Wikipedia:Top 25 Report/February 3 to 9, 2019

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Don't forget to read the Annual Top 50 Report for 2018

Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 3 to 9, 2019)[edit]

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga

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American football's popularity leads to another Super Bowl week report where the big game dominates, with 12 entries. And yet like last year #1 is unrelated: while rapper 21 Savage is from the same Atlanta where the NFL final happened, he instead topped the report because ICE arrested him for possible deportation. Other than plenty of entries returning from our last list, there's a young politician on the spotlight, two Google Doodles, and two actor deaths.

For the week of February 3 to 9, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:


Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 21 Savage 3,268,645
Rappers getting in trouble with the law is nothing new. But it usually isn't for illegal immigration claims like the one faced by Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, who turned out to be British with a possibly expired visa. Threats of deportation ensued.
2 Tom Brady 2,383,494
Nine Super Bowls, and on the one held on February 3rd, Brady got his sixth title at the age of 41. He easily surpassed idol Joe Montana as the greatest gridiron player ever, and is married to a supermodel (who missed the list at #26) to boot. There's nothing left for him to do, so why doesn't Brady retire?!
3 Ted Bundy 1,812,605
Only four letters are different between "Tom Brady" and "Ted Bundy", but the latter is a much more despicable person: Bundy slaughtered at least 30 women, and either violated the corpses or kept parts of them as souvenirs. Interviews with him are available on Netflix, and a biopic saw its trailer drop after a festival premiere.
4 Julian Edelman 1,611,110
In spite of a threat to miss the 2018 season due to a doping claim, the Patriots wide receiver got his third Super Bowl ring, and was named the game's MVP, no less.
5 Adam Levine 1,197,017
The Super Bowl's half-time show was done by Maroon 5, whose frontman is easily becoming more famous with things such as being a judge on The Voice.
6 Super Bowl LIII 1,135,664
I'm no fan of American football. And yet the 53rd Super Bowl managed to be even worse than I expected, with the teams rarely scoring, and the boring outcome where the already victorious enough New England Patriots tied the Pittsburgh Steelers as the biggest champions with six titles.
7 List of Super Bowl champions 1,125,020
8 Emiliano Sala 1,107,974
Actual football, for a change! Only for a tragedy, as two weeks after the plane in which this Argentinian travelled disappeared, his body was found at the bottom of the English Channel. All the big clubs paid their respects.
9 Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge 879,080
Google homaged the 225th birthday of the German chemist who identified caffeine, that stimulant who many people can't start their days without.
10 Freddie Mercury 858,616
"We Are the Champions" , written by the ever-popular Queen frontman, is unescapable after sporting events. And sure, seemingly every Spotify account in New England started playing it after the Super Bowl, and even the Boston police got along.
11 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 857,133
Described by Samantha Bee as "a Republican's wet nightmare", the New York representative continues on the news, possibly due to the Green New Deal she proposes.
12 Kristoff St. John 831,921
The actor best known for 25 years in The Young and the Restless died at the age of 52.
13 New England Patriots 804,489
You know why this is here. And the defeated Los Angeles Rams, who could've won a title just in their third year after returning to California, only got to #27 and missed the report.
14 Rob Gronkowski 788,650
The widely recognizable Pats tight end now has three Super Bowl titles to his name.
15 Deaths in 2019 736,528
Seems everything we've ever known's here
Why must it drift away and die?
16 Fyre Festival 689,600
The ads sold a luxurious music event held in a Bahamian beach. Nothing like that was to be found, and the attendees' struggles were compared to Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games. The responsible has been convicted for fraud, and two documentaries were released about the festival-turned-scam.
17 Bill Belichick 658,831
If the New England Patriots coach doesn't decide to retire, he'll begin his 20th season managing the team, and so far he's only missed the playoffs twice while getting to nine finals and six titles.
18 Albert Finney 643,879
This celebrated British actor with a long career that included five Oscar nominations - one for Best Picture winner Tom Jones - died at the age of 82.
19 Chinese New Year 596,486
The Year of the Pig has started!
20 Robert Kraft 589,815
In 1984, a disastrous tour by Michael Jackson and his brothers started a chain of events that led this Boston-area executive to own the New England Patriots' stadium and then the team itself (#13). Under Kraft, the Pats got to all the titles discussed everywhere else in this report.
21 Andrew Cunanan 584,425
The vagrant who killed Gianni Versace, played by Darren Criss in the currently binged by lots of Netflix viewers The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.
22 Gladys Knight 559,024
A Super Bowl in Atlanta needed the anthem sung by a local artist, and the "Empress of Soul" had the honor.
23 List of Super Bowl halftime shows 538,006
Adam Levine's (#5) Maroon 5 were the latest main attraction, bringing in two rappers, Travis Scott and Big Boi (who is from the same Atlanta of the game). Regarding all three, after two good songs from the band's early days the setlist went bad pretty quickly; people were underwhelmed when the SpongeBob Squarepants intro for Scott didn't lead to a song from said cartoon; and it's always great to hear "The Way You Move", unlike the overplayed-as-hell "Hey Ya!".
24 Super Bowl 536,507
How I wish we were discussing a Superb Owl instead.
25 Jared Goff 524,826
The Los Angeles Rams quarterback, who by default will be blamed for the team's hideous Super Bowl performance that led to only three points scored.
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 3 to 9, 2019)
Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (February 3 to 9, 2019)

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 (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.
    • Kayden Boche: No good reason has been found for this model's high views.
Note: If you came here from the Signpost article, please take any discussion of exclusions to this article's talk page.