Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (May 3 to 9, 2015)[edit]

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Summary: Casual viewers may think I've posted the same list twice. But no, readers just happen to be really interested in May 2's Big Fight. In fact, last week was just the weigh-in and the trash talk. This week, the numbers actually increased, and two new competitors entered the ring, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, both in reaction to ill-judged comments by the eventual victor, Floyd Mayweather. Other refugees from last week include Avengers: Age of Ultron, which continues its triumph at the box office, and Vision, arguably the team's most interesting new member. The 2015 Nepal earthquake also continued to draw shocked eyes its way. Unusually, events in Britain entered the lower orders of the list, with a new royal baby and a shock result in the 2015 UK election taking five slots total. Annual returnees Cinco de Mayo and Mothers Day made their scheduled appearances as expected.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of May 3 to 9, 2015, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Floyd Mayweather, Jr.	3,224,988	Apparently, Wikipedia viewers weren't done with the "fight of the century", as it remained the most viewed topic for the second week running, with its declared victor rising to the top spot. Indeed, his numbers have only increased since last week, indicating we may just be topping the hill.
2	Cinco de Mayo	2,573,768	For the third year running, one of the most self-explanatory article spikes on Wikipedia ever occurred, conveniently, on May 5. This celebration of Mexican-American culture (originally meant to commemorate a Mexican victory over the French) had more than double the views of last year.
3	Manny Pacquiao	2,383,123	Numbers have, however, slightly fallen for the current Filipino Congressman and boxing's only octuple champion, who suffered a fairly noble defeat to Floyd Mayweather, Jr. during the "fight of the century" on May 2. Just goes to show that in sport, winning is everything.
4	Nellie Bly	2,096,193	The barnstorming journalist, who beat Phileas Fogg by travelling around the world in 72 days and then faked insanity and got herself committed so she could uncover maltreatment of the mentally ill, got a Google Doodle on her 151st birthday on May 5.
5	Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao	2,074,940	Numbers are down but still robust for the "fight of the century" that took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Pay-per-view receipts are currently expected to hit $500 million worldwide.
6	Avengers: Age of Ultron	1,990,691	The latest instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe premièred in Hollywood on April 13, and went on wide release on May 1. By its second weekend, it was down 60% but still massive enough to drain grosses from its competitors. Not that its only real competition, the abysmally reviewed Hot Pursuit, needed any help to flop.
7	Vision (Marvel Comics)	740,608	Numbers have more than doubled for the sentient AI and foil for the villainous Ultron, who became the breakout star of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and allowed actor Paul Bettany (pictured) to finally step out of the voice-only shadows of his J.A.R.V.I.S. character into full acting.
8	Achim Leistner	732,005	The Australian/German optician with an almost superhuman touch sense is able to handcraft spheres to a level of perfection beyond those of any machine. This was noted in a Reddit thread this week, though a surprisingly short one, given the views.
9	List of highest-grossing films	724,579	With Furious 7 already in the increasingly inclusive $1 billion worldwide club, and Age of Ultron likely to reach it next week, it's not surprising Wikipedia viewers are interested in tracking their progress.
10	Mother's Day	723,932	The second Sunday in May (that's May 10 to all you ingrates who forgot) is far and away the most popular time of year to celebrate Mother's Day, and, even as the day fell, panicked college students in all participating countries rushed to their computers to see if they'd blown it.
11	Muhammad Ali	723,932	Floyd Mayweather may be the man of the moment, but there's no denying he's a... worrisome figure, even leaving aside his more egregious actions. Shortly before his epochal win against Manny Pacquiao, he had the temerity to call himself better than Muhammad Ali, arguably the most revered figure in the history of his sport. This of course led to no small backlash, with Ali's daughter Laila calling him out on a CBS Sports Network talk show.
12	Game of Thrones	711,403	Is the Iron Throne losing its lustre? Time was this show would drive all before it as it carved its path to the top of this list. Comparisons with last year suggest numbers are down, though not by much. It will be interesting to see if the views pick up by the finale.
13	United Kingdom general election, 2015	678,994	Well, that was unexpected. Despite every poll right up to the end suggesting that the Tories and Labour were neck and neck, the Tories ended up trouncing Labour on the night, taking nearly every non-urban constituency in England. Up in Scotland, the Scottish Nationalists swept all before them, raising the spectre of the breaking of the union thought put to rest after last year's referendum.
14	Suicide Squad	676,318	DC Comics' ramshackle team of pressganged supervillains, forced to do the will of a shadowy organization or let their heads explode, are the stars of one of the most anticipated films in the upcoming DC Cinematic Universe. This week, the studio released the first one-shot of the cast in character, including the first ever (accurate) live-action depiction of beloved Joker sidekick Harley Quinn.
15	Mike Tyson	659,238	The former world heavyweight boxing champion weighed in (ahem) on the current kerfuffle about Floyd Mayweather's opinion of himself, saying that if he really was in the same realm as Ali he would be able to take his children to school by himself. No I have no idea what that means. It may be a reference to Mayweather's domestic transgressions, in which case Tyson is one to talk.
16	Game of Thrones (season 5)	658,250	See #12
17	Met Gala	641,760	Well this is new. Wikipedia viewers tend to be more interested in who won which contact sporting event or which celebrity dissed which former teenage popstar than whether the Metropolitan Museum of Art meets its annual funding quotas. And in fairness, interest in this year's event probably has more to do with Rhianna's dress or Beyonce's "elevator incident" then the actual presentation.
18	Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge	557,093	It is an odd thing that the birth of a new royal baby spurred interest in several members of the British Royal Family... but not in the royal baby, who lies cooing, burbling and doubtless unconcerned at #89 on the raw list. This despite the fact that a) her name was announced at the start of this week b) her page was created a day later, and c) the numbers for these three entries are nearly identical.
19	Elizabeth II	553,151	See above
20	Prince William, Duke of Cambridge	552,906	See above
21	Ed Miliband	528,129	Why is the now-former head of the UK Labour Party, and the man who could most accurately be said to have lost the UK election, the most popular of its contenders on this list? Why the de facto winner, David Cameron? Or the victorious insurgent, Nicola Sturgeon? Perhaps it was because the polls had suggested he still had a chance of winning right up to the shocking end? Or perhaps his... unexpected cadre of online female fans? Perhaps it was the slight sense of disbelief in the political landscape no one expected.
22	Deaths in 2015	524,494	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.
23	2015 Nepal earthquake	520,274	The grinding push of India into Asia that is slowly raising the Himalayas has meant that the Nepali people are no strangers to geological tragedy; even so, the horror they woke up to on April 25 was the worst they would have known in more than eighty years. A combination of size (7.8) depth (a relatively shallow 15 km) and duration (twenty seconds) made the quake particularly devastating; generating a death toll of 7,500, with hundreds still missing. Entire villages near the epicentre were wiped out. Temples that had stood for centuries were flattened. But perhaps the greatest tragedy is that the poor state of transport infrastructure in the country has meant that many of the more remote villages have still received no aid.
24	Ariel Castro kidnappings	497,142	This horrific crime, in which Ariel Castro kidnapped three young women, held them captive, raped and abused them for a decade before they finally escaped, was recounted by the survivors in a memoir published this week.
25	Facebook	491,219	A perennially popular article.

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.