Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (June 1 to 7 2014)[edit]

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Summary: This was a week for both anticipation and reflection. While the standard articles are very much in evidence, and the running themes of the summer (movies, music, Game of Thrones) are still represented, this list is dominated by commemorations, both of great historical events, such as the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, but also of single lives, such as that of well-remembered actress Anne B. Davis. Anticipation was for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which gets underway this week, and finally began to have a major presence on this list. Expect it to grow.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of June 1-7, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Last	Wks	Article	Views	Notes
1	-	-	Slender Man	817,896	OK. Here is when I declare a conflict of interest: I am the creator and maintainer of this article; not that I'm particularly disposed to create articles like this- it was just kinda foisted on me. The circumstances are outside the scope of this list, but might make an interesting Signpost article some day. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that, however my position may colour by biases, they won't be all that different from yours- i.e., when two girls who are either psychotic or psychopathic use a fictional character from a thousand mildly uninspired fanfics as an excuse to stab an unsuspecting classmate 19 times and leave her for dead in the forest, it's better to look at them rather than at the character. Needless to say, the media did the opposite, and thus turned what had been a rapidly ageing meme into a full on cybernetic demon.
2	12	4	2014 FIFA World Cup	707,834	It took 29 months and 820 qualifying matches involving 207 national teams representing more than 99 percent of the world's population, but we're down to the final week before the game literally kicks off on Thursday. The final 32 comes complete with the traditional first timers (Bosnia), the heavy favourites (five-time winners and hosts Brazil), dark horses (Honduras) European stalwarts (Germany, Spain, England, Italy, France) and African hopefuls (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon). Now all that remains is to see whether Brazil can get its act together and finish construction in time. And if they can pull that off, they may even be able to explain why they built a 42,000-seat stadium in the middle of the Amazon jungle.
3	8	32	Game of Thrones	697,515	New seasons of this immensely popular show always draw people to Wikipedia. That it nearly topped the World Cup the week before it began shows how seriously people are taking it.
4	-	-	Normandy landings	665,485	Friday marked the 70th anniversary of this epochal invasion, which many feel marked the point at which the Allies started winning World War II. The largest seabourne invasion in history, it nonetheless caught the Axis off-guard, thanks to a brilliantly effective deception campaign. Memorials were held on the site to commemorate the nearly 10,000 people on both sides who died that day.
5	4	10	Game of Thrones (season 4)	615,681	This is the page with the plot synopses for each episode.
6	-	-	Bowe Bergdahl	551,453	Bowe Bergdahl must qualify as the most controversial non-fictional individual in the US right now. Is he a hero? A victim? A traitor? Mentally ill? However you may label him, you can't deny that there isn't a point in his story, from his decision to AWOL in the first place, to his detention by the Taliban, to President Obama's decision to trade him for 5 high-level Guantanamo Bay prisoners, that isn't cause for uncertainty.
7	7	9	List of Game of Thrones episodes	519,354	The episode list is probably used to look up air dates.
8	-	-	The Fault in Our Stars	504,006	YouTube sensei John Green's romantic tearjerker was already a hit with the cyber-set, but boomed up the bestseller list thanks to the opening of its film adaptation.
9	14	2	Maleficent (film)	498,208	Disney's rather startling subversion of one of their most popular tales has left an aftertaste in critics' mouths (its Rotten Tomatoes rating is currently just 50%) but audiences have been positively scarfing it; it earned nearly $130 million in its first ten days.
10	17	3	2014 in film	423,834	A new entry for the list, probably in preparation for the summer movie season.
11	6	18	Amazon.com	412,445	This article suddenly reappeared in the top 25 a few months ago after a long absence; it's always difficult to determine the reasons for the popularity of website articles (how many are simply misaimed clicks on the Google search list?) but there are at least two possibilities: first, it released its digital media player, Amazon Fire TV on April 2, and second, it is currently embroiled in a dispute with publisher Hachette that could decide whether book publishers even need to exist in the post-digital world.
