Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/May 14 to 20, 2017

WP:25

The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 14 to 20, 2017)[edit]

Prepared with commentary by OZOO

← Last week's report – Next week's report →

Bit Grim This Week[edit]

Bit of a death filled week here, with Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell (#1) and Indian actress Reema Lagoo (#4) both appearing in the top 5 of this list this week. (Soundgarden themselves are at #15.) The deaths of actor Powers Boothe (#13) and Fox News founder Roger Ailes (#22) also appear in the list, as do the notorious Moors murders (#7), following the death of serial killer Ian Brady.

In the land of the living, the fallout continues from the dismissal of James Comey (#20), with Robert Mueller (#9) appointed as special counsel into the allegations of Russian interference in the United States election. This and other events have helped bring Donald Trump (#21) back into this list. Some other news stories provide articles - the WannaCry ransomware attack (#6) and the release of Chelsea Manning (#18) are both represented here.

There's some pop culture, as standard, with both Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#2) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (#14) remaining, and being joined by the newly released Alien: Covenant (#8). There's a new video game here, Injustice 2 (#17), and an established TV series, 13 Reasons Why (#17). May 13 saw both UFC 211 (#19) and the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 (#11) - any crossover between the two events' audiences is, as yet, undetermined. Miscellaneously, there's a Google Doodle-boosted Ancient Greek computer (#3), a Reddit-boosted silver Red Fox (#23), and a... just generally boosted spinny thing. (#12)

