Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (November 23 to 29, 2014)

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Summary: Real world tragedy and fantastical escapism often share space in the Top 25, and this week was no exception. Although the ominous events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri took the top spot this week, movies. music and television again dominated the list overall; with current cinematic talking points Interstellar and The Theory of Everything joined by the trailers for the latest entries in the Jurassic Park and Star Wars franchises. The arrival of Thanksgiving in the US also offered some welcome reprieve from the dismal news, while the American Music Awards offered some decent celebrity appearances.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of November 23 to 29, 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	Shooting of Michael Brown		2,514,532	Unsurprisingly, the November 24 decision by the grand jury not to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager from Ferguson, Missouri, led not only to further unrest but to Brown's death becoming the most sought-after topic on Wikipedia this week.
2	Black Friday (shopping)		1,963,498	The day after Thanksgiving is also the day that retailers have earned enough to cover their debts from the previous year, and are thus "in the black" (at least, that's what they say; in truth it probably originated as a reaction to the traffic). Because of this, they often mark down their prices, leading this to become a major day on the shopping calendar and the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season. Over in the UK, where I live, more pious commentators have been staring at this phenomenon with something like horror, decrying its gradual "consecration" as a holy day for the new religion of consumerism. They may be right.
3	Thanksgiving		1,541,622	The day fell on the 27th this year, which meant numbers doubled this week. A healthy 57% mobile rate suggests the spammers are leaving the article alone at last. After all, who wants Spam with their turkey?
4	Phillip Hughes		1,445,775	One of the best cricketers in Australia's modern history, at the age of 20, Phillip Hughes scored centuries in both innings at a test match, the youngest player ever to do so. Sadly, he died this week after being hit on the neck by a cricket ball.
5	Stephen Hawking		1,082,411	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. Numbers for his article have only gone up since then, as the film opens in more theatres and the awards buzz gets going. It earned $5 million over Thanksgiving weekend, and while that may not seem like much, it's a strong haul for an arthouse release.
6	Interstellar (film)		942,129	As the above interest in Stephen Hawking shows, movies that win at the box office are seldom the ones that get the most Wikipedia views; rather it is the amount of debate and discussion those movies trigger that seems to be the main driver of Wikipedia interest. Case in point: Interstellar's respectable $147 million domestic box office has paled next to that of Big Hero 6, which opened opposite it, and even The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, which opened two weeks after it. And yet, the debates and questions it raised, both scientific and over its own quality, have meant that this film's article has barely fallen in the numbers after three consecutive weeks at number 1.
7	Survivor Series (2014)		847,909	No, not the TV series, but the latest WWE pay-per-view play; this one more notable than usual due to popular WCW wrestler Sting (pictured) making his WWE début.
8	Jurassic World		811,298	The fourth film in the Jurassic Park franchise drops next year, but its first trailer appeared this week. It is a curious fact of the modern movie world that trailers themselves now have trailers of their own it's not surprising that this one got one. Still, the actual trailer was released three days early anyway; another curious fact of the modern movie world.
9	Star Wars: The Force Awakens		745,878	Speaking of trailers for movies marking long-awaited franchise returns next year... Well, I say long-awaited; after the mess George Lucas made of his even longer-awaited prequel trilogy, it's fair to say fans are more than a little equivocal about whatever new owners Disney and admitted Star Wars geek J. J. Abrams have planned to restore the series' reputation. So far, the trailer looks like it gives fans what they want; i.e. pretty much exactly what they already have.
10	Thanksgiving (United States)		721,603	Because it also takes place in Canada.
11	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1		646,050	The third of four planned movies made from The Hunger Games trilogy (starring Jennifer Lawrence, left) has made $480 million worldwide in its first 10 days, showing that the blockbusting franchise is nowhere near running out of steam. How much do you want to bet Suzanne Collins will be asked to write another novel in the series soon?
12	Facebook		611,598	A perennially popular article, as it is the second most popular website in the world, after Google.
13	2014 Ferguson unrest		552,660	So far the unrest following the grand jury's decision has led to over 60 arrests, and 170 protests in cities across America.
14	Ariana Grande		476,363	Interest in the former Disney poppet spiked on November 24 thanks to a number of performances at the American Music Awards, and also to a minor Twitter spat with Bette Midler, who declared in a Daily Telegraph interview that she had a "silly high voice" and that "You don't have to make a whore out of yourself to get ahead."
15	Iggy Azalea		476,234	The Australian rapper won two awards at the AMAs this week, and managed to be surprisingly tactful to fellow nominee Eminem, despite the fact that the lyrics to his most recent song were revealed three days earlier to include, "Iggy, you don’t wanna blow that rape whistle on me. Scream! I love it."
16	Deaths in 2014		468,491	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article.
17	Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec		421,113	The painter of posters for the Moulin Rouge and documentarian of 19th century Parisian decadence got a boost this week thanks to a Google Doodle on his 150th birthday.
18	Sting (wrestler)		414,091	The WCW wrestler made his WWE début at Survivor Series 2014 this week.
19	Lewis Hamilton		412,193	The British Formula One driver won the 2014 Drivers' Championship this week, beating his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg by 67 points.
20	The Hunger Games	N/A	406,124	The release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 brought attention to the entire Hunger Games franchise created by author Suzanne Collins.
21	Taylor Swift		404,080	The country/pop singer performed her single "Blank Space" at the AMAs this week, and was also awarded the Dick Clark Award for excellence.
22	Google		398,349	Always a fairly popular article.
23	Gotham (TV series)		396,154	This televisual reboot of the Batman franchise debuted on September 22, 2014, and has remained a fixture in the Top 25 ever since.
24	Manny Pacquiao		391,428	The WBO World Welterweight boxing champion retained his title this week after comprehensively clobbering Chris Algieri in Macau.
25	Kendra Wilkinson		379,456	The onetime member of Hugh Hefner's harem (seriously, he has one) turned reality TV star is currently causing a stir in the British tabloid press thanks to an appearance on the UK version of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!

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.