Mrityorma amritam gamaya...

If you were wondering, the title above is part of a mantra in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad; it translates to, "From death lead us to immortality." Perhaps a touch melodramatic, I'll admit, but it seemed appropriate to me this week, given the milestones this list crossed. Death is no stranger to this list, but it has never cast such a pall as this week, when for the first time half the slots in the top 10 were devoted to it, including the top 3. The other milestone is, of course, India, who for the first time claimed five slots in the top 10.

For the full top-25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions. For a list of the most edited articles of the week, see here.

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of July 26 to August 1, 2015, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:

Rank	Article	Views	Notes
1	A. P. J. Abdul Kalam	3,589,713	The surge of views this former scientist and reluctant politician received upon his death this week at the age of 83 is merely a reflection of the regard in which he was held by his fellow Indians. A Muslim in a predominantly Hindu country, he rose to the very top of the political ladder, first as a developer of India's missile and nuclear programs, and then as President. Despite adhering to Islam, he considered himself an Indian and drew much inspiration from his country's Hindu heritage. As a result, his one term as President was one of the most popular in his country's history. A lifelong advocate of technology, he believed that India could become a developed country through embracing and expanding its knowledge base.
2	Yakub Memon	1,098,805	The Muslim terrorist, believed to have played a role in the 1993 Bombay bombings that killed 257 people, was hanged this week amid speculation that he was paying for the crime of his still-at-large brother Tiger Memon. Many commentators contrasted his death with the outpouring of grief which greeted that of his fellow Muslim and national hero A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, and pondered what it augured for the future of India's society.
3	Roddy Piper	1,086,945	Wikipedia viewers love their wrestlers, and so the death of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, world-renowned WWF and WCW heel, at the relatively young age of 61, was bound to stir emotions. In the ring, "Hot Rod" played up his Scottish roots, affecting the rage of a Glaswegian football hooligan and entering to the sound of bagpipes, for which he was named (his real last name, incidentally, was Toombs, which you would think would be a perfectly acceptable wrestling name). While never a wrestling fan, I will always remember him as the working class hero of John Carpenter's political alien invasion allegory They Live, in which he originated the now-legendary line, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass- and I'm all out of bubblegum!" OK, so it makes no sense, but it's still cool.
4	Bajrangi Bhaijaan	948,650	Bollywood's Muslim-targeted counterprogramming to the raging box office tsunami of Baahubali: The Beginning, starring Hindu/Muslim superstar Salman Khan (pictured) and opening on Eid weekend, made Rs 2 billion ($31.2 million) in its first nine days, and earned support from legends like Shekhar Kapur. In its first 15 days, the film has grossed more than Rs 4 billion ($62.5 million) worldwide. But Khan's tweets in apparent support of Yakub Memon have led to posters for the film being defaced in some areas.
5	Bobbi Kristina Brown	930,371	The eerie death of the daughter of the late Whitney Houston (found, like her mother, in a bathtub) has cast a pall of tragedy on a family already no stranger to it. Aged just 22, she had already become a focus of tabloid gossip and speculation.
6	List of highest-grossing Indian films	725,049	With the barnstorming performances of Baahubali: The Beginning and Bajrangi Bhaijaan making national news in India, people are interested to know how they stack up against the recent crop of record breakers. NOTE: includes views for its redirect page List of highest-grossing Bollywood films
7	Baahubali: The Beginning	747,036	At $41 million, this sprawling, two-part historical epic is the most expensive film in Indian history (no, it isn't actually Bollywood, since it was made in South India, much to Bollywood's chagrin). Starring the Telugu actor Prabhas (pictured), the first part, subtitled "The Beginning", broke box office records upon its release on July 10, earning Rs 2.15 billion ($34 million) worldwide in just 5 days and in just three weeks has already crossed the Rs 4.85 billion ($76 million) mark, showing remarkable stamina for an Indian blockbuster, most of which drop off by 80 percent at that point.
8	Ant-Man (film)	515,092	Other than Guardians of the Galaxy, this was always going to be Marvel Studios's biggest gamble, and signs did not augur well after writer-director Edgar Wright abandoned the project when denied total creative control. And yet, while it is hardly the box-office miracle that Guardians was, it has proved a moderate domestic hit, at $132 million to date, though it is on course to become the lowest-grossing film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
9	Deaths in 2015	482,484	The viewing figures for this article have been remarkably constant; fluctuating week to week between 450 and 550 thousand, apparently heedless of who actually died.
10	Ronda Rousey	482,298	The undefeated UFC women's bantamweight champion beat Bethe Correia in 34 seconds during UFC 190 on August 1 in Correia's home town of Rio de Janeiro. Apparently Correia had been trash talking Rousey prior to the fight, which strikes me as a rather odd thing to do to someone who a) has never lost a fight and b) won her last fight in 14 seconds.

