This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 19 – Friday 25 March
2,000th featured list
From the list of Moons of Saturn, promoted May 2010: a raw image from the Cassini space probe of the equatorial ridge on Saturn's moon Iapetus, taken September 2007 at a distance of just over 60,000 kilometresFrom Order of battle at the Battle of Camperdown, promoted April 2010, a painting of the Battle of Camperdown (1797) by William Adolphus Knell, now on display at Edinburgh CastleOn 14 March, the English Wikipedia reached a milestone with the promotion of its 2,000th Featured list (FL). Featured lists are determined by the community to be the best and most useful stand-alone lists on Wikipedia. The featured list process was created in May 2005 by Filiocht, and the first featured list, List of North American birds, was promoted on 1 June 2005. The criteria against which nominations are judged focus on the list candidate's usefulness, completeness, accuracy, neutrality, style and prose, and have been changed to reflect the community's higher standards for content-forks and red links (see previousstories).
Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist (presented by the World Science Fiction Society to artists of works related to science fiction or fantasy which appeared in low- or non-paying publications)
Harrias, nominator of List of international cricket centuries by David Gower, had this to say about one of his FLs being among those designated as the 2,000th FL: "It's nice to be a part of history, but to be honest, writing the (joint) 2,000th is merely a number: each one of the 1,999 (ish) FLs promoted previously are just as important as these six. I think the FL process is actually among the better ones for recognised content on Wikipedia! The reviewing team is quite small, but tends to be pretty friendly, especially once you've experienced the FLC process a few times."
On 20 February, Giants2008 was made the third featured list director. Giants2008 joined Wikipedia in March 2008; he has made 9,000 edits, is a primary contributor to nine featured lists, and has been an active reviewer at both featured lists and featured articles. We asked him for his thoughts on being director and on the FL process: "I've always felt that reviewing lists provided a nice change of pace from checking standard articles. The lists at FLC have a wide variety of styles, and I enjoy working with nominators to get the most out of them. FLC is also cordial as a whole, which makes interacting with nominators easy. When I accepted the position as FL director, the most important factor for me was that I enjoy the reviewing that comes with it. There's a lot of extra work that comes with being a director, but since I like it I'm willing to devote the time necessary to ensuring the next 2,000 FLs are the highest quality possible."
In another milestone, arrangements have been made for one featured list and two featured sounds to appear on the main page each week.
The Signpost welcomes two editors as our
newest admins.
Fæ (nom), from the UK, can be found doing anti-vandalism work and CSDing and is heavily involved in GLAM collaborations, the Hoxne Hoard featured article, OTRS and Commons.
Valfontis (nom) brings more than five years' experience as a Wikipedian to the role. She is an active member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon, has worked for Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam, and is familiar with AfD and reporting vandals to AIV. Valfontis has helped to promote five articles to GA status, and one to FA.
At the time of publication there are two live RfAs: Neutralhomer and Salvio giuliano, both due to finish Saturday.
Featured articles
Early motorsports: from the 1906 French Grand PrixRobert Oppenheimer (left) at the remains of the Trinity test in September 1945. The white canvas overshoes prevent fallout from sticking to the soles of their shoesTen articles were promoted to featured status:
2009 World Series (nom), Major League Baseball's 105th championship series, in which several records were tied and broken. (Nominated by Staxringold)
Kennedy half dollar (nom), first issued only months after the assassination of US President Kennedy in 1963. Co-nominator Wehwalt says the double whammy of hoarding and rising silver prices meant that "the half dollar failed to circulate despite massive mintages, and effectively destroyed the half dollar as a coin used in trade. It has never recovered, and the coin is only struck today for collectors." (RHM22 and Wehwalt)
Sacagawea dollar (nom), which proved unpopular with Americans in commerce. "Nonetheless, it continues to be minted, now with a reverse that changes yearly", says nominator RHM22.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (nom), theoretical physicist best known for the Born–Oppenheimer approximation, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process, and the prediction of quantum tunnelling, neutron stars and black holes. He worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons. (Hawkeye7)
Eastbourne manslaughter (nom), the death of a 15-year-old boy at the hands of a teacher. The case was important in the development of modern laws surrounding corporal punishment. (Nikkimaria)
1906 French Grand Prix (nom), from the very early days of motorsports: on a dusty road outside Le Mans, drivers in huge, rickety cars fought, driving on temporary wooden-plank roads, being blinded by tar. "It was a miracle no one died", says co-nominator Apterygial, with AlexJ.
