What Wikipedia page was everyone looking at yesterday?

Comic illustration of a woman with glasses

Justin Fairfax

Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from 2018 to 2022

Justin Edward Fairfax was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 41st lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2018 to 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the second African American elected statewide in Virginia, following Douglas Wilder. In 2019, he faced sexual assault allegations dating to 2000 and 2004, which he denied.

Read on Wikipedia →

587,429 views yesterday

OBSCURE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY OF THE DAY Forest swastika

The forest swastika was a patch of 100 larch trees in a pine forest located near Zernikow, Uckermark district, Brandenburg, northeastern Germany. The trees were arranged with their light colors to look like a swastika, and it covered a 0.36 ha area. It was removed by the German government in 2000. Continue reading

WIKIPOPs BY DAY

Date	Article	Category	Views
Apr 15	Samrat Choudhary	24th Chief Minister of Bihar since 2026	146,967
Apr 14	Asha Bhosle	Indian playback singer (1933–2026)	196,165
Apr 13	Péter Magyar	Prime Minister-designate of Hungary	517,672
Apr 12	2026 Hungarian parliamentary election		1,025,494
Apr 11	Eric Swalwell	American lawyer and politician (born 1980)	366,964
Apr 10	Afrika Bambaataa	American DJ, rapper and producer (1957–2026)	188,789
Apr 9	Nahui Ollin	Concept in Aztec/Mexica cosmology	146,166
Apr 8	Aubrey Plaza	American actress and producer (born 1984)	289,395
Apr 7	Dusty May	American basketball coach (born 1976)	200,924
Apr 6	Michael Malone	American basketball coach (born 1971)	199,763

View full archive (459 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.