Ebola, Ultron, and Creepy Articles

Ebola virus disease leads the Report for the fourth straight week. The rest of the list is primarily a mix of pop culture topics, including movie Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4) whose trailer was leaked early, and the death of Oscar de la Renta (#7). A BuzzFeed article on creepy Wikipedia articles, no doubt well-timed with Halloween (#9) around the corner, was responsible for three articles in the Top 25, including June and Jennifer Gibbons (#10), Taman Shud Case (#17), Joyce Vincent (#25). And the internet-run-amok controversy of Gamergate cracked the Top 25 for the first time at #19.

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

For the week of 19-25 October, 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	1,695,567	Though not as phenomenally popular as last week's 8.2 million views, this article still had more than enough views at almost 1.7 million to be the most viewed article for the fourth straight week. If you want to keep track of recent developments, check out 2014 Ebola virus disease epidemic timeline. Notable recent events included an announcement by the World Health Organization on 20 October that Nigeria has successfully defeated its recent breakout; the first confirmed case in Mali, one of the poorest nations in the world and quite ill-equipped to address health emergencies, occurred on 23 October; and a fourth case in the United States was diagnosed, this time a doctor recently returned to New York City from a trip to Guinea to treat Ebola patients. Through 23 October, WHO has reported 4,922 official Ebola deaths. Note: includes views from the Ebola redirect page.
2	Diwali	1,325,621	The Hindu festival of light, which draws attention to the inner light beyond the material body, the Atman, occurred this week.
3	Ultron	1,263,228	Ultron, a comic book villain in the Marvel Comics family, will be the subject of the 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron (#4), and will be played by James Spader (pictured). A week-early leak of the film's trailer propelled both articles into our Top 10. Marvel cheekily blamed Hydra, a fictional terrorist group in the Marvel universe, for the leak. One could question whether the leak was intentional and has already been added to the resume of some marketing guy at Marvel Studios.
4	Avengers: Age of Ultron	741,451	See #3. Scarlett Johansson (pictured) is another of the many stars in the film, which will be released in North America on 1 May 2015.
5	Happy New Year (2014 film)	733,860	This 2014 Bollywood film starring Shahrukh Khan (pictured) stormed the Indian box office on Diwali weekend. The comedic caper movie tells the story of a motley crew entering a world dance competition to get close to a valuable trove of diamonds.
6	American Horror Story: Freak Show	636,016	The fourth season of the American Horror Story series debuted on 8 October, and is in the Top 10 for the third straight week.
7	Oscar de la Renta	632,772	The world-renowned fashion designer died on 20 October at his home in Connecticut. In 2007, subsequent to being diagnosed with cancer, De la Renta remarked "The only realities in life are that you are born, and that you die. We always think we are going to live forever. The dying aspect we will never accept." Most recently, de la Renta designed the wedding dress which Amal Clooney wore.
8	Facebook	617,221	A perennially popular article. On 23 October, Facebook launched a separate new app called "Rooms," which is essentially an anonymous chat room.
9	Halloween	608,007	Unlike most other holidays, Halloween seems to creep into the Top 25 well in advance of its appointed date. It just barely missed making the Top 25 last week (#27).
10	June and Jennifer Gibbons	605,331	On 22 October, BuzzFeed published the listicle "21 Wikipedia Pages That Will Make It Impossible For You To Sleep" which proved quite popular. June and Jennifer Gibbons was listed at #9 in the article, but directed the most traffic to Wikipedia among the bunch, probably because the list entry was practically clickbait: "The entire backstory and what happens (to the twins) after they decide to go through with the sacrifice (of one of them) is fascinating." This report won't tell you want happened to June and Jennifer Gibbons either, you'll have to read June and Jennifer Gibbons to find out what happened to June and Jennifer Gibbons, but you will be shocked and amazed when you do click on it. But we will tell you that the BuzzFeed article was also successful enough to put Taman Shud Case at #17 and Joyce Vincent at #25 in the Top 25.

Notes: From the raw WP:5000, it took 255,150 views to make the Top 100 raw entries this week (John Wick (film)). Stephen Hawking joined Facebook and hit #114, while Monica Lewinsky joined Twitter and made #118. The 2014 World Series (#466) was the last article to break 100,000 views; the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (#1671) last to break 50,000; and Dark matter (26,824 views) closed out the list at #5000.

Ebola, Ultron, and Creepy Articles

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