Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 10 to 16, 2015)

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

See the main page revision history for full editor credit

Inner Core: The list is topped this week by Danish scientist Inge Lehmann, thanks to a Google Doodle celebrating her 127th birthday. Lehmann discovered in 1936 that the Earth has a solid inner core. It is sometimes surprising to realize how recently such basic scientific knowledge of the Earth, which we now take for granted, was discovered.

In a generally slow week for news and entertainment, it only took 464,540 views to crack the Top 10 this week, the lowest total of the year by a wide margin -- for example, last week it took over 720,000 views to make that mark. This lull led articles with fairly consistent weekly views to rise high, including Deaths in 2015 at #9, and the ever-popular Facebook at #10. The main page had over 208 million views, however, which is higher than we've recently seen. Reader interests were simply more varied this week.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of May 10 to 16, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Notes
1	Inge Lehmann		1,922,118	Lehmann (1888-1993) was a Danish seismologist and geophysicist who discovered in 1936 that the Earth has a solid inner core inside a molten outer core. On the 127th anniversary of her birth on May 13, Google honored her with a worldwide Google Doodle.
2	Mad Max: Fury Road		1,123,916	This action film starring Tom Hardy (pictured) in the title role debuted on Australia on May 14 and in the United States the next day. Despite very good reviews it was defeated at the box office in North America by Pitch Perfect 2 (#14), though it was the top release in many other countries. As of May 17, its worldwide box office reached $109.4 million on a budget of $150 million.
3	Avengers: Age of Ultron		1,105,364	The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premièred in Hollywood on April 13, and went on wide release on May 1.
4	Mother's Day		945,291	The second Sunday in May (that's May 10 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year to celebrate Mother's Day, and, even as the day fell, panicked college students in all participating countries rushed to their computers to learn they'd blown it. And then sent e-cards, perhaps.
5	B.B. King		875,051	This legendary American blues singer and guitarist put down his Lucille for the last time, dying in Las Vegas on May 14 at the age of 89.
6	Mad Max		661,735	The 1979 film starring Mel Gibson (pictured) that started the Mad Max franchise, albeit one that had not released a film since 1985 until now.
7	Game of Thrones (season 5)		649,169	Episode 5 for this season ("Kill the Boy") debuted on May 10.
8	The Flash (2014 TV series)		569,089	This spinoff from the hit series Arrow marks DC Comics' second attempt to create a TV universe, after the late and much lamented DC Animated Universe.
9	Deaths in 2015		516,509	A slow traffic week means that the 516,509 views this article had this week, within the remarkably constant total between 450 and 550,000 seen every week, places it in the top 10. Deaths this week included Indian historian Ninad Bedekar, pictured at left (May 10), Belgian author Jef Geeraerts (May 11), Australian serial killer William McDonald (May 12), Russian middle-distance runner Nina Otkalenko (May 13), American Astrophysicist Stanton J. Peale (May 14), Uruguayan writer Carlos Maggi (May 15), and American BASE jumper Dean Potter (May 16), who died during a wingsuit jump. If you want to make it into the deaths list on Wikipedia, I hate to say it, but BASE jumping will raise your chances immeasurably.
10	Facebook		464,540	A perennially popular article, also in the Top 10 in a slow traffic week.
11	Game of Thrones		459,800	See #7.
12	List of Arrow episodes		454,603	The third-season finale aired on May 13.
13	Furious 7		430,570	As of May 17, the worldwide box office for this film is up to $1.489 billion, and now the fourth highest-grossing film of all time. Last week it dropped off the Top 25, and was #34 with 437,118 views. This week the slow traffic puts it back on the chart.
14	Pitch Perfect 2		424,773	This American musical comedy film, and sequel to 2012's Pitch Perfect which generated the improbable hit song Cups, debuted in North America May 15. Starring Anna Kendrick (pictured), though Rebel Wilson as "Fat Amy" is much more interesting character, it has grossed $112.5 million as of May 18, not bad on a film budget of $29 million, only a fifth that of Mad Max: Fury Road, or about a tenth of the budget for Avengers: Age of Ultron. I know little about the actual plot of this movie except that it pits the star a cappella group against some German stereotyped group called "Das Sound Machine," which sound fairly representative of unrepentant dumb American humor.
15	Vision (Marvel Comics)		416,088	The sentient AI and foil for the villainous Ultron, who became the breakout star of The Avengers: Age of Ultron (#3) and allowed actor Paul Bettany (pictured) to finally step out of the voice-only shadows of his J.A.R.V.I.S. character into full acting.
16	2015 Nepal earthquake	N/A	405,032	Now found at April 2015 Nepal earthquake, though the May 2015 Nepal earthquake which occurred on May 12 also be a cause of this article's attention, as the world's attention is following the efforts to respond to these tragic events.
17	2015 UEFA Champions League Final	N/A	402,567	On May 12 and 13, semi-final rounds were completed to determine who will play in the final match of the 2014–15 UEFA Champions League to be held in Berlin on June 6. The match will pit FC Barcelona against Juventus F.C..
18	Google		399,441	Always a fairly popular article.
19	Rickie Fowler		399,441	This American golfer won the 2015 Players Championship on May 10. This is his first PGA Tour win since 2012, and consequently, his first appearance in the Top 25 Report.
20	Arrow (TV series)		387,295	See #12
21	List of Game of Thrones episodes		373,160	See #7.
22	Danish Protest Pig		367,841	Likely popular due to Reddit or similarly caused spike in views on May 10. This rare pig breed comes from North Frisia in Southern Schleswig, where in the beginning of the 20th century Danes living in the area under Prussian rule were prohibited from raising the Danish flag. They displayed the Protest Pig instead, whose coloring resembles the colors of the Flag of Denmark.
23	List of Bollywood films of 2015		363,554	Generally a popular yearly list article, though not often in the Top 25. Pictured at left is Anushka Sharma, starring in Bombay Velvet, which was released on May 15.
24	Kanye West		356,123	Yes, loser.com still redirects here, but he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on May 11.
25	United States		352,099	This article is often just outside the Top 25, but only occasionally makes it.

Just missing the Top 25: India (#26), Legends of Tomorrow (#27), Paul Walker (#28), World War II (#29), and Sunny Leone (#30).
From the Raw Top 5000: #100: Wikipedia (211,180 views); #250: Singapore (135,952), #500: Prince (musician) (94,420); #1000: Fantastic Four (2015 film) (66,257), #2000: Tony Allen (basketball) (45,175); #3000: Taylor Lautner (35,961); #4000: Human evolution (30,369); #5000: California Gold Rush (26,652).

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.