The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (October 25 to 31, 2015)

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Summary: It's Halloween again, and Wikipedia viewers are certainly in the, ahem, spirit. Not only has the holiday topped the list as it does every year, but three articles with the words "dead" or "death" appear in the top 10, alongside a movie called Spectre. In addition, Ryan Murphy's serialised spookfests American Horror Story: Hotel and Scream Queens appear in the top 25, while, in keeping with the theme of honouring the dead, film star Maureen O'Hara and basketball coach Flip Saunders get decent send-offs.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of October 25 to 31, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Halloween	1,775,219	My personal favourite holiday tops the list again with almost exactly the same numbers as last year.
2	Black hole	965,751	This article's inclusion is becoming increasingly problematic, as it is likely a cuckoo's egg. We should have a definitive answer from the analytics people by next week, where it could well be shunted to the exclusions list.
3	Spectre (2015 film)	794,056	The British are not known as titans of the filmmaking world, but they have staked their claim with this latest in their defining James Bond series. The budget, topping $300 million, makes this the most expensive film ever made without the words "Pirates of the Caribbean" in front of it. After the last Bond film made over a billion dollars, it seems the proudly British producers have confidence enough to stand apart from Hollywood, releasing the film in six national territories- but not the US. The strategy has worked; the film has made over $80 million so far, including a record-breaking $64 million in its native country.
4	Adele	757,752	The popular singer's new album 25 will be released on November 20. The first single, "Hello", debuted on October 23. As of this writing, the video for "Hello" already has nearly 200 million views. The surge in Wikipedia views was also likely from Spectre hype, as audiences remembered how much better her Bond theme was.
5	Hell in a Cell (2015)	746,518	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime took place on October 25, 2015 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
6	The Walking Dead (TV series)	547,272	Likely back on the list thanks to what happened to a major character, which took the Internet by storm.
7	Deaths in 2015	542,895	The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550 thousand on average, apparently heedless of who actually died. As such, it seldom makes the top ten except in low-traffic weeks, like this one.
8	Maureen O'Hara	497,163	One of the last stars of Hollywood's golden age, the flame-haired "Queen of Technicolor" and frequent leading lady of John Wayne died this week at the age of 95.
9	Day of the Dead	480,680	Mexico's carnival of the cadaverous is the living dream of any kid who ever wished Halloween could last three days.
10	The Walking Dead (season 6)	460,509	See #6.
11	Ben Carson	447,916	The soft-spoken neurosurgeon and Republican Presidential candidate (much like Trump and Fiorina, he has yet to hold political office, which appears to be a boon in this race) has reappeared on the list after the last debate, as polls suggest he may be slowly overtaking his only rival, Donald Trump, thanks largely to his appeal to his party's religious conservative base.
12	American Horror Story: Hotel	434,638	The fifth season of American Horror Story premiered on October 7.
13	Pablo Escobar	416,630	Fascination with the Netflix series Narcos continues to keep the Capone of cocaine on the Top 25.
14	Geeta Basra	415,341	This week the Bollywood actress became the wife of cricketer Harbhajan Singh.
15	Flip Saunders	407,004	The basketball coach died this week at the age of 60.
16	Star Wars	396,961	And so the hype awakens. Whether apotheotic Star Wars fanboy J. J. Abrams will prove a better custodian of the series' legacy than its creator remains to be seen.
17	Bob Ross	393,217	Until this week, Twitch.tv was mostly noted as a means for psychopathic tweens to swat hapless gamers. But now, with the launch of the new stream "Twitch Creative", the jaded generation is being introduced to one of my childhood's most serene influences: art instructor Bob Ross, who, in his lilting whisper, urged my parents to paint "happy little trees". An eight-hour stream of Ross's program aired on Twitch this week, leading to typically polarised reactions from a perplexed wired community, most of whom have never heard of him.
18	"Hello" (Adele song)	386,240	Power-balladeer Adele's latest single has become the first to sell more than 1 million downloads in a week.
19	List of Bollywood films of 2015	362,322	Not an unusual visitor to the Top 25.
20	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	1,271,270	If you've caught the press coverage about this upcoming movie here and there, you may be asking yourself, is this thing ever coming out? A poster and new trailer was released two weeks ago, which apparently caused a frenzy on the part of the internet. And for those us not that closely involved, the answer is that it rolls out in parts of Europe on December 16, the U.K. on December 17, and North America on December 18.
21	Halo 5: Guardians	345,651	The fifth instalment in what was supposed to be the Halo trilogy justified its extension into limbo with good reviews and a number 1 sales position.
22	Seventh-day Adventist Church	340,144	The Evangelical Protestant denomination adhered to by Ben Carson got into the news this week after he effused about how his faith had affected his life.
23	Supergirl (U.S. TV series)	334,694	Against all expectations, and the curses of Marvel fans, the cuddly CBS series about Superman's plucky cousin has proven a critical and ratings success, with a current RT rating of 97% and a 12.0 Nielsen rating for the pilot, which aired on 26 October.
24	Jeffrey Dahmer	322,826	The most disturbing serial killer since Ed Gein popped up, in ghost form, during this week's episode of American Horror Story: Hotel, played by former Nip/Tuck star Seth Gabel.
25	Scream Queens (2015 TV series)	319,301	Ryan Murphy's comedic companion piece to American Horror Story premiered on the Fox Network on September 22.

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.