The Top 25 Report

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (June 19 to 25, 2016)[edit]

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Summary: I would get this week. I have been told many times that I should be more politically impartial. Well if you want that from me this week, tough. I am a British citizen and a Londoner, and as such have borne witness to the venomous campaign that the EU referendum has created. I voted to remain, and I still believe that was the right choice. But the British people saw differently, and now we must live with the consequences. Already the politicians, like Boris Johnson, who spearheaded this vile spectacle and fed off the fumes, are now backtracking much of the grandiose promises and claims that they made, so it will be interesting to see if any of the hate they dredged up gets thrown back on them.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of June 19 to 25, 2016, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the TopViews (alternate: WP:5000), were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	UEFA Euro 2016	3,406,686	Holding steady for a second week, with a jump of 700,000 views. This has been a wild week, with all the laws of the sport seemingly upended. Tiny Wales beat giant Russia 3-0, while Ireland beat former World Cup winners Italy. Iceland, a country with a population smaller than Coventry, England, beat Austria 2-1, while Hungary held imploding former giants Portugal to a 3-3 draw, and Croatia beat cup holders Spain.
2	Anton Yelchin	1,997,309	As if the list of tragic deaths this year wasn't long enough, 2016 had to take yet another talent before his time. Perhaps best known for playing Pavel Chekov in the revamped Star Trek film series, Anton Yelchin was a fixture in the independent film scene before a car accident ended what stood to be a stellar career.
3	European Union	1,974,203	The world's largest trade bloc got hit with an axe this week when the UK decided to leave in a referendum. No one knows where we go from here; perhaps the EU will be able to contain the damage, or it may lead to ever more referendums, and the Union's ultimate disintegration. Some may cheer this, Vladimir Putin in particular. But the potential undermining of the post-World War II global order has put many on edge.
4	LeBron James	1,764,059	LeBron, as everyone calls him, led the Cleveland Cavaliers to their first ever NBA championship on June 20, scoring 27 of his team's 93 points and securing the MVP.
5	United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union	1,193,830	To be clear, this hasn't actually happened yet; the Referendum was only advisory and Parliament could still overturn it, though that is admittedly unlikely. Even if it does pass, however, it is unlikely to accomplish what those who voted for it wanted: immigrants are still likely to come in, and most of the EU's rules will still apply, since the UK wants to trade with Europe. But the shockwave its mere suggestion has sent through the markets has had many Brexiteers rethinking their vote.
6	Game of Thrones (season 6)	1,038,832	Numbers are up by over 100,000 this week, and it's not hard to see why. Silly title aside, this week's episode, The Battle of the Bastards, was a full-on Braveheart-style mediaeval war epic with cinematic production values.
7	Finding Dory	970,801	When it was released in 2003, Finding Nemo quickly became Pixar's most financially successful film up to that time, launching the cinemagoing careers of millions of children. 13 years later, most of those kids are in college, and they are rushing back to relive their childhoods with this long-awaited sequel which, with the help of a new generation of children, will likely soon be Pixar's most financially successful film ever.
8	United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016	906,451	What's fascinating about that map is how little overlap it reveals: Scotland voted to stay; England and Wales (outside the London commuter belt) voted to leave. Catholic Northern Ireland voted to stay; Protestant Northern Ireland voted to leave. This referendum wasn't about politics; it was about identity. It was about who you were, where you were and which society you belonged to. Which is why I don't think the wounds will easily heal.
9	Money in the Bank (2016)	855,492	WWE's latest pay-per-view pantomime was held at the T-Mobile Arena (pictured) on 19 June.
10	The Conjuring 2	833,756	Fans of the supernatural may take some issue with the veracity of demonologist ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but there's no denying that The Conjuring, the first film based on their case files, was a highly effective (and highly successful) spookfest. The sequel, which reunites stars Vera Farmiga (pictured) and Patrick Wilson, has proven just as popular, with a solid 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and $242 million grossed worldwide through June 25.
11	Independence Day: Resurgence	810,983	Despite a massive marketing campaign and the return of star Jeff Goldblum (pictured), the 20-years-late sequel to the 1996 smash Independence Day only managed a fairly anaemic $41 million opening weekend at the US box office, less, in fact, than its predecessor's opening gross, despite the benefit of two decades of inflation. Finding Dory notwithstanding, there does appear to be a limit to reviving public interest in sequels a generation later.
12	United Kingdom	806,351	Not, perhaps, for very much longer.
13	Orange Is the New Black	789,088	The fourth season of the women-in-prison TV series premièred in its entirety on Netflix on June 17.
14	Boris Johnson	775,409	Imagine if Lewis Carroll had invented a character based on Donald Trump and you have a pretty good idea of what Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (no I did not make that name up) is like. I cannot be objective about this, because he spent eight years as mayor of my city, during which time he did little except give planning permission to a bunch of skyscrapers, and then spearheaded the noxious leave campaign, despite having endorsed the EU in the past, because he scented blood and thought it might give him a stab at being Prime Minister. Well now it looks like he very well could be, and Americans will be treated to a dry run of a Trump presidency.
15	Copa América Centenario	745,819	The exhibition tournament between all ten members of CONMEBOL (the South American football federation) and six members of CONCACAF (the North American football federation) to celebrate 100 years of the South American international cup, the Copa America, kicked off on June 3.
16	Game of Thrones	730,167	The latest season of this eternally popular TV series premiered on HBO on 24 April. With the final episode of season 6 due next week, we can expect it stay up on the chart.
17	Father's Day	695,604	The third Sunday in June is the most popular date in the world to celebrate Father's Day, and this year it fell on June 19.
18	Deaths in 2016	659,545	The views for the annual list of deaths are remarkably consistent on a day-to-day basis, with close to 100,000 views a day.
19	Dihydrogen monoxide hoax	642,495	As Reddit learned this week, there is often nothing more dangerous than a nerd using his superior knowledge to get one over on people, and the dihydrogen monoxide hoax is one of the classic nerd pranks. To anyone with even casual knowledge of chemical nomenclature, "dihydrogen monoxide" translates to H₂O, or water, but by using an over-specific chemical name (it really could just be called "hydrogen oxide") it makes it sound like a lethal chemical. Which of course it is. The substance of the prank is to list a series of true facts about water in the most alarmist way possible (It is lethal if inhaled; it is also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major component of acid rain; it is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide; it accelerates corrosion and is a major cause of electrical failures) to scare people into signing a petition to ban it.
20	Stephen Curry	630,148	His team may have lost the championship but he's still the most lionised player in the game.
21	Lionel Messi	564,289	The Argentine forward and "best footballer on the planet"^TM is facing Chile in the Copa America Centenario final on June 26.
22	David Cameron	547,055	The Tommen Baratheon of British politics saw his career end with a 4% swing, and genteelly stepped up to the window. Meanwhile, our own Cersei Lannister, Michael Gove, mustered his forces for usurpation.
23	Kyrie Irving	512,180	When your name is literally a prayer, you have a lot to live up to, but Irving did so this week with a hail-Mary three point shot that clinched the win for the Cavaliers.
24	List of Game of Thrones episodes	525,981	See #6.
25	Cleveland Cavaliers	523,346	The winners of the NBA Championship.

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 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. Since WP:5000 and WMF Topviews use different exclusion algorithms, articles that appear in one but not the other can also safely be excluded as false. 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.