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

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

Summary: The mysterious fate of MH370 still tops the list, but in all other respects our readership has retreated from the real world into its pop-cultural happy place: TV, movies, music, celebrity death, Reddit and Google Doodles all made an appearance.

For the week of March 23 to 29, 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	2	3	Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	978,855	Interest has barely waned in this ongoing event that is as frustrating as it is tragic. Three weeks in, we still don't know precisely what happened to this flight, or to its 249 passengers and crew, but, gradually, a drip of hard facts is beginning to replace occasionally wild speculation. Leads are coalescing around a violent region of the sea off the coast of Australia, but it seems unclear as to where it is.
2	21	8	Amazon.com	908,036	This article is veering wildly around the view graph, in a pattern that is making me suspicious. Still, no reason to assume people aren't interested in Amazon's decision not to launch a video service.
3	-	-	Dorothy Height	662,799	The head of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years until 1997 got a Google Doodle on what would have been her 102nd birthday.
4	-	-	Graham Island (Sicily)	564,555	There aren't that many landmasses left unclaimed on Earth these days, so modern territorial disputes have an air of Gulliver's Travels about them. But people still take them very seriously. This tiny submerged island, which was claimed by England when it last emerged from the waves in 1831, was claimed by Sicily when divers placed a flag on it in 2000, just in case it ever emerged again, as noted in a popular Reddit thread this week.
5	9	63	Facebook	457,386	A perennially popular article.
6	7	53	Deaths in 2014	422,882	The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.
7	15	25	The Walking Dead (TV series)	382,673	The show's fourth season recommenced on 9 February.
8	12	15	Frozen (2013 film)	380,281	Disney's Oscar-winning juggernaut got a shot in the arm thanks to its release on DVD on March 18. Despite this, it is on course to overtake Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as Disney's highest-grossing film.
9	-	-	Divergent (film)	357,749	Another attempt to turn a girls' action novel into a film franchise, ala Hunger Games, this one a Brave New World rework in which individuals are sorted into 5 classes- the honest, the selfless, the brave, the peaceful and the intelligent- and those who don't fit into those categories are targeted and killed. Question: How could anyone not fit one of those categories? Anyone who is not honest, selfless, brave, peaceful, or intelligent is probably in prison. Still, it made $76 million in 8 days, so it's obviously hit a nerve.
10	-	-	Noah (2014 film)	330,078	Darren Aronofsky's high fantasy take on the Book of Genesis has been ambivalently received for its Biblical fealty, but has opened with a solid $15 million in one day, so obviously people are curious about it.
11	-	-	Sunny Leone	329,164	The Canadian adult actress turned Bollywood star has received massive attention on the subcontinent thanks to her new film Ragini MMS 2 and her song "Baby Doll".
12	-	-	Divergent (novel)	318,929	The novel by Veronica Roth upon which the film is based.
13	-	7	Jordan Belfort	311,789	Onetime stockbroker who spent 22 months in prison for running a penny stock boiler room and went on to write the books that the film The Wolf of Wall Street is based on got a new lease on the list thanks to the films recent release on video. Yes, he did actually call himself "The Wolf of Wall Street".
14	-	2	How I Met Your Mother (season 9)	306,767	This hugely popular sitcom has always been a popular search on this site, and it creeps back into the top 25 in the lead up to its final episode on March 31.
15	-	22	Game of Thrones	300,225	This TV show's previous season, not to be glib, owned this list. I expect its upcoming season, due to commence on 6 April, to do no less.
16	22	6	The Walking Dead (season 4)	297,540	People are undoubtedly using this page to look up air dates.
17	-	-	James Rebhorn	293,887	The Homeland star died on March 21
18	-	-	Nancy Grace	286,945	The American cable news anchor gained some unwanted attention this week when she derailed a discussion of the Oscar Pistorius trial with a stream of interjections about porn. Yes, because watching too much porn encourages people to shoot their girlfriends through a door.
19	-	35	List of Bollywood films of 2014	286,166	An established staple of the top 25 returns.
20	-	11	Wikipedia	281,141	Wikipedia returns to its own Top 25.
21	24	26	United States	278,859	The 8th most popular article of 2013 and the 3rd most popular Wikipedia article between 2010 and 2012. Even when not on the list, this article is a perpetual bubble-under-er. Not really surprising that the country with by far the most English speakers would be the most popular on the English Wikipedia.
22	-	-	Natalia Poklonskaya	275,077	What is it about Ukrainian female political figures that so weakens the world's knees at the expense of its judgment? I mean yes, Yulia Tymoshenko is a very beautiful woman, but she's also a deeply controversial individual with allegations of corruption hanging over her. And now we have Natalia Poklonskaya, the newly installed "Prosecutor General of the Republic of Crimea", a job title that, whatever it may mean, bodes complicated for the region's Ukrainian and Tartar minorities. And why is she suddenly all over Japan and China? Because they think she's cute.
23	-	-	Ragini MMS 2	268,860	This Bollywood horror film (yes, there are such things, and yes, they do have musical numbers in them) has proven a hit in the homeland, having earned ₹385 million ($6.4 million) in its first week against a $2.9 million budget, thanks in part to interest in its star Sunny Leone (see above).
24	-	7	How I Met Your Mother	268,552	This hugely popular sitcom has always been a popular search on this site, and it creeps back into the top 25 in the lead up to its final episode on March 31.
25	-	-	Shakira	268,523	The Colombian singer with the famously swiveling hips promoted her new single "Empire" by doing a series of live performances this week.

Number of views needed to reach Top 25 this week: 268,523. Last week: 280,673.

The revision of WP:5000 containing the data used to create this list.

Almosts: True Detective (TV series) (267,445 views); YouTube (258,878 views); The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film) (257,128 views)

Exclusions

This list excludes the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages, 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.

- Java: My only guess is a bot searching for the programming language.
- Climatic Research Unit email controversy: I'll believe that Climategate was #1 during a typhoon, but that it got more hits than Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving? No.
- IPv6: I have to face facts; I've been allowing this into the top 25 for months as it is the kind of issue that would appeal to web denizens (ala Bitcoin) but its insane popularity is just too high explain by human interest alone. It's getting help.
- Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
- History of Bălţi: There is simply no logical way to explain the sudden rise of this hyper-obscure article except as the result of a traffic-checking botnet, ala cat anatomy

Specific exclusions this week:
- Malware: suspiciously even slope for this search's sudden spike, not to mention that it is perfectly in character for malware to look up malware.
- Triceratops: I wish, I wish, I wish I could say that this article's one-day spike was due to honest interest, but it's a one-day spike, and people just don't do that.