The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (September 25 to October 1, 2016) edit
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Debatable: If not for the death of American baseball player José Fernández (#1), Donald Trump (#2) would have been the most viewed article of the week, no doubt due to the attention-grabbing spectacle of the first U.S. presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton (#5). The only other debate-related subject to make the Top 25 was Alicia Machado (#13), a topic which Clinton brought up to illustrate Trump's history of derogatory remarks about women, and which caused Trump to inexplicably keep defending his comments for most of the week. Aside from that, the chart this week is a mix of pop culture topics with a number of Reddit "Today I Learned" threads elevating random articles into the lower rungs of the Top 25.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of September 25 to October 1, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 José Fernández (pitcher) 
1,762,983 
The Cuban-born American baseball player for the Miami Marlins died in a boating accident on September 25. Though a popular player, it is hard to pinpoint exactly why his death generated so many views, except in part because he died on the first day of this chart's data, so the chart captures the full run of attention caused in the week after his death. 2 Donald Trump
1,201,566 
455,000 of these views came on September 27, which for United States timezones catches the first presidential debate which occurred on the evening of September 26 and its news-dominating aftermath. Trump consistently places higher in this chart than Hillary Clinton, usually because he is doing or saying eye-opening things. 3 Arnold Palmer 
915,706 
The American golf great died on September 25 at age 87. He was generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the sport's history. Dating back to 1955, he won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and the circuit now known as PGA Tour Champions. 4 Pablo Escobar
813,231 
Narcos is back on your television screens, meaning Don Pablo is back on the list for another week. 5 Hillary Clinton 
753,800 
311K views on September 27. With the presidential debates underway and the American election finally getting close, Clinton and Trump may remain high in the charts for the next few weeks. 6 Luke Cage
710,850 
The debut of the Luke Cage (#10) TV series on Netflix teaches me about yet another superhero character I've never heard about before. 7 László Bíró
710,850 
A Google Doodle for the inventor of the ballpoint pen. 8 Deaths in 2016 
646,900 
The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis. It is consistently higher in the first half of 2016 with a string of highly notable deaths, but things seem to be calming down a bit. Where the article appears in this chart is entirely dependent on how many subjects in a week happened to exceed this bellwether in views. 9 Toys in the Attic (album)
547,193 
A Reddit thread caused a burst of popularity about this 1975 album by Aerosmith on September 26. 10 Luke Cage (TV series)
710,850 See #6. Mike Colter (pictured) plays the lead role. 11 Jake Lloyd 
530,964 
Lloyd played the role of Anakin Skywalker in the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The article had a big jump in views on September 25 and 26, due to a Reddit thread. 12 M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story 
511,454 
This Indian biographical sports film about cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni debuted on September 30. The lead role is played by Sushant Singh Rajput (pictured). 13 Alicia Machado
505,270 File:4,241,968 Of all the things one could not predict would come up during the first U.S. presidential debate, Donald Trump's apparent past habit of calling Miss Universe 1996 "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping" after she gained a few pounds during her title reign was not one of them. 14 WWE Clash of Champions 489,863 
A September 25 wrestling event. Kevin Owens (pictured) was among the winners. 15 Krishna's Butterball
482,888 
Another popular Reddit thread at /r/todayilearned. 16 UFC 205
453,792 Will occur on November 12 17 Rikers Island
453,433 
The infamous New York City had one of its few uplifting moments made the subject of a Reddit thread. 18 Stranger Things (TV series)
451,785 
This Netflix science-fiction series is basically an 8-hour homage to early 80s kid-centric flicks like E.T., The Goonies and Explorers, though aimed mostly at adults. It has been a smash hit for Netflix, evidenced by its continuing appearance on this chart -- ELEVEN straight weeks. Netflix has already ordered a second season. 19 Soraya Tarzi
446,243 
The Queen consort of Afghanistan in the early 20th century and the wife of King Amanullah Khan. Reddit learned that "King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan (1919-1929) once gave a public speech in which he said "Islam did not require women to cover their bodies or wear any special kind of veil". At the conclusion of the speech, Queen Soraya tore off her veil (hejab) in public." 20 Deepwater Horizon
419,032 
They made a film called Deepwater Horizon about the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion. It stars Mark Wahlberg (pictured). After this and Sully, both films about relatively quiet recent historical events, I wouldn't be surprised to see a movie about the first U.S. presidential debate, starring Alicia Machado, before this month is over. 21 Habeas Corpus Act 1679
410,390 
Reddit again, with the hook "TIL the 1679 Habeas Corpus Act was only passed in Parliament because its supporters jokingly counted a fat lord as ten votes and the opposition never noticed." 22 The Girl on the Train (novel)
406,874 
Well, its not very common for an article I started to make this chart, so this is rather exciting for me. It helps, I suppose, that it is on a very popular recent novel and not one from the 19th century. But I know the real reason its here is because the film based on the novel, starring Emily Blunt, is soon coming out. 23 Salsa Tequila
404,353 A 2014 novelty song by Norwegian comedian Anders Nilsen. Views jumped on September 30, probably due to a Reddit thread? 24 Steve Jobs
397,003 
Views jumped on September 25 and 28. 25 The Magnificent Seven (2016 film)
384,274 
The American Western film, directed by Antoine Fuqua (pictured), was released on September 23.
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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). 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. Since WP:5000 and WMF Topviews use different exclusion algorithms, articles that appear in one but not the other can also safely be excluded as false. 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.