Ebola drives reader interest

Serious news continues to dominate the most popular articles chart on Wikipedia this week, with Ebola virus disease—the sickness humans get—far and away in the top spot. In the top 25, we see the related articles Ebola virus, which talks about biological aspects, at #18 and 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak at #19. Articles concerning the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict remain in high demand for another week, including Gaza Strip (#5) and Hamas (#6), as well as three more in the top 25: Israel (#12), Israeli–Palestinian conflict (#20), and Palestine (#24). Two films also made the top 10 this week: the American film Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Hindi Kick.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.

For the week of 27 July to 2 August 2014, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	Ebola virus disease	2,031,341	The continuing growth of the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak of this serious disease, which began in March in Guinea, is causing great interest in this article. Views began growing on 23 July (18,000+ views), and by 30th have been usually exceeding 300,000 views per day. As of August 1, the World Health Organization has reported 1603 suspected cases and 887 suspected deaths from the disease. Data from Guinea through mid-June indicate the outbreak has a probable fatality rate of about 64%. Figure includes hits for the redirect Ebola page.
2	Guardians of the Galaxy (film)	640,568	Up from #16 last week, this 2014 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics series opened in the UK on 31 July and the US on 1 August. As of 5 August, the film's worldwide earnings are over $170 million.
3	World War I	576,281	Fighting in World War I began one hundred years ago this week, causing the normal round of press coverage we see at such big anniversaries. What were people occupying themselves with in 1914 before war broke out? Check out 1914 and peruse the many links in the infobox.
4	Kick (2014 film)	381,965	Up from #11 last week, this Hindi action film starring Salman Khan (pictured) was released on 25 July. The film has received mixed reviews, but has set several domestic box office records. One reviewer at Bollywood Hungama, while noting that Khan's movies are "critic proof", concludes that Kick "is a paisa vasool, seeti-maar entertainer." That means you get your money's worth (paisa vasool), and you'll "blow the whistle"—meaning enthusiastically cheer—(seeti-maar) if you go see it.
5	Gaza Strip	426,854	The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, part of a very long and complicated history of conflict, keeps this article on the list for the third straight week.
6	Hamas	365,631	Also seeing continuing popularity due to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.
7	Susanne Klatten	353,063	German billionaire Susanne Klatten is one of the top 50 wealthiest people in the world, and the richest woman in Germany. On 30 July, a Reddit "Today I Learned" thread noted that she met her husband while she worked at BMW (which she owned a stake of, via her father) under an assumed last name; he didn't know she was filthy rich until after they were sure about each other. This is a likely fantasy of many male internet users, let's be honest.
8	Laura Prepon	340,514	The bulk of views on the article about this Orange Is the New Black actress came on August 1, and though we cannot find a precise cause, it is the type of article (an attractive current American actress) that will get the occasional intense burst of popularity. She is a likely fantasy of many male internet users, let's be honest.
9	Deaths in 2014	324,661	The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article. Deaths this week included British politician Christine Oddy (July 27), American journalist Margot Adler (pictured) (July 28), Sierra Leone physician Umar Khan (July 29; died of ebola, headed the country's efforts to combat the outbreak), Argentine football executive Julio Grondona (July 30), Indian actor Mukku Raju (July 31), Norwegian writer Jan Roar Leikvoll (August 1), and Olga Voronets (August 2), a popular Russian singer of the 1960s and 1970s.
10	Facebook	322,490	A perennially popular article.

From the raw WP:5000 stats, some notes:

113 articles exceeded 100,000 views this week, the last being 2013 videogame The Last of Us, coinciding with the release of updated version for the PlayStation 4 called "The Last of Us Remastered".
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (#3 last week and #2 two weeks ago) dropped all the way to #99 (109,717) as the press apparently ran out of angles to cover the lack of progress at the crash site.
17-year old Kazakhstani volleyball player Sabina Altynbekova was #105 with 106,948 views. But the article was subsequently removed via Articles for Deletion, as she was primarily in the news because her coach is complaining her attractiveness is causing too much distraction. There's precedent for this deletion, but nothing we can easily cite because, well, it was deleted.
Two weeks ago, 2014 FIFA World Cup was #1. It is now down to #133 (90,870 views).
Twitter went crazy this week about Sharknado 2: The Second One which debuted on the SyFy Channel on July 30. On the WP:5000, it made #275 (62,814 views), though its prequel Sharknado hit #168 (79,655 views), also due to the hoopla of its sequel.
The last article to hit 50,000 views was Elon Musk (#422); Joan Rivers (#1647) was last to break 25,000; and German footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger (#5000) was last to make the list with 13,494 views.

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Re Ebola, it looks like ZMapp drove some interest in monoclonal antibody therapies. I'm a huge fan of using current events to steer people towards understanding of general solutions, and I think encyclopedias should try to leverage that effect when possible. During the 2001 anthrax scare, general public interest in Cipro got government agencies to focus on supporting some antibiotics which had been phased out because they were no longer profitable compared to newer in-patent medicines. One of them turned out to be effective against a previously drug-resistant form of streptococcal infection that was an issue in several hospitals. On the other hand, after China beat Novartis to the H5N9 bird flu vaccine by a few weeks last year, Novartis sold their entire vaccine unit, believing that there would never be any money in it since it was no longer a market they could corner. Pharmaceutical companies' market abuses kill more people than Ebola ever will, and mostly in developed countries. (See Pharmaceutical industry#Controversies, [1], [2], [3], etc.) EllenCT (talk) 20:43, 9 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I think the ebola article is an excellent article - far better summary that any of the single event-driven news stories out there from traditional news providers. I understood what is going on through this article much more than any news website coverage. Wikipedia at our best! AndrewRT(Talk) 22:39, 10 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]