Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (January 15 to 21, 2017)

Prepared with commentary by Maplestrip.

← Last week's report – Next week's report →

Clothes of the First Ladies: I picked one hell of a week for my first report, that's for sure. The inauguration of Donald Trump occurred on the 20th (though I can still hardly believe it), and the Donald (#1) and his family are, as expected, on the forefront. The top ten is dominated by American politics, both past and present, with Barack Obama (#4) freeing Chelsea Manning (#3) as one of his last political acts and the country celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr (#9) before the Republican Party outlaws the right to protest. Further down, the list is mostly about media, with the results of the 74th Golden Globe Awards lingering on. It took me all day to compile this list, so I don't know yet if this will be the last time I've done this or not, but it is fun to do and I have learned a lot.

For the week of January 15 to 21, 2017, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Donald Trump	4,487,438	I find it rather weird that the United States doesn't seem to have a system for dealing with botched elections. The Russian interference aside, both major presidential candidates were going through legal situations ranging from tax evasion to email classified information to literal rape right as the election was held. Even the president-elect has posted on his Twitter that he believes massive voter fraud had taken place. Regardless, I suppose none of these are good reasons to do a re-election, so it seems to be official now. President Donald Trump.
2	Melania Trump	2,235,322	News media only seems to care about Melania Trump's shoes, jewelry, and gown this week. Maybe that's because the second foreign-born First Lady of the United States will spend the first half year of Donald's term in New York with her son, rather than in Washington with her husband. I personally quite like Mrs. Trump, so I hope she'll become more politically influential later on.
3	Chelsea Manning	1,976,999	One of the final acts of 44th President Barack Obama (#4) was to commute the prison sentence of several hundred people, including those who have been convicted for espionage and treason over the years. Among them is 29-year old Chelsea Manning, who, in 2010, relayed 700,000 military files to WikiLeaks. This political act has been praised by many who found the 35-year prison sentence much too harsh, though some say Manning could have been sentenced for 90 years for what she did. I'm personally quite happy to see her go free, but I don't know if that's because I'm not interested in patriotism or because I'm not American.
4	Barack Obama	1,463,253	Everyone wants to know how Obama will go down in history, and everybody seems to be talking about how successful his administration has been. I don't think comparing him to the likes of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln is really fair, but for my two cents, I think people will remember Obama quite fondly.
5	A Series of Unfortunate Events	1,192,275	People are probably searching for the television series (#16), though of course it might have reignited interest in Lemony Snicket's book series. Weird that this article outperformed that of the TV series this much, though.
6	Ivanka Trump	1,174,350	President Trump's oldest daughter promised back in July that she would fight alongside of her father to ensure the working rights of women. The populace speculates that she will "fill in" for First Lady while her stepmother lives in New York to be with her child Barron Trump. I am sure Ivanka will take on a big role during this presidential term.
7	Queen Victoria	1,161,981	I am quite impressed by Britain's ability to wedge an old queen between all of this contemporary American politics. The US premiere of Victoria was last week, spurring more interest into the royal family's history. TV series on that topic seem to be popular recently.
8	Betsy DeVos	1,123,350	President Trump's pick for Secretary of Education is clearly the most controversial. Her lack of experience with America's world-infamous student loan system has been pretty harshly criticized by liberals, as has her belief that not all federally-funded schools have to follow the same federal laws (like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).
9	Martin Luther King Jr.	1,008,665	Last week was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, marking the birthday of the Civil Rights Movement chief spokesman. Of course, this got people interested in the man who was assassinated 49 years ago. I don't think King would have liked the new president.
10	XXX: Return of Xander Cage	940,185	The continuation of a film series that started in 2002 once again features Vin Diesel in the lead role, so I am not surprised to see it high on this list.
11	President of the United States	918,118	I'm sure everyone is looking up what the job of the president actually entails, including the president himself.
