Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-07-31/Traffic report

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It's been a week with many entries driven by women, such as the women's football World Cup (#4, #8) and women politicians running for president of the US (#5, #7, and #18). Otherwise, it's the usual offenders: movies (#1, #2, #6, #10), sports (#9, #13), and TV (#3).

For the week of June 23 to 29, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Kabir Singh		1,470,837		In another one of those articles that makes our readers seek what does crore mean, Shahid Kapoor is an alcoholic surgeon who goes on a self-destructive path once his girlfriend (played by Kiara Advani, in the picture with Shahid) is forced to marry someone else. Reviews were mixed, with claims that Kabir Singh glamorises misogyny and toxic masculinity, but it is the third highest grossing Bollywood movie so far this year.
2	Toy Story 4		1,123,417		Pixar started the 2010s with Toy Story 3, and is closing the decade (which also featured four other sequels and a prequel) by returning to Sheriff Woody and his pals, thankfully in a movie that provides as much of an emotional and entertaining closure as its predecessor. Unsurprisingly, Toy Story 4 got glowing reviews and already amassed half a billion dollars worldwide.
3	Chernobyl disaster		1,072,936		After quite a long hold atop the list, the 1986 disaster dramatized in an HBO miniseries falls but without leaving the podium.
4	Megan Rapinoe		1,021,012		Colin Kaepernick, move over for political protests within real football. The U.S. team that is the big favorite in the World Cup (#8) is captained by someone who is refusing to sing along with the anthem and said she'll not go to the White House if the team wins (which it seems they will, to the chagrin of this writer and everyone who'd like to see someone else with the title rather than a squad which already won 3 out of 7 tournaments), given her fierce opposition to the man currently living there.
5	Kamala Harris		977,593		Speaking of He Who We Prefer Not To Name, given he ran against Hillary Clinton in the last election, the Democractic Party is all full of women who want to follow her footsteps. One of them is this Californian Senator.
6	Avengers: Endgame		848,358		The final confrontation with Thanos never left the top 10 here, but after dropping out from the box office rankings for a week, returned there as the film was reissued with extra scenes (outgrossing Avatar is just around the corner!). Meanwhile, Marvel fans get ready for the first follow-up (#10), coming out this week.
7	Marianne Williamson		811,846		Another woman pushing to be the Democrat candidate, known for her books, plus involvement with peace and AIDS relief causes.
8	2019 FIFA Women's World Cup		773,035		Everyone who likes this competition having some emotion instead of the certainty that the U.S. team will win certainly mourned that both the host team and the Lionesses (pictured) couldn't make it through. How I wish I could root for the dark orange horse this Sunday without it feeling like a lost cause.
9	2019 Cricket World Cup		771,533		The other tournament currently played on European grass fields.
10	Spider-Man: Far From Home		769,347		"Spider-Man! Where are you coming from, Spider-Man? Nobody knows who you are!" (Bark, bark, bark, bark!)

O beautiful 'momgst factual sites,
For endless waves of FA's,
For series, movies, tragedies,
A catch-all knowledge place,
Wikipedia, Wikipedia,
How trivial your readers have been,
Why are we here, if these should be,
The most read articles of the past week.

For the week of June 30 to July 6, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	Spider-Man: Far From Home		1,908,257		The man who can do whatever a spider can came swinging back onto cinema screens for the first time in four days, as the web-slinging teenager takes a trip to my side of the pond. The film is highly enjoyable, especially after they drop the villainous illusion, and acts as a worthy bookend, at least in my opinion, to the bombast and spectacle of #8. If you think that this is the last entry on the report from the Spider-Verse, your tingle may be broken.
2	Stranger Things (season 3)		1,348,233		Competing for the attention of our eyeballs with #1 is the return of Netflix's (arguably biggest) original series, which sees the return of nosebleed Jean Grey, Toothless the (Dungeon and) Dragon, and beep beep Richie, as they battle both monstrous entities from the Upside Down and their hormones. If you were concerned that the new season would abandon the near-intoxicating nostalgia of its predecessors, the fact that much of the season involves the characters going to the mall should alleviate your fears.
3	Cori Gauff		1,200,886		Over on the grass courts of the All England Club, Wimbledon is underway, meaning that the world gets to pretend it cares about tennis for a fortnight. A story of actual intrigue, alongside the Williams-Murray partnership and the continued resurgence of Rafa and Roger, was that of Cori Gauff, the youngest player in the history of the tournament at only 15 years of age, who drew attention for her nonchalance as she felled Venus Williams in the first round, going on to reach the final 16.
4	Stranger Things		1,066,290		As an author of the Top 25 Report, I am often very bored at having to come up with novel commentary for the ceaseless plethora of Netflix Originals, many of which (I'm (not) looking at you, Sandy) are not very good, to be diplomatic about affairs. However, I am a big fan of most of Stranger Things, with its superb theme, likable cast, and a highly bingeable story evocative of the work of two Stephens. Gauging from what I have seen of the new season (#2), released on America's birthday, the Duffer brothers have kept up the good work.
5	2019 Cricket World Cup		1,038,856		It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming... Football Cricket's coming home. Yes, it would appear that neither Finch nor Kohli (to the doubtless despair of much of our readership) will be able to prevent Ireland's greatest cricketer from lifting the World Cup on home(?) soil, with only New Zealand left standing in his way.
6	Midsommar (film)		1,019,055		The newest horror film from Ari Aster, director of the critically acclaimed and audience maligned Hereditary was released during the week, courting the lucrative audience segment of arachnophobes who are OK with brutalistic pagan rituals. It is an admittedly niche market. As someone who vehemently dislikes the jump-scare riddled tedium of contemporary horror, I appreciate Aster's efforts, but as someone who found much of Hereditary to be more hilariously absurdist than abjectly horrifying, I think I will give this one a miss.
7	Tyler Skaggs		975,817		A sadder entry now, as an Angel ascended at the age of 29. Skaggs, a pitcher for the non-dodging LA outfit, was preparing to face some walkers when he was found unresponsive in his hotel, leading to an outpouring of grief and morbid interest in the player from fans of the national pastime.
8	Avengers: Endgame		875,684		You knew this would be here, with the re-release hyping up and subsequently underwhelming MCU fans worldwide, and with the gap between the top two entries on the list of highest-grossing films drawing tantalisingly closer - this film, this box office juggernaut so large that the industry is still reeling, just has to be on the report. It is inevitable.
9	Kabir Singh		795,093		With their enjoyment and anticipation for #5 tarnished by kiwis, our Indian contingent went back to frantically researching the newest Bollywood hit. This time, it is Sandeep Vanga's remake of his own Telugu film that has caught their attention. The massive hit is produced by T-Series, and has been critically maligned despite its status as number one. Sound familiar?
10	Alex Morgan		762,853		Many historians cite the spilling of tea as a moment where Anglo-American relations seriously deteriorated. In Parc Olympique Lyonnais last week, star-spangled soccer starlet, having slotted the ball beyond the English keeper, popped out her pinky and triggered another breakdown between the two allies, leading to some stunningly bad takes (including from another Morgan). I'll go to the hilt for the World Cup winner, because our freedom to mock Britain must be preserved, now more than ever.