← Previous "Traffic report"

Next "Traffic report" →

In this issue

5 August 2015 (all comments)

Traffic report

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

Indian subjects

Clearly Indian-related subjects in English Wikipedia are getting increasingly greater number of visitors. Particularly Bollywood is proving its force even in English. But how does this translate into visits of the same subjects in say Hindi Wikipedia. Is Hindi Wikipedia developing fast enough to cater for this increasing influx of viewers from India and other parts of the world regarding Indian subjects? Just curious. werldwayd (talk) 12:54, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One factor to keep in mind is that not everyone in India speaks Hindi. Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil all have speaking populations larger than Great Britain, and even "Hindi" includes several sub-languages that are not always mutually intelligible. If Wikipedia is to be believed, then English, at 125 million, is India's second language, with as much as 50% the number of Hindi speakers, depending on how one defines "Hindi". That also makes India the second-largest English-speaking nation in the world after the United States. Serendi ^pod ous 13:15, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One week a trend does not make. Indian subjects are not garnering an increased presence on Wikipedia overall in any way: rather, a number of prominent Indian topics peaked in the news recently, and that audience flexed its collective muscle and brought those topics to the top of the viewcount. Put another way, for the purposes of illustration: if Barrack Obama experiences a (say) 30% increase flux in traffic and makes this list, does that mean that interest in the entire United States, as a topic, has increased? Of course not.

The data here is not a demonstration of a trend per se so much as it is a demonstration of another lesser but nevertheless interesting fact: that high-production Bollywood films can carry view hits just as well as high-production Hollywood ones. ResMar 18:28, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid you're wrong; not about Bollywood rivalling Hollywood- that's correct, but this has been going on for years, not weeks. In fact, the last eight or nine months, when Indian topics have been in remission, has been the exception, not the rule. That the English language Wikipedia would be dominated by the world's first- and second-largest English-speaking populations (the US and India) makes perfect sense. What's surprising is that it has taken this long to happen. Serendi ^pod ous 18:37, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Judging topical traffic off of a weekly top-ten list is like measuring Wikipedia traffic by extrapolating from main page hits: an appealing but meaningless shorthand. Top ten hits, though interesting from a causal perspective, are borderline statistical noise.

For measurements of long-term trends I suggest looking at popular pages data. ResMar 22:39, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We also have a top 25, and we do an annual list as well. The trends that occur in the top 25 are pretty well represented in the year-end list. Serendi ^pod ous 23:51, 6 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Serendipodous that in the 2.5 years this chart has been kept, I subjectively feel that Indian topics (particularly pop culture) are showing increased relative popularity. Certainly if Mario or anyone wants to do a more rigorous analysis of this hypothesis using the WP:5000 they are strongly encouraged to do so. I suspect it could be worthy of publication if done right, based on some of the research we see published using viewcount statistics. I would also hazard to guess that the English wikipedia is getting the most attention. An article like Bajrangi Bhaijaan is currently much more comprehensive in English than its Hindi or Urdu versions. --Milowent • ^hasspoken 05:48, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]