The top 25 most popular Wikipedia articles of 2015

Wikipedia passed a notable milestone in 2015, notching up five million English-language articles. Looking back at the page view data across these articles reveals some interesting insights into the topics people were reading about throughout the year.

Movies seemingly made a resurgence in 2015, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Star Wars, Furious 7, and a number of other movie-related articles making the top 25. Compared to 2013 data, which leaned further toward TV shows such as Breaking Bad, the Walking Dead, and the Big Bang Theory, this data suggests that films are starting to regain mindshare in the entertainment realm.

Two tech companies also made the top 25 — both Facebook and Google were among the most-read topics on Wikipedia last year.

The most-read article, with almost 28 million views, was “Deaths in 2015.” This matched up with the most-edited articles of 2015 — that very same article notched up more than 18,000 edits in the past 12 months. However, the similarities between the two lists pretty much end there.

Perhaps surprisingly, people steered clear of Wikipedia for current affairs. While some topical subjects did feature prominently, such as Donald Trump, the Islamic State, and the new Star Wars movie, by and large ,it seems people elected to read about current news events in the mainstream media.

Here is the full top 25 most-read articles on Wikipedia in 2015.

1.  Deaths in 2015 (27,885,484)
2.  Chris Kyle (27,765,570)
3.  Star Wars: The Force Awakens (23,523,985)
4.  Facebook (22,330,302)
5.  Stephen Hawking (20,060,944)
6.  Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (19,335,481)
7.  List of Bollywood films of 2015 (18,171,094)
8.  Google (18,107,283)
9.   Avengers: Age of Ultron (17,409,029)
10. United States (16,855,064)
11. Kanye West (16,478,369)
12. Game of Thrones (16,135,993)
13. Star Wars (15,580,814)
14. Wikipedia (15,157,792)
15. Furious 7 (14,740,823)
16. Jurassic World (14,283,010)
17. Donald Trump (14,052,391)
18. Fifty Shades of Grey (13,362,580)
19. Pablo Escobar (13,190,232)
20. India (12,864,393 )
21. 2015 in film (12,542,233)
22. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (12,436,450)
23. Ronda Rousey (12,298,765)
24. Paul Walker (12,201,471)
25. World War II (12,149,875)