFC 185		415,829	The mixed martial arts event was held on March 14, 2015 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas.

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 also 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. 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.

Specific exclusions this week:

Tablet computer: A crazed viewing pattern offsets a decent mobile count.