The Top 25 Report
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (July 17 to 23, 2016) edit
← Last week's report – Next week's report →
Trumpapalooza: Last week's American news was dominated by the Republican National Convention, but it should have been simply named the Trump Convention, because Trump family members were highlighted among the speakers every night. SIX of the top ten slots this week are Trumps, even including Donald Trump's first wife Ivana Trump (#9) who wasn't even at the convention. I cannot recall any prior instance of a single family dominating the chart like this. And outside the Top 10, at #12 is Trump's second wife Marla Maples (mother of Tiffany Trump, who is at #10); one more Trump son, Eric, also made the list at #14.
As prepared by Milowent, for the week of July 17 to 23, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Melania Trump 
2,990,596 
How is the Donald not #1 this week? Well, the spouse of Donald Trump gave a speech on Monday night at the Republican National Convention. This type of speech is usually expected to be non-controversial, and to help humanize the candidate. Instead, it kicked off a negative three day news cycle, because the speech clumsily lifted some passages from Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. This fact was initially denied by the campaign (which is notorious for not being coordinated in its public statements at this point), and finally admitted to have occurred on Wednesday, though it was blamed on one of Trump's employees, Meredith McIver, who has been the ghostwriter for a number of Donald's books. 2 Donald Trump 
2,796,617 
Trump is now officially the Republican nominee for President of the United States, and accepted the nomination in a lengthy speech on July 21. 3 Pokémon Go
2,029,089 
Down from 4.7 million views this week. How long is the shelf life of this thing? I was out to dinner the other night and half the people I saw walking around were teenagers looking at their phones playing Pokémon Go. I shook my fist at the sky like a cranky old man and felt better. The article has improved from Start Class to B-Class in the last week, now with a staggering 184 references. 4 Ivanka Trump 
1,775,380 
Probably the most liked Trump outside core Trump-fandom, Trump's daughter Ivanka gave a speech introducing her father at the Republican National Convention, though she touted some policy positions that sounded much more like she was introducing a Democratic candidate. 5 Tim Kaine
1,513,047 
Kaine, a current United States Senator, and former Governor from Virginia, was named as Hillary Clinton's vice-presidential candidate on July 22. I must say Kaine was not high on my radar because he does not showboat online, though the Wall Street Journal put him on Hillary's shortlist last month. Virginia is also a swing state, probably one Trump would have to win to have any chance of being elected. 6 Kabali (film)
1,351,718 
This Tamil language film starring Rajinikanth (#27) (pictured) debuted on July 22 to mixed reviews, but broke box office records, earning around ₹211.75 crore (US$31 million) worldwide during its opening weekend. 7 Stranger Things (TV series)
1,165,953 
This Netflix science-fiction series was released on July 15 to positive reviews. 8 Donald Trump Jr.
1,073,547 
The first son of Donald Trump (#2) and Ivana Trump (#9), who also spoke at the Trump Convention. This article actually received 581,231 views, but the redirect Donald Trump, Jr. is #26 by itself with 492,316 views; so in order to more accurately reflect the true number of views he received, both views have been combined. 9 Ivana Trump
1,032,111 
Donald Trump's (#2) first wife, mother of Ivanka (#4), as well as Donald Jr. (#8) and Eric (#14). She was not in Cleveland last week, but instead in St. Tropez "with her dog and Italian lover" as the Daily Mail tells us. I would guess a fair amount of these views include people trying to get to Ivanka's article. 10 Tiffany Trump
1,019,203 
Donald Trump's (#2) only child with Marla Maples (#12) (his second wife), who also spoke at the convention last week. 11 Mike Pence
940,781 
Donald Trump's (#2) Vice-Presidential candidate, down from 1.65 million views last week. 12 Marla Maples
903,270 
Mother of Tiffany Trump #10, second-wife of Donald Trump #2. She was also not at the convention last week, so presumably this article got so high just from people looking into Trump's personal history. Traditionally, America has been fairly prudish when it comes to politicians and divorce, or at least these things seemed to be big negatives for candidates. They can even overshadow whether a candidate can actually do the job well and is qualified. Trump's cult of personality really seems to overcome all these things in the eyes of his supporters. 13 Ghostbusters (2016 film)
805,180 
Slightly up from 738K views last week. Prior to its release, the fact that a female-fronted reboot of the 1984 film Ghostbusters was being made caused a fair amount of complaining that struck many as absurd and misogynistic. The Internet likes to complain. It's just a fictional comedy movie about catching ghosts, it is not turning Fight Club into a feminist manifesto, and it cannot ruin anyone's childhood unless time travel is possible. With a cast featuring Melissa McCarthy (pictured), the film debuted on July 15 to mixed reviews and mixed returns. Box office is now up to $130.5 million as of July 27 on a budget of $144 million. 14 Eric Trump
801,112 
The second son of Donald Trump (#2) and Ivana Trump (#9), who also spoke at the Trump Convention. 15 Sultan (2016 film)
764,403 
Down from 1.22 million views last week, third consecutive week on the chart. 16 Eazy-E 
726,200 
The founding member of N.W.A, whose death from AIDS at the age of just 31 forms the emotional climax of the film Straight Outta Compton, which brought this article #1 in August 2015. Views spiked on July 17 last week. I am having trouble pinpointing why, though, it may be because the movie started streaming on HBO and Amazon last week. 17 Garry Marshall
691,763 
The American director of popular television shows including The Odd Couple and Happy Days died on July 19. 18 Star Trek Beyond
620,332 
The latest in the Star Trek reboot film series, the film stars Chris Pine (pictured) as Captain Kirk, and was released on July 22 to positive reviews. It grossed over $117 million in its opening weekend, which makes it slightly surprising that it is this far down on the chart. Perhaps everyone who went to see the movie already knows too much about Star Trek. 19 Pokémon
611,154 See #3. 20 Deaths in 2016 
590,634 
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. 21 Qandeel Baloch
581,160 Baloch was a Pakstani feminist and social media celebrity who was murdered by her brother on July 15, claiming she was "bringing disrepute" to the "family's honour". Horrible. 22 Suicide Squad (film)
554,587 
This widely anticipated superhero film (it dominated the chart for a week last July) will be released on August 5. 23 Dr. Dre
523,430 
Far and away the most successful talent to emerge from N.W.A., which also included Eazy-E (#16). 24 Taylor Swift
522,694 
Because the haters are going to hate. We don't seem to have an article on the latest Kanye-Kardashian-Swift kerfuffle which attempts to demean the greatest pop star of our age, but here's an explainer from Vox. 25 Spatial disorientation 514,096 
As learned in a Reddit thread this week, pilots can sometimes enter a death spiral without even realising they're spinning.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Just missing the Top 25:
- #26: Jared Kushner. 477,091. Husband of Ivanka Trump #4.
- #27: Rajinikanth. 444,678. Star of #3.
- #28: Bat Pussy. 437,767. Reddit-fueled.
- #29: Ice Cube
- #30: List of Pokémon
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 (~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. 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.