For the week of May 14 to 20, 2017, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Chris Cornell	3,867,811	Chris Cornell, the lead vocalist for the rock bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, was found dead on May 18. Amongst his career's achievements were two Grammy Awards for his work with Soundgarden, a Golden Globe nomination for his song "The Keeper" for the film Machine Gun Preacher and performing the title song to the James Bond film Casino Royale, "You Know My Name". In 2013 readers of Guitar World voted Cornell Rock's Greatest Singer. His death, shortly after performing in a concert with Soundgarden, has been ruled a suicide.
2	Baahubali 2: The Conclusion	1,470,041	S. S. Rajamouli's historical fiction Telugu / Tamil film is still drawing the interest, having received positive reviews from the vast majority of critics and currently made ₹1,565 crore (US$240 million) at the worldwide box-office - marginally the highest-grossing Indian film of all time.
3	Antikythera mechanism	1,354,328	On May 17, 1902, archaeologist Valerios Stais, investigating items recovered from a shipwreck off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera, discovered this 2,000 year old analogue computer. The ancient Greeks used the orrery to predict astronomical positions and eclipses, and track the four-year cycle of athletic games. The machine has been dated to between 205 and 87 BC. The 115th anniversary of the discovery was marked with a Google Doodle.
4	Reema Lagoo	1,017,096	Lagoo, an Indian theatre and screen actress known for her work in Hindi and Marathi cinema, died of a cardiac arrest on 18 May. Amongst her career, she was nominated for a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress four times, and won the Maharashtra State Film Award for Best Actress in 2002.
5	List of highest-grossing Indian films	999,640	Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#2) still leads this chart, but the release of 2016's Dangal to Chinese cinemas has seen the lead cut to approx. ₹64 crore (US$10 million). I would expect interest in this chart to remain as the two films continue their releases - Baahubali 2 is still yet to be released in China.
6	WannaCry ransomware attack	975,181	A Cyberattack involving the ransomware software WannaCry hit a number of computers for major organisations, including FedEx, Telefónica and the British National Health Service, on 12 May 2017. The malicious attack encrypted files on the impacted computers, demanding a ransom of $300 – $600 in bitcoin to release them. A "kill switch" was discovered which helped slow the impact of the attack, and experts now say that the rate of update application has slowed the rate of new infections to a trickle.
7	Moors murders	971,660	Between July 1963 and October 1965, five children aged between 10 and 17 were murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Brady died on May 15th while serving a whole life tariff that lasted over 50 years and was detained in a psychiatric hospital Ashworth Hospital since 1985.
8	Alien: Covenant	954,723	The sixth film released in the Alien film series - and the second in chronological order - was released in the United States on May 19. The third film in the franchise directed by Ridley Scott (pictured) has received mostly positive reviews.
9	Robert Mueller	769,505	Mueller - the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013 - has been appointed as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. This comes after the dismissal of Mueller's successor, James Comey (#20), which is suspected to have been designed to hamper the investigation.
10	Deaths in 2017	715,286	An unusually morbid week, with a total of five deaths making this Top 25 and, of course, some others less regarded by Wikipedia readers as a whole but doubtless all remembered by some.
11	Eurovision Song Contest 2017	704,024	It's late May, it must be time, once again, for Europe's biggest music show! Every year, the nations of Europe (and Israel, and those bits of Western Asia that everyone counts as Europe, and Australia for some reason) select a champion to represent them in the great contest, Europe having decided a singing contest to be slightly easier to organise than the next best alternative, the Hunger Games. memorable performances at this year's event in Kiev included a Romanian yodel-rap, an Italian dancing gorilla and the return of Moldovan hero Epic Sax Guy; but the contest was ultimately won in a major victory by Portugal's Salvador Sobral (pictured), with the quiet jazz song "Amar pelos dois"; the victory is the first for Portugal, having competed 48 times previously, since they first entered in 1964.
12	Fidget spinner	618,960	This increasingly looks like it is going to be this summer's "thing". A stress-relieving toy originally marketed to help those who have trouble with fidgeting has now become the must-have thing amongst the schoolchildren across the world. It looks like there is an interest in "tricks" you can do with these spinners, similarly to the yo-yo. I have never used a fidget spinner, but I do plan to start investing in them just as soon as my previous investments in loom bands and Pokémon Go guides start paying off.
13	Powers Boothe	611,956	Powers Boothe, the American actor, died on May 14 at the age of 68. His career included an Emmy winning performance in 1980's Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, and roles in recent series such as Deadwood, Nashville and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
14	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	602,225	"We're going to make a movie about a raccoon, a tree, and a wrestler, themed around the music of the 1970s", said Marvel a few years ago. "What? Don't be ridiculous", we all said, confident that this would be the first flop of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Well, here we are now, with the sequel, and it turns out they were right; we really did want to see a film about a raccoon and a tree (examples of both pictured). I bet whoever greenlighted the film originally never mentions it.
15	Soundgarden	583,910	Chris Cornell (#1), the lead singer of the seminal grunge band Soundgarden, died shortly after performing with the band on May 17.
16	13 Reasons Why	543,226	Eight weeks since the first release of the Netflix drama series starring Dylan Minnette, and there is no sign of the interest letting up just yet.
17	Injustice 2	537,856	May 16 saw the US release of this superhero-fighting game based on DC Comics characters such as Superman, Batman and Gorilla Grodd. The game - a sequel to 2013's Injustice: Gods Among Us - currently holds scores of over 85% on Metacritic for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
18	Chelsea Manning	516,507	Manning, who leaked classified information concerning the United States Army to WikiLeaks in 2010, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013. As one of President Obama's final acts in office, her sentence was commuted in January 2017, and she was released from prison on May 17.
19	UFC 211	505,668	The Ultimate Fighting Championship produced its 211th major event on May 13. The event, which was the fourth UFC event to be held in Dallas, Texas, featured twelve fights in total, the headline of which was a Heavyweight Championship fight between Stipe Miocic (pictured) and Junior dos Santos. Miocic won the fight in 2 minutes 22 seconds, via a TKO.
20	James Comey	485,325	The fallout from Comey's dismissal from the FBI on May 9 continues. Robert Mueller (#9) has been appointed to continue the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, while Comey has been invited to testify publicly to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he will do at some point over the next couple of weeks.
21	Donald Trump	479,599	President Trump was reported to have shared classified information during a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, reports which were denied by National Security Advisor McMaster on Monday 15 and then confirmed by President Trump via Twitter on Tuesday 16. This is just one of those things that happens now.
22	Roger Ailes	477,314	Ailes, the founder of Fox News and former chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group, died on May 18 at the age of 77. For better, or for worse, he and his channel have certainly been influential over American politics over the last twenty years. He resigned from Fox in 2016 following sexual harassment allegations, but went on to advise Donald Trump in his successful presidential campaign.
23	Russian Domesticated Red Fox	476,178	Here's our friends at Reddit, discovering the USSR's selective breeding programme which resulted in red foxes which were tamer and more dog-like than wild foxes. They were also, according to the image that leads our article, not red.
24	Prabhas	443,766	Starred in Baahubali: The Beginning, the fourth highest-grossing Indian film of all time, and the sequel Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (#2), the highest-grossing Indian film of all time. Well done him.
25	Mother's Day	440,095	The second Sunday in May, the day, in many countries, to honor the mother of the family, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society. Did you do something special for your mother on May 14? I didn't. I'm British, so got it out of the way in March.

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). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% 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.
Per consensus, Lali Esposito & Earth are excluded.

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.