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 picks one of the most popular Wikipedia articles 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

Jesús de Miguel

Spanish footballer (1996–2026)

Jesús de Miguel Alameda was a Spanish professional footballer who played as a striker.

Why the popularity?

CD Tenerife striker Jesús de Miguel died at 30, a day after collapsing following an on-pitch collision in a game against FC Andorra.
Born in Madrid, he spent most of his career in the third tier and won promotion with both CD Castellón and Tenerife.
UEFA announced a period of silence before all European games this week, and Gerard Piqué, who owns Andorra, was among those paying tribute.
His family asked that he be taken to Navahermosa, his parents' hometown where he spent childhood summers, for a final farewell with teammates.

Read on Wikipedia →

585,060 views yesterday

OBSCURE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY OF THE DAY Screen burn-in

Screen burn-in, image burn-in, ghost image, or shadow image, is a permanent discoloration of areas on an electronic visual display such as a cathode-ray tube (CRT) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) in a computer monitor or television set. It is caused by cumulative non-uniform use of the screen. Continue reading

WIKIPOPs BY DAY

Date	Article	Category	Views
Nov 2	Karl Bushby ·day	English adventurer and paratrooper (born 1969)	147,561
Nov 1	Tung Tung Tung Sahur ·day	AI-generated character	192,363
Oct 31	Nidhi Razdan ·day	Indian journalist (born 1977)	303,902
Oct 30	Sunny Ozell ·day	American singer-songwriter (born 1978)	488,907
Oct 29	Patrick Stewart ·day	English actor (1940–2026)	2,356,552
Oct 28	Susan Saint James ·day	American actress (1946–2026)	200,179
Oct 27	2026 Israeli legislative election ·day		438,729
Oct 26	Eric Bauza ·day	Canadian voice actor (1979–2026)	511,715
Oct 25	2026 Brazilian general election ·day		271,783
Oct 24	UFC 333 ·day	Mixed martial arts event in 2026	224,691

View full archive (667 articles) → Wikipedia's most-viewed of 2026 →

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 picks one of the most popular Wikipedia articles 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.