Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-12/Features and admins

Features and admins

The best of the week

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Administrators

Two editors were promoted to adminship:

Fetchcomms (nom) has been with us since last October and has already made 27,000 edits, half of them to unique pages. Fetchcomms has 14 DYK hooks and two good articles, and helps new Wikipedians, dealing with real-time assistance in #wikipedia-en-help and responding to on-site "helpme" requests.
MGA73 (nom) is an admin and CU on the Danish Wikipedia, an admin on Commons, and an OTRS volunteer. Much of MGA's work involves cleaning up the large backlog of images and other content on the Commons and the English Wikipedia.

Featured articles

Nine articles were promoted to featured status:

Confirmation bias (nominated by MartinPoulter, who substantially rewrote the article) on the tendency for people to favour information that confirms their preconceptions. Reviewer DCGeist commented, "Lovely to see a quality article on a serious intellectual topic such as this. Looking forward to more."
Masako Katsura (Fuhghettaboutit), a carom billiards player who trail-blazed a path for women in the sport by competing and placing among the best in the male-dominated world of professional billiards.
Distributed element filter (Spinningspark), whose aim was to make a highly technical topic readable.
Achtung Baby (Y2kcrazyjoker4 and Merbabu), the seventh studio album by rock band U2, released in 1991.
The Volcano (British Columbia) (BT), a cinder cone on the Canada–Alaska border and the most recent to erupt in its field of 10 volcanos.
Jordan River (Utah) (Bgwhite and three co-workers), which runs from freshwater Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake.
Lad, A Dog (AnmaFinotera), a set of short stories by American novelist Albert Payson Terhune, published in 1919.
Banksia aemula (Casliber), who is hoping the promotion will somehow lead to his successful transplanting of "a gnarly old one" into his new garden.
The Temple at Thatch (Brianboulton), who said "not much is known about this lost Evelyn Waugh novel, partly because Waugh said nothing about it for 40 years.... An intriguing footnote for the Waugh-mongers, and my first endeavour in this field."

Evelyn Waugh, at the height of his career as a novelist

Choice of the week: The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Wehwalt to select his number-one for the week. "I reviewed Evelyn Waugh's The Temple at Thatch and recommend it. I'm not an early 20th century literature buff, but not only is this well written and interesting but it will be very useful for someone wanting (or needing!) information on this rather specialized topic. And then he can take the references and go further. That's what Wikipedia is all about."

Three featured articles were delisted:

Macintosh (sourcing and prose)
John Vanbrugh (sourcing)
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (sourcing)

Featured lists

Nine lists were promoted to featured status:

Choice of the week: We asked delegate and reviewer The Rambling Man for his opinion. "Two choices actually, for different reasons. The List of New York Yankees no-hitters, nominated by regular contributor Staxringold, exemplifies what FLC nominations should be about: it's notable, meets pretty much all of the criteria, it's interesting (even to a non-baseball enthusiast such as me), and it took little adjustment to get the green light from reviewers. Secondly, and equally important, is Sandman888's List of FC Barcelona presidents. Here was a nominator who took on a great deal of advice, including two peer reviews, made changes swiftly and diligently, and we now have a great list."

Featured topics

Three topics were promoted to featured status:

Major League Baseball Triple Crown (nominators User:Killervogel5 and User:Staxringold, with one featured article and six featured lists. The Triple Crown is awarded to a player who leads a league in three specific statistical categories.
Crag martins (User:Jimfbleak), with two featured and two good articles. There are three species of this small bird, which is in the swallow family.
Everglades (User:Moni3), with six featured articles, one good article, and one featured list. The Everglades are ecologically rich subtropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida.

One featured topic, Canadian election timelines, was delisted, for want of progress in promoting constituent articles.

Featured pictures

Six images were promoted:

Tantalum single crystal, fragments, and 1 cm³ cube (creator and nominator Alchemist-hp)
Southern Red Bishop, Male (creator Noodle snacks), cropped after reviewers' comments.
Evaporated tungsten crystals and cube (creator and nominator Alchemist-hp)
File:Egretta novaehollandiae Tasmania 1.jpg (creator Noodle snacks), to replace a featured picture of the same species for which delisting was successfully sought.
Eastern rosella (male) and Eastern rosella (female) (creator Noodle snacks) to replace a single featured picture for which delisting was successfully sought.
Clavaria zollingeri ("Violet coral") (creator Dan Molter of Mushroom Observer; nominator Sasata)

Choice of the week: J Milburn, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost, "Evaporated tungsten crystals, fragments, and cube is another fantastic photo from Alchemist-hp, who has provided many high-quality images of elements, and has more to come. This was a particularly interesting one in terms of composition and texture, to my eyes, and passed without controversy. I also adored Clavaria zollingeri, also known as "Violet coral", as a weird and wonderful example from the world of fungi, but I don't make any secret about my love of mushrooms, so I don't think that would be the most impartial choice from me!"

Featured portal

Portal:Terrorism was promoted, the first new featured portal since April.

Video on the Main Page

The July 2009 Ürümqi riots, featured on Monday's Main Page, was accompanied by a video—something rarely seen with TFAs—captured on a Wikipedian's cell-phone. Among the other TFA highlights were:

The 1930 FIFA World Cup, the inaugural FIFA World Cup championship, which appeared on Sunday to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.
Gustav Mahler, the late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation, which appeared on Wednesday. The article describes him as "one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century".

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The new format is great, very interesting. Sasata (talk) 22:16, 13 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can see the headline now: "Wikipedia promotes Terrorism!!! Oh, the humanity!" bahamut0013^words _deeds 00:05, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Then I must be the one who promoted it (no pun intended) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 12:41, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I love the new format, especially the short blurbs on the new admins. Airplaneman ✈ ^Review? 04:32, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

+Delighted by the new format (and not just by the mention of my name). Thanks to the writers for the effort they've put into it. MartinPoulter (talk) 17:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Really appreciate the descriptions on promoted items, definitely gives them the status they deserve having become featured. The disappearance of the FP gallery dismayed me at first, but I can now see how it no longer serves a good purpose in the page's context. Well done. Radagast (talk) 04:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good to see Distributed element filter being featured. I wish we had more featured articles about technical topics. -- œ ^™ 19:45, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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