Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 27 to October 3, 2015)

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Summary: English speakers, like most of humanity, are primarily a northern-hemispheric people, and as autumn draws close and the days grow shorter, as a group we tend to huddle around our flickering screens and remember what matters: TV, movies, sports and, of course, crazy doomsday prophecies. People shied away from the active search for knowledge; viewing numbers for this list were the lowest since July. That's not to say that there was nothing learned this week; the release of the movie The Martian and the suspiciously contemporaneous revelation by NASA of clinching evidence for flowing water on Mars led to interest in the Red Planet, while the birthdays of Indian independence pioneers Gandhi and Annie Besant were also noted.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of September 27 to October 3, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Pablo Escobar		804,426	The fascination with the Netflix series Narcos continues to keep the Capone of cocaine at the top of this list, despite a near-50% drop in numbers since he first rose to the top on September 5, and a momentary dethronement last week by the far more deserving Pope Francis.
2	The Martian (film)		607,894	After a string of relative critical and commercial disappointments, it was looking like 77-year-old director Ridley Scott should consider retirement. But if the man behind scifi masterpieces like Alien and Blade Runner was out to prove he still has his mojo with his latest project - an adaptation of Andy Weir's popular novel about an astronaut stranded on Mars (played by Matt Damon) - he has succeeded. The film has wowed critics (it has a 93% RT rating) and impressed audiences (its $55 million opening gross is a hair less than the very similar Gravity), and no doubt shored up hopes for his upcoming return to his signature franchises.
3	Quantico (TV series)	Unassessed	537,354	It's odd that it's been 24 years since The Silence of the Lambs and yet this is the first TV series about a female inductee at the FBI's eponymous Academy (played by Priyanka Chopra, pictured). This being 21st century American TV, said inductee is now a suspect in a terrorist attack, rather than hunting serial killers, because apparently audiences don't want that.
4	Deaths in 2015		533,204	The relatively low viewing figures this week have given this unfailingly constant article (it averages about 450-550 thousand views a week) one of its highest positions on the list ever.
5	Pope Francis		517,325	The wildly popular Pope's visit to the United States earned him pole position on this list last week, and even with numbers down 60%, His Holiness still draws the interest of Wikipedia's Church Militant.
6	Lunar eclipse		482,132	Astronomically, lunar eclipses are little more novel than seasons; between two and five can happen in a single year. That said, total lunar eclipses are far less common, and total lunar eclipses during the Moon's perigee (a so-called "supermoon") are uncommoner still. This week's total supermoon eclipse was even more notable since it marked the conclusion of a "tetrad", or four total lunar eclipses in a row with no partials in between. It is often said that the full moon brings out the crazies. This is a myth; however, exceptionally rare astronomical events like this often do bring out crazy people, who then make noises about the end of the world. Such has been the case with this week's event (see below), and it has sadly infected the wider news media.
7	Blood Moon Prophecy		467,336	For a people who pride themselves on their optimism, Americans sure are in a hurry for the world to end. For the third time in five years, a kerfuffle has emerged regarding a prophecy of doom, this time from American Pentecostal megachurch pastor John Hagee (pictured), who claims that this week's conclusion of the lunar eclipse tetrad, combined with a recent total solar eclipse, is a sign of the Biblical end times. His appropriation of the term "blood moon" (actually a synonym for a hunter's moon) for a lunar eclipse was likely derived from the Biblical prophecy that the second coming will be heralded by the Sun becoming dark and the moon becoming "as blood", and has, rather unfortunately, been embraced by wider culture.
8	2015 FIBA Asia Championship		463,055	The final matches for the Asian basketball tournament were held on October 3, with final victory won by China. Regardless, this is the English-language Wikipedia, and when an event of purely Asian interest appears on this list you can bet India's involved somewhere. And indeed it is: on the same day China competed in the final, India played Qatar for seventh place. Sadly, they lost.
9	Scream Queens (2015 TV series)		434,507	Ryan Murphy's comedic companion piece to American Horror Story premiered on the Fox Network on September 22.
10	Everest (2015 film)		405,904	After a striking opening week on IMAX, Universal Pictures historical disaster pic (loosely based on the true-life account Into Thin Air) expanded into 2D theatres last week, leading to a solid but unspectacular $33 million to date. Worldwide the film has done better, generating over $100 million.
11	Mahatma Gandhi		402,787	How respected and beloved is the High Souled one? He has been dead for nearly 60 years, and yet his birthday alone is enough to send him into this list, without even the usual aid of a Google Doodle or a Reddit thread.
12	Whitey Bulger		398,555	Interest in this Boston Irish mobster, brother of a state senator and coddled FBI informant has skyrocketted thanks to the trailer for the film Black Mass, which features a bonechilling performance by Johnny Depp, playing a particularly icy variation of Joe Pesci's "You think I'm funny?" scene in Goodfellas. The trailer led to a respectable $23 million opening weekend gross.
13	Mars		391,592	Thanks to the repeated attentions of NASA, the only planet we know more about than the Red one is the one we are currently standing on. And we have learned a little more this week, thanks to the final confirmation (actually speculated since 2006) that briny water flows occasionally on Mars's surface. Thanks to the NASA-heavy film The Martian, the general public also got a dose of Martian education.
14	List of Bollywood films of 2015		388,123	Not an unusual visitor to the Top 25.
15	Facebook		376,322	Once a fixture on this list, the second most popular website on Earth has been all-but absent for months. So when it does happen, one tends to look for reasons. Thankfully, there are always potential reasons. This week saw Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg travel to India to meet Narendra Modi (always likely to generate interest here), as well as the exposure of an internet hoax claiming that Facebook would charge $5.99 for privacy guarantees.
16	Gotham (TV series)		366,589	The second season of the televisual reboot of the Batman franchise premiered on September 21.
17	Puli (2015 film)		363,475	Despite huge anticipation and a decent Rs 350 million ($5.4 million) opening weekend, the Bollywood action fantasy film starring Vijay (pictured) had a stumble on its third day of release, suggesting audiences were demanding more after a hit-laden summer.
18	Google		362,536	Always a fairly popular article.
19	2015 Rugby World Cup		361,650	The eighth quadrennial international competition of the world's ninth most popular sport (it is, oddly enough, tied with American football in overall numbers, but played in more countries) got underway in England on September 18, and will conclude on Halloween. Likely got into the list this week due to the hosts crashing out to South Africa.
20	Fear the Walking Dead		357,142	The sixth and final episode of the first season of AMC's spin-off to their hit series The Walking Dead aired on October 4.
21	Heroes Reborn (miniseries)	Unassessed	336,193	The first of this 13-episode "miniseries" reboot of the faded Heroes franchise hopes to recapture the glory of its first season, but the reviews have been tepid.
22	Donald Trump		332,628	A fairly quiet week for The Donald saw him only insult Syrian refugees. And Hispanics. And the victims of the Umpqua Community College shooting. Truth be told, numbers for him this week are fairly flat, and likely the only reason he's on this list is that numbers are fairly low overall.
23	Rai stones		329,998	As learned in a Reddit thread this week, the residents of the Island of Yap use these four-ton stone discs as coins, and trade them without moving them, even one that had been lost at sea on the assumption that it must still exist.
24	Annie Besant		328,861	On October 1, a Google Doodle celebrated the 168th birthday of this advocate of Indian self-rule.
25	Cristiano Ronaldo		315,756	The Real Madrid striker and winner of the Golden Ball in 2013 and 2014 scored his 500th career goal on September 30 during a Champions League match against Malmö.

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.