Top 25 Report: Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (December 14 to 20, 2014)

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North Korea Is Not Pleased: The bizarre story around the American film The Interview propelled that article to the top spot this week, not that anyone can quite figure out what has happened. Aside from that, the Top 25 is the normal fare of films like The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (#5) and the Indian PK (#6), a Google doodle (Wassily Kandinsky at #2), television series like the new Marco Polo which hit #15 but also got Marco Polo to #3 and Kublai Khan to #12, and two Reddit-fueled entries.

As prepared by Milowent, for the week of December 14 to 20, 2014, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	The Interview (2014 film)	1,274,526	So, the story goes that this typically absurd American male comedy film starring Seth Rogen (pictured) and James Franco, which lampoons a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, led to the November 2014 Sony Pictures Entertainment hack, and then subsequent internet threats to unleash "September the eleventh" levels of violence if the movie was released, which led movie theater chains to refuse to screen the film, which led Sony to pull the movie's release altogether, a reaction which a cybersecurity expert called "beyond the realm of stupid.". North Korea denied the hack, and saw its own flimsy internet connections flame out on December 22. On December 23, Sony announced the movie would now get a "limited release" on December 25. The Top 25 Report really has no idea what to make of this bizarre chain of events, except that it is nice that no one has been killed by wars of internet trolls. More people are going to probably watch clips of the film's brutal imagined death of Kim Jong-un than ever would have without the controversy. Imagine if a One Direction song raised more social awareness than the entire catalog of Bob Dylan, and that's the basic situation we seem to have here.
2	Wassily Kandinsky	713,349	This influential Russian painter and art theorist is credited with painting one of the first purely abstract works. Google commemorated Kandinsky's 148th birthday by featuring a Google Doodle based on his work.
3	Marco Polo	695,433	The release of Marco Polo (TV series) (#15) on Netflix this week brought new attention to the 13th century Venetian explorer, as well as his Asian host Kublai Khan (#12)
4	Hanukkah	683,140	The 8-day Hebrew Festival of Lights, commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the Maccabean Revolt against the Persian Seleucid Empire in 200 BC, began on December 16 this year.
5	The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies	663,792	The final installment of The Hobbit film series directed by Peter Jackson (pictured) debuted in New Zealand on December 11, and the United States on December 17. As of December 21, the film has already earned over $355 million in worldwide revenue. Up from #18 last week.
6	PK film	638,357	This Hindu film starring Aamir Khan debuted on December 19. The Bollywood press seems to have liked it, with Bollywood Hungama calling it "a solid entertainer that will surely entertain the masses and classes alike", and reviewer Subhash K. Jha giving it 4 out of 5 stars, saying "'PK' is a film designed to warm the cockles of the heart." The phrase "warm the cockles of the heart" really is underused these days, isn't it? The plot revolves around the arrival a human-looking alien on earth who needs to recover a stolen piece of his equipment, and includes satire regarding the phenomenon Indian "godmen". The film grossed about US $25 million in its opening weekend.
7	Guardians of the Galaxy (film)	583,334	This critically and popularly adored movie proved its staying power when its arrival on Blu-ray was greeted with a shot to the top of this list. Up a bit from 555,000 views last week, its popularity continues.
8	Facebook	577,740	The perennially popular article arrives at #8 this week.
9	Deaths in 2014	508,396	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. Deaths this week included American singer Millie Kirkham (age 91), who used to sing with Elvis Presley (December 14); Scottish Anglican bishop Michael Hare-Duke (age 89) (December 15); Man Haron Monis(age 50), perpetrator of the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis (December 16); Ukrainian poet Oleh Lysheha (age 65, December 17, pictured); Italian actress Virna Lisi who starred in films including 1965's How to Murder Your Wife (age 78, December 18); American actor Arthur Garder, who at age 104 was the last surviving cast member of the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front (December 19); and Nigerian footballer Seriki Audu (age 23), who died in a car crash on December 20.
10	Jordan Belfort	490,256	You may not remember it, or believe it, but this author of the The Wolf of Wall Street topped our list for three weeks in January 2014. The article has experienced a new jump in popularity since December 12.
11	Stephen Hawking	481,526	The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his seventh straight appearance in the Top 25 this week, thanks in large part to his biopic, The Theory of Everything, which opened in the United States on November 7.
12	Kublai Khan	480,697	See #3 and # 15. What would people do without Wikipedia to look up historical figures depicted in TV series? I wonder how many of these views occur while the show is airing, it is likely a fair amount.
13	Chris Kyle	469,150	Kyle was a United States Navy SEAL who was reportedly the most lethal sniper in Navy history. In 2013, he was shot and killed at a shooting range in Texas. Before Kyle died, however, he had claimed that he had once punched former wrestler and Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura in 2006 for badmouthing U.S. President Bush and the military. Ventura sued him for defamation, eventually getting a $1.8 million jury award. This week, Ventura filed a new lawsuit directly against HarperCollins, who published Kyle's book American Sniper. There is no moral to this story. Sticks and stones may break your bones (and snipers may kill you), but words only hurt you when you sue over them so that everybody hears about the stupid things someone said.
14	Marilyn Manson	459,074	The controversial and improbably still popular singer released a new single called "Deep Six" on December 19, which will also appear on his new album, The Pale Emperor, which will be released next month.
15	Marco Polo (TV series)	443,188	See #3 and #12. The 10-episode series has been met with mostly positive reviews from viewers, and mostly negative reviews by critics.
16	American Horror Story: Freak Show	436,021	The fourth season of the American Horror Story series débuted on October 8.
17	Surfers Paradise Meter Maids	430,998	On December 16, Reddit learned about the bikini-clad "meter maids" of Surfers Paradise, Queensland, in Australia. They haven't learned about bikini baristas yet, it appears, but no doubt they will.
18	The Hobbit (film series)	422,856	See #5.
19	Christmas	419,764	The author of this Report is not yet finished shopping, but Merry Christmas to all.
20	Ariana Grande	405,521	Wikipedia just can't get enough of this former Nickelodeon star. Down a bit from over 447,000 views last week.
21	Google	404,540	Always a fairly popular article.
22	Wikipedia	399,716	Though not always in the Top 25, the project's own page is always a fairly popular article.
23	United States	386,895	Hard to say why this article made it into the top 25 this week (as it is always a fairly popular article, and was #25 last week), but the appearance of Fidel Castro at #25 suggests that perhaps some of the popularity this week may be due to the announcement that the United States would be normalizing relations with Cuba.
24	Vanessa L. Williams	380,474	The Report figured this article's appearance must be due to a Reddit thread, and it was, from December 15, when Reddit learned "when the Vanessa Williams Miss America scandal was breaking, Hugh Hefner was offered the nude photos. He turned them down saying 'There was never any question of our interest. But they clearly weren't authorized and because they would cause considerable embarrassment, we decided not to publish.' "
25	Fidel Castro	370,581	After over 50 years of cold war, the United States decided to normalize relations with Cuba this week.

Just missing the Top 25 this week: Mumps (#26), Taliban (#27), List of Arrow episodes (#28), Ascension (TV series) (#29), and Santa Claus's reindeer (#30).
Notes from the raw Top 5000: 87 articles exceeded 250,000 views this week, ending with India (250,162, #87), 471 hit 100,000 views (last in was List of Bollywood films of 2015. Normal distribution (#1674, 50,002 views) was the last to exceed 50,000 views, and Naproxen was last on the list (#5000, 29,389 views).

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 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.

Specific exclusions this week:

None

Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.