12	List of Presidents of the United States	911,789	Donald Trump is the first United States president to not have held any kind of government role before being elected president. It's somewhat amusing to his "prior position" listed as "Chairman of The Trump Organization" rather than "governor", "senator", or "vice president", like most of the others. It's not that different from "Supreme Allied Commander", right?
13	Split (2016 American film)	906,427	As someone who actually knows people with dissociative identity disorder (DID), I find M. Night Shyamalan's latest film (of which I've only seen the trailer, to be fair) absolutely ridiculous and kinda disgusting. It's clear Shyamalan hasn't done his research, but what bothers me more is that it's another film that portrays people with DID in a very negative light. I haven't actually seen the film, though, and it's getting much more positive reviews than most of Shyamalan's works, so who knows.
14	Mike Pence	844,734	With all this talk about security and risks at the presidential inauguration ceremony, people were very worried (or hopeful) Donald Trump might be assassinated. It is no surprise interest in Trump's vice president rose. Because of Trump's lack of political experience, we can expect the strongly conservative Pence having a lot of power in the coming years.
15	Jallikattu	844,281	I expected this to be a Reddit thread, but no. This Tamil bullfighting-like sport – in which a bull is released into a crowd of people and participants try to hold onto its horns – got attention because it is being banned by the Indian supreme court. Hundreds of thousands of people are protesting to keep the traditional sport alive.
16	A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV series)	830,272	When the cinematic adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events (#5) underperformed, many suggested the material was better suited for television. Well now Netflix is giving it a go; releasing 8 episodes, covering the first four books.
17	Miguel Ferrer	827,335	61 is no age to die, but throat cancer is difficult to treat. You may know this very successful actor from his roles in RoboCop, Mulan, or Iron Man 3. I primarily know him from NCIS: Los Angeles, because my mom is big on crime series.
18	Tiffany Trump	767,611	To return to the politics theme, Donald's daughter Tiffany Trump also got a lot of attention during the inauguration. She takes after her stepmother (#2) rather than her half-sister (#6), however, in that the media primarily focused on what she was wearing during the event. She mostly tries to be removed from all the media attention and I can't blame her, but apparently she's pretty big on Instagram.
19	Aaron Rodgers	732,472	Uh-oh, American football. Apparently, this man has become one of only four quarterbacks to pass for at least 40 touchdowns in multiple seasons. The NFC Championship Game is taking place today (the 22nd), and Rodgers and his team played a game on the 15th (right at the start of the pageview week). I have a feeling Rodgers is playing a big role in these.
20	Deaths in 2017	718,087	I am sure that the pageviews of this list rose this week because of all the Dutch celebrities that died this week. Joop Braakhekke, Jan Kruis, Hans Breukhoven, Adèle Bloemendaal [nl]... Ok, in reality, I'm sure people are just checking whether 2017 is as bad as 2016 in terms of international celebrity deaths.
21	Marla Maples	706,339	I wonder if people go to the Wikipedia article on Donald Trump's second wife to find out what she wore during the inauguration ceremony. Maybe we should list this kind of information: it is clearly very important to our reliable sources.
22	Sherlock (TV series)	698,210	It took years for the fourth season of Benedict Cumberbatch' portrayal of Sherlock Holmes to come out. It is finally here, and the large fanbase of the series may rejoice.
23	La La Land (film)	687,826	The buzz for La La Land following the 74th Golden Globe Awards is dying down, but Damien Chazelle's (pictured) film starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone is of course still of interest to many people.
24	List of Sherlock episodes	681,375	It is somewhat shocking how much time there is between the seasons of Sherlock, in which Martin Freeman takes on the role of Dr. Watson. With only a few episodes coming out every few years, it is fairly reasonable to read every episode description as a reminder of everything that has happened.
25	Elizabeth II	621,649	The Americans may be dominating this list, but it is the British Crown that finishes it off. Of course, Queen Elizabeth II would be a popular article even without the Golden Globe-winning television series, but the extra attention certainly helps.

The 26th place goes to Dangal (film), which is coming fairly close to becoming the highest-grossing Indian film. Donald Trump Jr., Ivana Trump, George H. W. Bush, redirect Melania Knauss, and Eric Trump all follow, and the political theme continues.

Exclusions

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. 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.