12	-	-	Ann B. Davis	395,332	The actress best known as Alice on The Brady Bunch died this week at the age of 88.
13	-	-	2014 FIFA World Cup squads	389,876	The World Cup has its first also-ran in this list (unlikely to be the last as the tourney commences); probably the result of residents of competing countries checking out their opponents.
14	18	63	Deaths in 2014	388,466	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article.
15	-	-	Tiananmen Square protests of 1989	380,662	Another grim commemoration, though this time without the benefit of a happy ending. 1989 was a remarkable year for revolutions, unless you were in China. However, the images of the protest beamed across the world provided impetus for the later, successful revolutions in Eastern Europe. The Chinese students who stood up to the tanks in Tiananmen found that nonviolent protest only works if those you are protesting are unwilling to use violence themselves. The country's historical suppression of this event is so complete that hardly anyone under the age of 30 is even aware of it, and it is arguably reason number one why Wikipedia is blocked there. To this day the death toll remains controversial, though the subsequent crackdown involved many executions.
16	-	7	Orange Is the New Black	379,815	The second season of the women-in-prison TV series premiered in its entirety on Netflix on 6 June.
17	-	-	Edge of Tomorrow (film)	374,696	With its greyscale gunmetal aesthetics, Tom Cruise's latest blockbuster attempt not only looks like a third person shooter video game, it borrows its mechanics, with Cruise's character effectively given infinity lives and returning to a save point every time he dies. Judging by the box office, audiences decided if they were going to watch someone else play a video game, they'd do it for free on YouTube.
18	20	73	Facebook	365,917	A perennially popular article.
19	19	4	Iggy Azalea	334,189	The Australian/American rapper released her début album, The New Classic on 21 April, and the Gods of Pop Culture have declared her single "Fancy" to be the Song of the Summer.
20	-	-	FIFA World Cup	329,661	The wider, historical overview of the competition may have been accessed by people looking for the long view, but in truth it was probably more to do with people looking with the more specific article above.
21	-	-	Pilot (Lost)	316,891	The first episode of this cult classic TV series was apparently so expensive that the President of NBC, Lloyd Braun, was fired for greenlighting it. Still, he got re-hired by Yahoo!, so all's well. This typical bit of corporate shortsightedness became the topic of a Reddit thread this week.
22	22	44	List of Bollywood films of 2014	311,697	An established staple of the top 25 returns.
23	9	3	X-Men (film series)	311,697	X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer's cross-generational collaboration uniting his original cast of fogies with their younger selves introduced in X-Men: First Class, earned $90 million in its first weekend, but seems not to be generating the fire of other Marvel Studios franchises. Still, it appears to have triggered interest online.
24	-	-	D-Day (military term)	291,695	The military term for the day to commence combat operations, of which the Normandy landings (see above) is the most famous example, has direct link in that article, so it's no surprise people went here for more info.
25	-	4	A Song of Ice and Fire	285,181	George R. R. Martin's still unfinished (hint hint, George) tale of dynastic struggle in a fantasy world makes occasional appearances in the top 25 thanks to its TV adaptation, Game of Thrones; this week however, there is an additional reason: Martin's hinting that the books may extend to eight. Given that this series was initially intended to be a trilogy, no one should have been surprised at this.

Exclusions[edit]

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Please keep in mind that the explanations given for these articles' popularity are, fundamentally, guesses. Just because I can't find a reason for an article to be included doesn't mean there isn't one; conversely, just because a plausible reason is found for a view spike, that doesn't mean it wasn't due to a bot.

There are a number of articles that reappear frequently in the top 25 for no determined reason, and have been excluded as likely being due to automated views. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the talk page if you wish.

- Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
- Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
- Lycos: The geriatric web portal is back.
- Climatic Research Unit email controversy: And it's back. It says something about this manufactroversy that someone feels the need to shove it repeatedly down our throats, as if that were the best way to get people to believe it.