Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 16 to 22, 2014)

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Big In Japan: Oftentimes in popular culture, a subject will be quite popular among a distinct niche of people or region of the world, but little-known elsewhere. The Top 25 provides a bevy of examples this week. The article on deceased singer Aaliyah was quite popular as the result of a new cable television movie about her life. The movie drew 3.2 million viewers, which was considered very successful. Though that figure only represents a very small fraction of the world's population, the attention was enough to make the article the second most popular one on Wikipedia this week. Meanwhile, in India, the marriage of the daughter of actor and screenwriter Salim Khan propelled his article to #9. In the gaming world, a trailer video for Eve Online raised that game's profile to #17, and the new first-person shooter game Far Cry 4 debuted at #23. In Britain, the appearance of retired footballer Jimmy Bullard on a reality show brought him new attention and landed spot #19. And, last but not least, American wrestling fans raised their latest spectacle, Survivor Series (2014), to spot #25.

Competing for attention amidst the niche-driven articles was an assortment of topics of broader popularity, including the film Interstellar (#1), which is topping our list for the third straight week, news that imprisoned killer Charles Manson (#3) is getting married, the death of director Mike Nichols (#5), also husband of Diane Sawyer (#14), and the continuing troubles of comedian Bill Cosby (#6).

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of November 16 to 22, 2014, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Interstellar (film)		1,409,615	This movie remains Wikipedia's most popular article for third straight week. Since opening on November 5, it has grossed $120.6 million in North America, and almost $450 million worldwide.
2	Aaliyah		1,349,666	Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, a biopic about the American signer who died in 2001, debuted on the Lifetime cable network this week. It was quite successful, bringing in over 3.2 million viewers.
3	Charles Manson		1,308,091	On November 17 the world learned that this demented killer, who has been in prison for over 40 years, has recently obtained a marriage license to wed a 26-year old who has been visiting him in prison for over nine years, and runs websites proclaiming Manson's innocence.
4	Stephen Hawking		802,353	The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon got a boost with the release of the biopic, The Theory of Everything, in the United States on November 7. Up from #16 last week.
5	Mike Nichols		788,230	This highly regarded American film and stage director died of a heart attack in New York City on November 19. In 1968, Nichols won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate, and he had helmed a host of critical acclaimed movies, his last being 2007's Charlie Wilson's War
6	Bill Cosby		756,135	The American comedian probably had one of the worst weeks in his life, as allegations that he had sexually assaulted as many as 16 women in the past was the subject of renewed and more much high-profile attention, causing a planned new sitcom and comedy special to be sidelined. New allegations included those of former supermodel Janice Dickinson, who publicly alleged for the first time that Cosby drugged and raped her in 1982. It is difficult for many to square these burgeoning sordid tales of private life with the clean father-figure persona which Cosby represented for so many years.
7	Thanksgiving		663,886	Down almost a million views from last week, but mobile views are up to 19.9% (from about 5% last week), suggesting that legitimate views are starting to overtake the spammer views which has affected the viewcounts of this article and others such as Online shopping which are connected to the biggest shopping season of the year in the United States.
8	Facebook		628,013	A perennially popular article, as it is the second most popular website in the world, after Google.
9	Salim Khan		562,555	An Indian actor and screenwriter, the nuptials of his adopted daughter Arpita Khan (which redirects to his article and got over 286,000 views itself) occurred this week, and have drawn much attention in India.
10	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1		536,903	The third of four planned movies made from The Hunger Games trilogy starring Jennifer Lawrence (left) debuted this week.
11	Deaths in 2014		490,048	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article.
12	Corita Kent		476,435	A Goodle Doodle celebrated what would have been the 96th birthday of this American artist, educator, and nun, who died in 1986.
13	Kim Kardashian		472,868	Kardashian continues to ride her latest wave of celebrity after recently posing nude in an arty niche magazine rather than a lads' mag.
14	Diane Sawyer		447,423	The famous news anchor grieved the loss of her husband, director Mike Nichols (#5), to whom she had been married since 1988.
15	Guardians of the Galaxy (film)		445,347	This film returns to the Top 25 this week as anticipation of its release on DVD/Bluray was increased by Disney's screening of 40 minutes of extras which will be included with it. The film has grossed over $770 million worldwide.
16	Google		425,311	Always a fairly popular article.
17	Eve Online		413,357	CCP Games released a "trailer" video for this decade-old massively multiplayer online role-playing game called "This is EVE", which uses audio recordings submitted from actual gameplay. The video brought about a frenzy of positive reactions. The author of this report watched the video and was not put into a frenzy, but it was noted that the graphics of space warfare shown are quite good, and at least ten times better than Star Wars.
18	American Horror Story: Freak Show		390,899	The fourth season of the American Horror Story series débuted on October 8, and continues its run on the Top 25.
19	Jimmy Bullard		388,584	This English footballer retired in 2012 from the Milton Keynes Dons, but he returned to British TV screens this month as a contestant on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (UK series 14).
20	Gotham (TV series)		383,641	This televisual reboot of the Batman franchise debuted on September 22, 2014, and returns to the Top 25 after a one-week absence.
21	The Hunger Games	N/A	382,414	The release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 brought attention to the entire Hunger Games franchise created by author Suzanne Collins.
22	United States		379,443	A perpetual bubble-under-er that, while it seldom makes the top 25, usually appears in "Top of the Year" lists.
23	Far Cry 4		373,146	This first-person shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal was released in North America, United Kingdom, Australia, and Europe on November 18, 2014.
24	Ebola virus disease		364,870	The Ebola scares in the United States have subsided, but the disease will remain a serious public health issue in West Africa for some time.
25	Survivor Series (2014)	N/A	363,869	The lead-up to this WWE wrestling event to be held on November 23 caused enough buzz to make the Top 25. Lilian Garcia (pictured) will serve as ring announcer for the matches.

Just missing the list: The Walking Dead (TV series) (#26), Salman Khan (#27, and son of #9), Big Hero 6 (film) (#28), Kendra Wilkinson (#29, and who joined #19 on that same reality show), and The Flash (2014 TV series) (#30)
Notes from the Top 5000: 88 articles from the raw Top 5000 exceeded over 250,000 views this week, ending with horror video game Five Nights at Freddy's (#88), and just shy of 250,000 views was #89 Friend of Dorothy, which Reddit gazed upon; 453 articles cracked 100,000 views, the last being Grey's Anatomy (season 11) (#453); List of United States federal executive orders (#1655) was last to top 50,000; and "Bang Bang" (Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj song) and Sexting tied at #4999 with 26,385 views each, and closed out the list. The sum of views for all the Top 5000 articles exceeded 437 million.

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.