Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (March 1 to 7, 2015)
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Summary: A drab week, with a low view count, few new or interesting entries, and a slew of suspicious content to boot, more than we've seen since before the mobile counter was introduced.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of March 1 to 7, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 Kanye West 
4,291,451 
The rapper/entrepreneur is, it is fair to say, a polarising figure. Whether he's campaigning against other artists' award wins during their acceptance speeches, comparing himself to God and Picasso, or naming his daughter North West, it seems the 21-time Grammy winner just can't stop throwing the media for a loop. But it seems his most persistent recent gaffe has been his ill-judged tirade against Beck, winner of this year's Grammy for album of the year, which has apparently earned him the undying enmity of Beck fans. This enmity has manifested itself in many ways, but this week, the web address "loser.com", which just happens to share a name with Beck's best known single, was redirected to his Wikipedia page. This redirect has led, naturally, to a spike in views to said page. The perpetrator of this egregious offence eventually made himself known as Brian Connelly, a 44-year-old systems analyst from South Carolina, whose reasons are apparently deep-seated. "I went to Bonnaroo last year," he told The Daily Beast, "He started yelling, 'Where the press at? Point out the press!' and started going crazy and yelling at everybody about how they didn't respect his genius. Then he started naming names of people he should be compared to—George Washington, Henry Ford, etc ... And he didn't even play 'Gold Digger'." 2 Momofuku Ando 
1,705,988 
A Google doodle for the noodle guru occurred on his would-have-been 105th birthday on March 5. 3 House of Cards (U.S. TV series) 
885,920 
The third season of this political thriller TV series debuted in its entirety on Netflix on February 27 4 Leonard Nimoy 
873,806 
The death of this beloved actor on February 27, best known for playing the role of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, led to widespread tributes. Spock's Vulcan salute bade us to "live long and prosper," as Nimoy did himself. 5 Stephen Hawking
841,024 
The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 18th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. And at the Oscars, Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor for portraying him in The Theory of Everything. 6 Ronda Rousey
788,398 
The UFC women's bantamweight champion beat Cat Zingano in a record-breaking 14 seconds during UFC 184 on February 28. 7 Fifty Shades of Grey
736,594 
The release of the film adaptation of this onetime Twilight fanfic continues to draw fans, though a 74% drop in views on the second weekend and a 56% drop on the third weekend suggest that everyone who was going to see it has done so. 8 House of Cards (season 3)
554,178 see #3 9 Holi
591,417 
This fun Hindu festival of colours and love, notable for people throwing coloured powder on the streets, fell on March 6 this year. 10 Fifty Shades of Grey (film)
585,927 See #7. 11 Harrison Ford
582,400 
The beloved actor suffered his second accident in the last year this week when he crashed his private plane onto a golf course in Venice, California, fracturing his pelvis and ankle. His condition is reported as moderate to fair. 12 Deaths in 2015 
515,559 
The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550,000, apparently heedless of who actually died. 13 Chris Kyle
508,139 
While Clint Eastwood's American Sniper may not have wowed critics nor drawn great overseas crowds, it has played spectacularly well in America's conservative heartland. After dropping to #8 and 850,000 views two weeks ago, news that Eddie Ray Routh was found guilty of the deaths of Kyle and Chad Littlefield on February 25, after three hours of jury deliberations, raised the profile of this article once again. 14 Facebook
489,608 
A perennially popular article. 15 The Walking Dead (season 5) Unassessed 474,243 
The latest episode of this popular TV series premièred on March 1. 16 2015 Cricket World Cup
465,791 
The world's most popular non-soccer, non-Olympics sporting event got underway on Valentine's Day, hosted jointly by Australia and New Zealand. 17 Dakota Johnson
458,148 
The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson plays the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey (film) (see #10). 18 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
457,548 
The Islamic State continues to find new and innovative ways to appal. Now, to add to the already varied resume of torture, mass murder, and slavery, you can add cultural genocide, as Hatra, the ruined ancient Persian city in Iraq, has been reportedly bulldozed to rubble. The birthplace of human civilization had better find some decent custodians, and fast. 19 Empire (2015 TV series) Unassessed 447,068 
Lee Daniels' TV drama about a family-run hip-hop label stars Terrence Howard (pictured) and has proven a hit for Fox, with consistent ratings in its debut season. 20 The Walking Dead (TV series)
443,230 See #15 21 Better Call Saul
435,030 
A television show spinoff of Breaking Bad (a former chart favorite on Wikipedia) starring Bob Odenkirk (pictured), it debuted on AMC on February 8, 2015. 22 Birdman (film)
428,262 
This years Best Picture winner continues to draw attention. 23 Boris Nemtsov
426,489 
That this outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who accused him of innumerable acts of corruption, was assassinated on a bridge just outside the Kremlin this week apparently has no connection whatsoever to Putin himself. But then hardly anything else seems to either. 24 Vision (Marvel Comics)
414,113 
The android superhero got a bit of attention when his face appeared in the last frame of the latest trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron. 25 UFC 184
404,361 
See #6.
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 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.
Specific exclusions this week:
- 87th Academy Awards: An odd one perhaps, but with Academy Awards definitely getting inflated this week, and with a suspiciously low 3% mobile count, it seems fit for exclusion.
- Finance: A low 5.9% mobile count and an odd viewing pattern suggest this is fake.
- Bitcoin: A suspiciously level viewing pattern and a 2.57% mobile count
- Tablet computer: A crazed viewing pattern offsets a decent mobile count.
- Real estate: Sometimes you gotta go with your gut, and this is just not something people look up with such relish on here.
- Computer: ditto.