New featured picture: the International Space Station, photographed by a crew member on the space shuttle Endeavour after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking separation. The undocking occurred on May 29, after Endeavour spent 11 days attached to the orbiting laboratory. For smaller window-widths, please use the horizontal scroller.
This week's "Featured content" covers Sunday 12 – Saturday 18 June
Featured articles
From the new featured article, medical investigations of people injured in collapsed buildings during the Blitz of London led to numerous discoveries of the mechanisms underlying renal impairment in the disease rhabdomyolysis.From the newly featured List of World Heritage Sites in Madagascar, gradual erosion has produced vast fields of limestone spires known locally as tsingy, interspersed with dry forests, lakes and mangrove swamps inhabited by numerous endemic and threatened lemur and bird species.From the same list, the landscape surrounding Betafo, the capital of one of four ancient kingdoms of the Betsileo people, exemplifies the traditional terraced rice paddies and irrigation systems that emerged in this part of the southern highlands in the 17th century.Six articles were promoted to featured status:
Anna of East Anglia (nom) (killed in 653 or 654), was the King of East Anglia from the early 640s until his death. (Nominated by Amitchell125)
Scott Zolak (nom). Nominator Wizardman says in irony, "while the great [US National Football League] quarterbacks remain in article purgatory, I bring a backup to FAC (I promise to bring a more important athlete here next time)".
John Y. Brown (1835–1904) (nom), a governor of Kentucky, whose reputation as an orator put him in high demand, and whose zealous criticism of the Know Nothing Party attracted death-threats. (Acdixon)
Mary Anning (nom), a British fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for a number of important finds she made of the Jurassic age, including marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis, where she lived. Her work contributed to the fundamental changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the earth that occurred in the early 19th century, at a time when women were not even allowed to attend meetings of the Royal Geographical Society as guests. (Rusty Cashman)
Rhabdomyolysis (nom), an interesting medical condition that arises from numerous different situations, from drug abuse to being trapped under a collapsed building. It has been a personal project of JFW's since 2007.
Monty Hall problem (nom) was delisted for reasons of prose, referencing, stability, POV and MOS compliance.
Bison skull pile (nom; related article), a photograph from the mid-1870s of a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertiliser, restored by User:PawełMM, and modified by User:Chick Bowen after reviewers debated the visual resolution—the issue that had led to the delisting of the image (photographer unknown).
Discuss this story
1. It looks like you can show big pictures. ;)
2. I think you should always show all the FPs.
TCO (talk) 17:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Tony. I get ya on wanting to have the FAs and such illoed. Perhaps if you kind of clearly differentiated the sections though? Just had the FPs at the very end or something and then could put all the pictures? Would allow going no borders with them. Also, I think more clearly segregating the FPs from picture illo-ing an FA/FL would be nice structure for the reader. No biggies. P.s. I inserted images into the MOS talk thread on left images. My new thing is centering. Just sorta saying to heck with text wrapping at times...TCO (talk) 04:10, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reponses. Now, Juju will correct me if I'm wrong. The problem—much under-recognised on en.WP—is to optimise for a range of permutations of the following factors:
To this juggling act need to be added—here, not in order of importance—the push and pull of (i) the overall character-length of the page; (ii) whether there are bullets, and thus a narrower column width to compete for real-estate with side images and issues for screen-readers where left-side images are used; (iii) the character-length of captions; (iv) the desirability of keeping pics close to their associated main text/section; (v) the desirability of presenting a close succession of images with a justified horizontal left-edge; and (vi) how detail-rich each image is.
The baddies to minimise are (i) text sandwiching; (ii) pic overlap; and (iii) acres of white space.
My hunch is that manipulating pic numbers, sizes, and locations is the most straightforward way for editors to optimise the display in this forest of variables. The wikimedia software makes our job very difficult (memo to developers for long-term strategies, perhaps treated together with the mobile device program?).
This is how the image strategy at "Featured content" has evolved. (Co-author Dabomb87 is not around at the moment, which is a pity.)
The big bottom pic is something of a problem: for users who view the page on a 27" monitor at high res, with the window width occupying the whole screen (many WPians), it's hard.
