Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (August 17 to 23, 2014)
edit← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Summary: The key word this week is "viral", as an actual virus, Ebola, competed for attention with several viral social phenomena; most notably the Ice Bucket Challenge, a charitable dare that spread largely on social media, and a spontaneous online debate over the nature of rock music, sparked by Lorde's surprise win at the VMAs. This week also saw the return of that oldest of viral social phenomena, the riot, as tensions exploded over the shooting of Michael Brown in Missouri. That most social media-savvy of all terror groups, the Islamic State, increased its notoriety by posting its execution of James Foley on Twitter. This was also a bumper week for that prime viral knowledge vector, Reddit, with four topics in the top 25.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of August 17 to 23, 2014, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Ice Bucket Challenge 
2,902,018 
Surprisingly, this global viral phenomenon, in which celebrities, Youtubers and everyday members of the public pour icewater over their heads, post their ordeals online and then dare others to do the same in the name of raising awareness for motor neurone disease, was not launched by any particular charity, but seems to have grown on its own. While it certainly has achieved its goal of raising awareness of motor neurone disease (see below) many have criticised it as a frivolous wet T-shirt contest that has had no tangible effect except to waste water at a time when many areas of the planet are in drought. 2 Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis 
1,856,817 
The purpose of the Ice Bucket Challenge was to draw attention to the disease made famous by Lou Gehrig and Stephen Hawking, and it's hard to argue it didn't work- people flocked to the page to learn more about it, though you could argue that if it had truly succeeded, this page would be first, the Challenge second. 3 Robin Williams
864,859 
The unexpected death by suicide of this iconic comic on August 11 led to one of the highest spikes in views since this project began; this week's numbers may be down by more than 90 percent, but they're still impressive. 4 Ebola virus disease
616,334 
The 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, whose death toll has now passed 1400, continues to draw attention to this horrific disease. 5 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 
607,641 
Numbers are up for this almost absurdly brutal jihadist group, which proudly posts mass executions it carries out on Twitter and has been disowned even by al-Qaeda. The surge is likely due to the fallout from Barack Obama's decision to take US troops into Iraq (despite having campaigned on the promise of troop withdrawal from the country), including the execution of journalist James Foley. 6 Rock music 
536,500 
Disclaimer: with a topic this broad, there is no way to determine a precise reason for its popularity, and its view count is suspiciously even, so if it remains high next week it may be removed. That said, the surge did occur shortly before the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, which have sparked a minor controversy about the precise definition of rock music with the nomination, and subsequent win, for Lorde's video for "Royals", an electronic song better defined as art pop. Rock music, pretty much by definition, includes an electric guitar, bass guitar and drums, and thus, for obvious reasons, is not generally associated with solo artists. Even Lorde's fans have been somewhat bewildered by this, as you'd think MTV would have a better grasp on what rock music is. 7 Mona Lisa
494,140 
Arguably the most famous painting in the world, and one of the few that the legendarily distractible Leonardo da Vinci completed himself, the Mona Lisa did, in fact, once possess eyelashes and eyebrows, but they have been worn away over the years by careless cleaning, according to a thread on Reddit this week. 8 SummerSlam (2014) Unassessed 384,478 
The WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was staged on 17 August. Brock Lesnar prevailed in the main event match to take the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. 9 Deaths in 2014 
382,940 
The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. 10 Guardians of the Galaxy (film)
380,140 
Marvel Studio's cheerily bonkers space opera crowd pleaser has regained the top spot at the US box office in its fourth weekend and, to the sure delight of many, has overtaken Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction as America's biggest movie of the summer, though it has done less well internationally, where audiences are apparently more trepidatious about this unknown and unashamedly odd property. 11 Shooting of Michael Brown
366,066 
The latest in a string of racially charged shootings to occur in the US led to days of riots in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri this week, and predictably level-headed and conscientious commentary on the internet. 12 Kit Kat
333,991 
The chocolate-covered wafer is manufactured in the US by Hershey's under licence from Nestlé, owners of its original maker, Rowntree's, as noted in a thread on Reddit this week. 13 Facebook
326,828 
A once popular article, it has been falling out of the top 25 quite a lot recently, and in fact has a lower view count now than last week, when it was #25. That goes to show you how heavy last week's traffic was. 14 Ferguson, Missouri
321,921 
The town, which, observers noted, has a 67% black population and 95% white police force, saw tensions erupt this week with the shooting of Michael Brown. 15 ALS Association
299,221 The main recipient of the publicity drummed up by those American partakers in the Ice Bucket Challenge (see #1) 16 2014 in film
297,983 
An infrequent visitor to the top 25 flits back in. 17 List of Bollywood films of 2014
289,520 
An established staple of the top 25 returns. 18 Google
269,834 
Always a fairly popular article. 19 Ariana Grande
366,998 
This popular singer released her second album, My Everything on August 25. 20 Nathan Lane
259,796 
When the openly gay star came out to his parents at the age of 21, his mother said, "I'd rather you were dead", to which he replied, "I knew you'd understand", as noted in a thread on Reddit this week. 21 The Expendables 3
245,533 
The production budget of this PG-13-rated, now-likely conclusion to the Sylvester Stallone-directed 80s action nostalgia series is still unknown, but it is unlikely to be less than the $49 million it has so far made worldwide. Even so, it garnered substantially more Wiki views than actually successful films such as If I Stay (#164) and Let's Be Cops (#503) 22 Gary Busey
238,449 
The hard-edged star of action flicks like Lethal Weapon and Point Break for some reason decided to star in the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother; as could be predicted, he's been a suitably unsuitable housemate so far, with several spectacular blowouts to his credit. But it was his claim in a pre-incarceration interview to have been visited by the ghost of his onetime costar Patrick Swayze that has gained him the most coverage. 23 Censored 11
237,907 
This group of 11 Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts from the 30s/40s have been banned from distribution since 1968 for what is politely termed "racial insensitivity", as noted in a Reddit thread this week. 24 James Foley 
237,157 The director of acclaimed films such as At Close Range, After Dark, My Sweet and Glengarry Glenn Ross, as well as 9 episodes of the US remake of House of Cards, got some belated recognition by virtue of sharing his name with a journalist publicly executed by ISIS. 25 Isis
232,870 
The Ancient Egyptian goddess of the throne, maternal love and marriage, who conceived her son Horus after copulating with the dismembered body of her husband, Osiris, (What can ya do? It's myth.) likewise got some (very) belated attention thanks to sharing her name with one of several for what is now called simply the Islamic State (see #5)
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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, educated guesses. Just because one 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 raw 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.
- Alive/Alive!: Links to disambigs with no apparent reason for being.
- Undefined. A common error message in computing, these are automated visits by a buggy computer program.
- Ddd: Hello? Spambot here. Just checking in.
- English alphabet and Alphabet. No legitimate reason for recent rise in views.
- Amazon.com. Scepticism has been raised about the recent large jump in viewcounts for this article.