Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 31 to June 6, 2015)[edit]

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Summary: "Happy families are all alike," Leo Tolstoy said, "but unhappy families are unhappy after their own fashion." While there is truth to that statement, I've never found it entirely right. Unhappiness can strike in many forms, but there are several we all share, the most obvious, and in many ways the most painful, is bereavement. The unexpected death of the eldest son of US Vice President Joe Biden brought respect and sympathy from viewers worldwide, while on the other end of the spectrum, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, erstwhile scion of the Kardashian clan, followed a route to personal happiness that I doubt Tolstoy had ever conceived, but in the process put an end to her seemingly successful marriage.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 31 to June 6, 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	Bruce Jenner/Caitlyn Jenner		4,124,013*	On June 1, the former track and field star and honorary Kardashian announced that she had completed her transition to womanhood, and was answering to the name Caitlyn. In keeping with the habits of her former family, her transition was accompanied by a full-on media blow-out, including a cover shoot for Vanity Fair. Perhaps surprisingly, America seems to have welcomed her with open arms, though you wouldn't know that from the response of the right-wing press, whose reaction has been, to quote the Washington Post, "apocalyptic". *Numbers are combined with her now-redirected former name. Her current name alone gained 1,249,139 views this week.
2	Game of Thrones (season 5)		902,536	As we approach the season finale, it seems the Song of Ice and Fire is getting some fire back, as numbers jumped again by another 80,000 views. This week's episode was the highest-rated since the première, and numbers are only likely to increase next week.
3	Beau Biden		876,235	The former Attorney General of Delaware and eldest son of US Vice President Joe Biden died this week of brain cancer, aged just 46.
4	Marilyn Monroe		802,950	Lifetime premièred a biopic of the legendary sex goddess in the weekend leading up to what would have been her 89th birthday on June 1. The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe starred Kelli Garner as Marilyn and Susan Sarandon as her mother.
5	Joe Biden		777,579	The bereaved Vice President of the United States got some sympathy views in the wake of his son's untimely death (see above).
6	Stephen Curry		675,368	On June 4, this record-breaking basketball wunderkind, who has been leading the Golden State Warriors to the NBA Finals, beat LeBron James's Cleveland Cavaliers in a tight battle.
7	List of Game of Thrones episodes		665,093	See #2.
8	Kris Jenner		665,093	The mother of the media-genic Kardashian clan and now-ex-Mrs-ex-Bruce Jenner has been tactfully quiescent in the wake of her former husband's coming out, though that hasn't stopped the media stoking rumours about rampant jealousy and catfights between the two.
9	San Andreas (film)		652,261	Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's biggest starring role to date rises to become the most popular film on the list, probably in part because it inspired Californians by the carload to purchase earthquake insurance. The film had a boffo $53 million opening weekend in the States last week, though this Friday's numbers augur a rather steep dropoff. Critics seem equally unimpressed, with the film currently resting at 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.
10	Mad Max: Fury Road		613,713	Numbers are falling steeply for this belated action sequel, but it still retains its position ahead of Pitch Perfect 2, which beat it soundly at the US box office.
11	Elimination Chamber (2015)	Future	578,366	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held on May 31, at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.
12	Sepp Blatter		559,369	Depending on who you talk to, this guy is either the capo di tutti capi of a billion-dollar criminal enterprise, or the crusading head of a non-profit organization who raised his sport's profile outside its core European-South American base. Both sides of the argument are arming themselves this week in the wake of his shock resignation, as the FBI closes in on tens of millions in purported bribes. Some have noted the irony that it took the least-soccer-crazed country on the planet to finally take soccer's governing body down, but, really, that's too glib. Americans may not like soccer all that much, but they do like a fair deal, and when FIFA passed them over to host the 2022 World Cup in favour of Qatar, a country with un-playable summer temperatures in excess of 50°C, they smelled a rat. It remains to be seen just how many they catch.
13	Deaths in 2015		539,429	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.
14	Chris Kyle		512,421	The titular American Sniper is back on the list for a third week after a near-three month hiatus. The film was released on DVD on May 19, and his widow, Tanya, has been making the rounds to promote her book, American Wife, including endorsing Texas governor Rick Perry's Presidential bid.
15	Charles Manson		497,499	Remains popular due to the debut of the American television series Aquarius, which premièred on May 28, with Gethin Anthony in the role. Prior to Aquarius, Manson last appeared on the Top 25 report in November 2014 based on news stories that he would be marrying a 26-year-old prison groupie (which did not happen).
16	Jurassic World		460,582	It's hard to believe that it's been 15 years since the last Jurassic Park movie, which was itself released fully eight years after the first one. This series produces new material so rarely it seems ill-at-ease in the franchise-ready modern era of pre-packaged multi-serials. But, with a barely tested indie director at the helm, whose last (and first) movie cost the princely sum of $750,000, and Chris Pratt in the lead, this film appears to imply that Universal wish to compare themselves to Marvel, the studio most at home in this era because it partly invented it. It will be interesting to see where they take this in the future, short, perhaps, of going back to the actual Jurassic.
17	19 Kids and Counting		459,621	Another week in our conscious. The TLC reality show, which concerns the lives of a Christian family with 19 children, shot into public awareness when it was taken off air after it was revealed that one of the children, Josh Duggar, had a history of child molestation.
18	Kim Kardashian		440,611	The gravitational well at the centre of the entire Kardashian family had to get on this list, even though she had nothing to do with her ex-stepdad's recent gender conversion, because she is ultimately the reason for it generating the public interest it has. For the record though, she is apparently entirely happy about it, and gushed about being present for his Vanity Fair shoot.
19	Avengers: Age of Ultron		415,913	The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, despite the fact that a) it has yet to out-gross its predecessor, and b) it isn't the highest-grossing film of the year.
20	Charles Kennedy		408,449	The likeable, avuncular, conscientious Scottish politician who led the Liberal Democrats to their highest ever representation in the British Parliament died unexpectedly this week of an alcohol-related illness.
21	Nargis		393,089	The Bollywood icon got a Google Doodle on her would-have-been 86th birthday on June 1.
22	Facebook		390,733	A perennially popular article.
23	List of Bollywood films of 2015		387,398	Not as frequent a guest on this list as it once was, but no doubt pushed up by the presence of Nargis.
24	Lionel Messi		387,122	The Argentine forward and "best footballer on the planet"^TM played in Barcelona's treble-clinching Champions League final on June 6.
25	Hunter Biden		362,917	Following the death of his elder brother, attention returned to Joe Biden's second son.

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.

Deja vu: 3.68% mobile, one day spike. Pretty much certainly fake.