Planet Stories (nom), now one of the most sought-after pulp science-fiction magazines from the 1940s and 1950s. (Mike Christie)
Flow (video game) (nom), originally played millions of times as a free flash game and then successfully used to launch to prominence an American independent video game developer co-founded by two University of Southern California Interactive Media Division students. (PresN)
Suillus salmonicolor (nom), or "the slippery Jill", a widely distributed, slimy, and (somewhat) edible mushroom. (Sasata)
User:Alvesgaspar's photograph of a tabby catTwelve images were promotedThe Lion Tower in Tripoli, an important example of 15th-century Lebanese architecture, photographed shortly after 1900. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
Aerial photo of Laguna Beach, California (nom; related article), a seaside resort and artist community in southern Orange County, California. Creator User:WPPilot took what is apparently the only photo of the whole city. "I fly a route that takes me down over Laguna and then up the ridge to get this perspective. Few people ever see this view."
Ferrari F40 (nom; related article), one of 1,315 Ferrari F40s produced between 1987 and 1992. It was the first production car to reach 200 mph (320 km/h). (Created by Will Ainsworth, slightly modified by User:Bob Castle.)
Container ship (nom; related article), the 196-metre-long Delmas-operated container ship, the Nicholas Delmas, unloading containers at the port of Zanzibar in Tanzania.
Lion Tower, Tripoli, Lebanon (nom; related article), an important example of 15th-century architecture from this part of the Middle East. (Created by the Photographic Division of the American Colony, Jerusalem (most likely Elijah Meyers or Lars Larsson); digitally edited by User:Chick Bowen.) picture at right
New featured picture: of more than a little relevance to events over the past few weeks, a map of caesium-137 contamination in 1996, a decade after the Chernobyl crisis. Restriction orders are still in place for the production, transportation and consumption of food contaminated by Chernobyl fallout.
Featured sounds
Engraved portrait of composer Richard Strauss by Ferdinand Schmutzer (1922); a performance of Strauss's Burleske was promoted to featured status.Four sound files were promoted:
Discuss this story
Not to be rude, but you really need to check this on a high-res monitor before publishing: on high screen resolutions, it takes a lot less space for the text, so you can end up with far too many images if you're not careful.
I've removed one image, but, really, I should have removed two, for layout reasons. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:33, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- It's not so much this text as your edit summary that was a little brash. I have reinstated the picture, but captioned it as related to featured sounds, since you are right, for wide window widths the pic will not be adjacent to the FS section. If you use a full window width on a 27-inch monitor, most WP pages will display with text/image distortions. We cannot cater for every window width (and resolution) at the same time; thus, a compromise is reached. Perhaps you might experiment with smaller widths. Mine is less than half the width of the monitor, which also minimises the occurrence of one- and two-line paragraphs. Tony (talk) 02:40, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I possibly should have specified wide-screem monitors in the edit summary, but it really did look appalling on wide-screen - there was about 2/3rds of a screen worth of whitespace left of the pictures. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:42, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- This might be related, but occasionally images here overlap. It's rare, but here are the two most recent examples, dated. One is from this week, the other from several months ago. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:12, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've just realized the internet has ruined me. The Lion Tower just looks like a face to me, while I am expecting a funny capshun on the cat. Great pictures though! Resolute 02:44, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]