Snow big deal

The 2014 Winter Olympics had more of an impact on the Top 25 than the Top 10, which had to shoulder old stalwarts like the death list, Reddit threads, TV shows and the eternal presence of Facebook; still, with four slots, it's the most searched topic on the list. Other topics of interest for the English-speaking world this week include Facebook's purchase of the mobile messager WhatsApp and the new trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy, which from the looks of things could spell another hit for Marvel Studios.

For the full top 25 report, including exclusions, see WP:TOP25

For the week of 16 to 22 February, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages were:

Rank	Article	Class	Views	Image	Notes
1	2014 Winter Olympics		819,448		The 2014 Winter Olympics drew to a close this week. Thanks to Russia's vicious anti-gay laws and roundly condemned political imprisonments, this has become, whether it wanted to or not, a lightning rod for modern civil rights protest.
2	House of Cards (U.S. TV series)		768,302		The second season of this political thriller series was released in its entirety on Netflix on 13 February.
3	Curling		690,932		The first major event at the Olympics, competitive ice resurfacing (sorry, curling) remains one of the quaintest and most intriguing.
4	WhatsApp		652,803		The mobile messaging service, which has a reputation as the site kids use to avoid their parents snooping on their Facebook pages, exploded into the public sphere when people wondered why on Earth Facebook would pay $19 billion for it.
5	True Detective (TV series)		544,945		This HBO police procedural stars Woody Harrelson and actor-of-the-moment Matthew McConaughey.
6	Facebook		511,120		A perennially popular article
7	Guardians of the Galaxy (film)		507,948		In the great Hollywood high-dive, Marvel Studios has no time for the safety cord. The phenomenal success of their current run of films was built on risk, and this is their riskiest project yet; a $100 million-plus space opera mega-epic about a bunch of guys you've never heard of, including a talking raccoon and a walking tree, directed by a guy who worked for Troma, and whose last film's lifetime theatre gross was exactly $327,716. Well, its first trailer was released on the 18th, so how did it do? Judging by its social media impact, spectacularly. Or at least better than Man of Steel.
8	Ice hockey at the 2014 Winter Olympics – Men's tournament		502,792		A surprisingly specific article for the top 10, an indication of the event's popularity. Incidentally, Canada won gold; the US barely missed the podium. There will be some rowdy bars in Ottawa tonight.
9	Playboy Bunny		487,854		Wearers of the first service uniform registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office became a topic on Reddit this week.
10	Deaths in 2014	List	454,253		The list of deaths in the current year is always quite a popular article.

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According to the article, Facebook acquired Whatsapp for $19 billion not $17 billion as stated here. --Meno25 (talk) 05:15, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed in this edit. --Meno25 (talk) 05:56, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Asterisk

What does that * in "viewed pages*" stand for? --07:35, 28 February 2014 (UTC), Utar (talk)

It's a fossil from an earlier version of the page. I'll get rid of it next time. Serendi^podous 07:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]