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

John Tuggle

American football player (1961–1986)

John Davis Tuggle was an American professional football running back who played in the National Football League (NFL) for one season with the New York Giants. He played college football for the California Golden Bears and was selected by the Giants as the final pick of the 1983 NFL draft. Tuggle's professional career was cut short after his rookie season by a cancer diagnosis which led to his death two years later.

Read on Wikipedia →

334,076 views yesterday

OBSCURE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY OF THE DAY Weed High School

Weed High School is a secondary school located in Weed, California and is part of the Siskiyou Union High School District. Continue reading

WIKIPOPs BY DAY

Date	Article	Category	Views
Sep 13	Sitee ·day	1993 Maldivian film	571,625
Sep 12	Elena Rybakina ·day	Kazakhstani tennis player (born 1999)	416,703
Sep 11	September 11 attacks ·day	2001 terror attacks in the U.S.	665,793
Sep 10	Barry Melrose ·day	Canadian and American ice hockey player, coach and broadcaster (1956–2026)	238,858
Sep 9	Ben Shelton ·day	American tennis player (born 2002)	337,515
Sep 8	Alex Michelsen ·day	American tennis player (born 2004)	208,780
Sep 7	Elizabeth Holmes ·day	American businesswoman convicted of fraud (born 1984)	642,791
Sep 6	2026 Saxony-Anhalt state election ·day	State election in Germany	256,468
Sep 5	Mirzapur (film) ·day	2026 Indian film by Gurmeet Singh	213,671
Sep 4	Richard O'Sullivan ·day	English actor (1944–2026)	251,253

View full archive (609 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.