So what's this WikiPop thing?

It's a proxy for what's going on in the world seen through the lens of Wikipedia. WikiPop compiles the most popular Wikipedia article each day and keeps an archive of it. There's a daily email and an RSS feed.

Wouldn't there be repeat articles some days?

Yeah, that can happen. To keep things interesting, an article won't be featured if it was already the top article in the last 30 days.

Do you store this data in a database?

Actually, no! WikiPop runs entirely off a flat JSON file, a cron job, and static HTML.

Are you associated with Wikipedia?

No, but I'm an everyday user of it and a donor.

What Wikipedia page was everyone looking at yesterday?

Comic illustration of a woman with glasses

Cape Verde

Island country in West Africa

Cape Verde, in Portuguese Cabo Verde, in Cape Verdean Creole Kabu Verdi, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelagic country in the central Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa. It consists of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about 4,033 square kilometres (1,557 sq mi). These islands lie between 600 and 850 kilometres west of Cap-Vert, the westernmost point of continental Africa, after which they are named. Cape Verde forms part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Savage Isles.

Read on Wikipedia →

1,232,812 views yesterday

OBSCURE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY OF THE DAY Nitt Witt Ridge

Nitt Witt Ridge is a house on two and a half acres in the coastal city of Cambria, California, United States. Artist and recluse Arthur "Art" Harold Beal (1896–1992) bought his hillside lot in 1928 and spent most of the next 50 years carving out the terraces with only a pick and shovel, creating his own "castle on a hill". Continue reading

WIKIPOPs BY DAY

Date	Article	Category	Views
Jun 14	Oliver Tree ·day	American musician (1993–2026)	1,508,668
Jun 13	Folarin Balogun ·day	Professional soccer player (born 2001)	958,598
Jun 12	David Hockney ·day	English artist (1937–2026)	287,022
Jun 11	OG Anunoby ·day	English basketball player (born 1997)	488,031
Jun 10	Killing of Austin Metcalf ·day	2025 murder in Frisco, Texas, U.S.	420,301
Jun 9	2026 FIFA World Cup ·day	International men's soccer tournament in North America	280,506
Jun 8	2026 Peruvian general election ·day		281,754
Jun 7	Alexander Zverev ·day	German tennis player (born 1997)	476,702
Jun 6	Mirra Andreeva ·day	Russian tennis player (born 2007)	260,296
Jun 5	Anthony Head ·day	English actor (1954–2026)	900,115

View full archive (519 articles) →

FAQ

So what's this WikiPop thing?: It’s a proxy for what's going on in the world seen through the lens of Wikipedia. WikiPop compiles the most popular Wikipedia article each day and keeps an archive of it. There’s a daily email and an RSS feed.
Who made this?: Josh Sowin made this, inspired by Hatnote and LonelyWiki. I have a newsletter called Rabbitholes which explore more obscure things (including obscure Wikipedia articles) but I was also interested in what was trending on Wikipedia because I rarely have a pulse on it. Read more about the behind the scenes creation of Wikipop here (link coming soon).
Wouldn't there be repeat articles some days?: Yeah, that can happen. To keep things interesting, an article won't be featured if it was already the top article in the last 30 days.
Do you store this data in a database?: Actually, no! I started this with the goal of making an auto-updated feed of popular Wikipedia articles WITHOUT a database. I could have used Firebase or Supabase but I’ve already done that before; what I haven’t done is make a website that is dynamically generated without one.
How do you get the data?: From the Wikimedia REST API.
How does it update and keep an archive without a database?: I ended up using two main methods: JSON and GitHub Actions. The site runs off a flat JSON file, a cron job, and static HTML. Every day, a GitHub Action fetches the top articles from the Wikimedia REST API, stores the result in a JSON file, compiles the static pages, and commits them back to the repo. GitHub Pages serves it from there. What a world.
This design feels familiar in some way?: Yes, it should! I wanted to make the design less “every current boring website on the internet” and more “fun internet of the past” … as I was thinking about this, I was looking at my art studio mural and saw Image Duplicator by Lichtenstein and started playing in that direction. The background dots were done in pure CSS and adjusted to perfection using WikiPop’s Background Adjuster created for this singular purpose.
Why did you remove the .xxx page?: Because .xxx is, surprisingly, often the most popular page on Wikipedia. My best guess is that people are searching for "xxx" on Google, and either they're not paying attention to the results or get nerd-sniped that there's a whole top-level domain dedicated to that. Either way, it's not interesting on a daily basis because it's always up there, so I filtered it out.
Are you associated with Wikipedia?: No, but I’m an everyday user of it and a donor, and they would love for you to be, too! Back when it first started I thought “there is no way this could work” but somehow it does and that’s very encouraging. It’s a free wealth of knowledge available to the world without ads. Incredible. Nothing like this has ever been created or available in human history.