What lies beneath Earth always intrigued man, even if actual people who walked outside this planet were only those involved with exorbitant expenditures to put a man on the Moon (#5, #7). The prospect of life in other worlds moves our top entry, regarding plans to walk into an air base that supposedly housed alien corpses, and is present with the extraterrestrials in Marvel movies (#8, #10) and the beasts from the Upside Down in Stranger Things (#6). But Earth and humans is all we have so far, with all the sports (#2, #3) and movies (#4) possible available to make us forget of bad things such as people dying due to an arson attack (#9).

For the week of July 14 to 20, 2019, the 25 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the WP:5000 report were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	About
1	Area 51		2,826,689		On June 27, a funny fellow named Matty Roberts posted a gag post on Facebook: "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us." He proposed that a flashmob of thousands of alien-hunters simultanously storm the walls of Area 51, the infamous Air Force base in Nevada that supposedly housed extraterrestrials, on 20 September. He meant it as a joke, but three million people have signaled their intent to take him up on it. The government already warned that whoever trespasses into armed forces territory is subject to arrest and prosecution.
2	Novak Djokovic		1,832,087		Wimbledon's final was between two tennis legends, whose confrontations warrant their own article. After nearly five hours of play, with Federer nearly winning twice, his Serbian adversary won, marking his fifth title in the British grass.
3	Roger Federer		1,707,049
4	The Lion King (2019 film)		1,301,407		Out of Disney's tendency to remake its animated classics, The Lion King made the least sense: with no human characters, it effectively would just trade the 2D animation for the latest computer graphics. And with barely any changes to the plot, only adding short amounts of new content for the sake of padding the runtime to two hours, it is certainly the same movie again, only less inspired (the musical numbers suffered the most - what the hell did this movie do to "Be Prepared"?!), unlike what director Jon Favreau had previously done in The Jungle Book. Not that audiences cared, given this new Lion King made half a billion dollars in just a weekend.
5	Apollo 11		1,075,876		"If you believed they put a man on the Moon, man on the Moon..." Well, some stupid people claim otherwise, but on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 managed to land on Earth's satellite and fly back. 50 years later, this milestone of spaceflight is celebrated as returns to the Moon are planned, along with going to Mars.
6	Stranger Things		881,105		In-between two entries about humans leaving Earth in the 1960s, interdimensional monsters entering Earth in the 1980s.
7	Neil Armstrong		857,633		"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", said Armstrong as he left the Apollo 11's (#5) Lunar Module - "The Eagle has landed"- and became the first man on the Moon. Armstrong, who died in 2012, was described as a "reluctant American hero", given he was a fairly reserved person, and continued to keep a low profile after his return to Earth.
8	Spider-Man: Far From Home		788,599		Peter Parker's ruined European vacation has gotten the approval of both reviewers and audiences, and managed to beat Spider-Man 3 as the highest-grossing solo movie of the Webhead.
9	Kyoto Animation		756,402		An arsonist set ablaze the studio responsible for animes such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, killing at least 34 people, injuring about the same amount of people, and destroying computers and materials.
10	Avengers: Endgame		753,872		In February, the Academy somehow passed over the Visual Effects of Avengers: Infinity War to award the story of our #7. Follow-up Endgame has since become the highest-grossing movie ever, so the Oscar voters certainly have a chance at fixing this snub next year.

• These lists exclude 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 Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.