Comments? Tony (talk) 05:24, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
TCO Comments
Caveat for Tony: (1) I'm not smart enough to write short. (2) Sometimes when I'm being analytical, it comes across as harsh, but really...it's more that trying to express things, helps me think them through.
1. The issues integrating pictures into article text and here are somewhat different. This is a low "writing page". you've got pics and bulleted lists of links here. Also, this is NOT a page that "anyone can edit" (so something that might be unstable in article space, would not be here). In addition, you basically can blow off some of the "rules" of article space land, as this is a weekly newspaper and people cut you slack to be a little different. While there are some general long-discussed issues with layout in articles that match here, I would not conflate the two discussions.
2. Also, rather than worrying about fixes that require technology, I would just concentrate on what you want your little page to look like, given the tools right at your fingertips. Systemic changes in the code, need to be driven from article layout discussions and needs, not this particular page anyway.
2.5. You said something above about "this is the only place you can show a large picture", but it's certainly possible and appropriate at times to show things full screen (or centered and big) in article land. Peope do it with medical diagrams, maps, panoramas, etc. all the time. Not everything has to be an "illo" with text wrapping around it. When someone pushes "page down" to hit a new screen, it is a lot like flipping a page in a book. And books have full page pictures at times.
2.75. People reading on very small devices are going to have issues all over the net. I would not sweat that too much. they get a scroll bar, big deal. People reading text on 27 inch monitors have much bigger problems in article land then here...but then why are they subjecting themselves to that. this would be an easier page to read anyway on 27" text as it has the bullets and all creating less long runs of text. other than that, would not worry more about the 27 inchers.
3. For this page, specifically: To me, having pictures scattered in the wrong section is much more distracting than what side you put them on or the like. Somewhat similarly, it's distracting that some FA/FT/FLs (and even some PICTURES) "have a picture" and others don't. I have to wander around to figure it out. I have to read the caption to see if it is an FP or an illo for an FA. And then this page seems to have a different layout every week. I would organize and segregate the content, and have the same order every week. I can live with blank space way better than stuff in the wrong section. This would also have the advantage of not as much head scratching on layout each week.
4. I would put featured pictures in their own area, either at the top of the page or the bottom. And have them all in a (non-thumbed) wallpapery gallery. Then have a separate section of text (bulleted list) above or below the gallery, so that people can click to the link of the featuring discussion (I don't think clicking to the link of the article of an FP has any value...many are very crappy articles...or then there are multiple articles the pic is in.) But clicking to the discussion is valuable. And is in the spirit of featuredness. And maybe even draws people into participating in the FP process (which we need). If you want to do the work to write a sentence on the topic of each FP, that's fine too, especially if the object was hard to figure out. And since I advocated deep-sixing the captions.
5. Yeah, the big picture at the top is nice. Probably that argues for putting FPs first in the order of the page. (you could do FL or FA, but then which one do you pick?)
6. If you want to have pictures for the FA/FLs, etc. that is fine, but I would keep them next to blurb instead of littering the right side. Maybe make them more like DYK blurb pictures. Or just have a gallery section for each category.
7. Blurb for Scott Zolack seems out of place with the others. All the others have an objective description. This one shifts voice to the nominator. think it is better to have parallel structure.
8. FL looks like a blue haze. not sure what to do about it. Is the rationale not to have blurbs like for FA, as the lists are usually more self explanatory than our (often very obscure) FAs? I guess you could get rid of user credit...but then that seems like it might be demotivating.
9. Actually it might even be interesting to have a table for all this stuff. (Like at the bottom of State reptile). But tables on wiki are sooo painful. Excel or MS Word are so easy.
10. Not sure we need blurbs for FPs as much as a bulleted list of links. Seems strange we have blurbs for FPs, but not for FLs. Also, in the two FPs, there's again a non parallel approach (one describes the process of getting approved, the other describes the picture). And then, the blurb on the space shuttle is duplicative of a caption. But I guess if you cut all the captions, these blurbs could be the caption substititues.
11. Seems like in previous weeks, we've had a "none promoted" statement. Not sure which I like better, but like it standard.
TCO (talk) 06:42, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]