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Features and admins

The best of the week

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By Tony1, Wackywace, and Dabomb87
The featured picture Choice of the week is this panorama of the Uluguru Mountains in Tanzania, East Africa.

Administrators

The Signpost congratulates five editors on their promotion to adminship:

  • Thumperward (nom)—Chris Cunningham, a system administrator in Scotland—has been with us for more than four years. He has worked heavily on most of Wikipedia's core templates, including infoboxes and article message boxes, and has a strong record of involvement at the help desk and the technical village pump.
  • Favonian (nom), "a mathematician by education, a software architect by profession and an amateur historian when time allows", is fluent in both English and Danish. During more than two years of editing, Favonian has been active in anti-vandalism and new-page patrolling, with maintenance work on linking, referencing and categorisation.
  • Bsadowski1 (nom), from the American midwest, has been active since December 2008, and has specialised in tasks such as ensuring compliance in account creation and operation, patrolling new pages, and reporting vandalism. Bsadowski is also an admin and checkuser on the Simple English Wikipedia, and an admin on MetaWiki.
  • Joe Decker (nom), a graduate of the prestigious California Institute of Technology, has been a Wikipedian since 2005. He has been a significant contributor to the unreferenced BLP cleanup drive, in which he has provided referencing for more than a thousand articles created by other editors.
  • Jujutacular (nom), also known as "juju", specialises in featured content. He is an active reviewer for featured list candidates and featured picture candidates, and has produced 2 featured lists, 15 did you knows, 3 featured sounds, and 11 featured pictures.

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status:

"Susan Blue" by the children's book illustrator Kate Greenaway (1885), engraved and printed by Edmund Evans, the subject of a new featured article
The article on the village of Little Thetford, north of London, was promoted. This 2005 tornado sucked up large quantities of dark earth from the surrounding fenland.
The treasure beneath the field: the silver "Hoxne Tigress", a broken-off handle from an unknown object in the Hoxne Hoard, unearthed by accident in Suffolk, England (picture by Mike Peel)
Babe Ruth—from 500 home run club, our featured list Choice of the week—was the first player to reach 500 home runs (1929)
Biddlestone Chapel, was built as a private chapel in a remote location in Northumberland, England, on the remains of a medieval pele tower.
A male Dendropsophus microcephalus tries to attract females by blowing up his vocal sac during a call.
The element Ruthenium. This image was shot outdoors, and the sky can be seen reflected by the mirror-like surface of the processed bar.

Choice of the week: The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Brianboulton to select what he believes is the best FA for the week. He wrote: "I was tempted to choose Edmund Evans for the beauty of its images, but in the end I decided on Montague Druitt. Unsolved mysteries, even 120-year-old ones, are endlessly fascinating, especially when told in sparse, lucid prose which is sometimes deliciously dry. I loved this line: 'Druitt, his mother and his sister Georgiana were invited to a ball in honour of Clarence at the home of Lord Wimborne on 17 December 1888, although they did not attend because by that time Montague was dead, his mother was in an asylum, and his sister was expecting her second child.' Seems like some people will do anything to avoid their social obligations."

Four featured articles were delisted:

Eight lists were promoted:

Choice of the week: We asked regular nominator and reviewer Rambo's Revenge for his pick of this week's crop: "Look through the log of promoted featured lists and you will see that sport figures frequently. However, this is not something to be bemoaned. Even as a baseball-ignorant Brit, the 500 home run club stood out to me as an exemplary list. It uses sortabilty to show how, chronologically, members of the club appear to have a pathway into the Hall of Fame. A less common theme is architectural lists; the newly promoted Historic Chapels Trust is a beautifully complete piece of content that not only gives a rounded explanation and history of the Trust but details, descriptions and, where possible, images of each constituent chapel." Pictures from both lists appear above.

One topic was promoted:

  • Kentucky gubernatorial election, 1899 (nom). This tumultuous election and its aftermath featured political party infighting, voter fraud, a Supreme Court case, and the only assassination of a state governor in U.S. history (nominated by Acdixon).

Eleven images were promoted:

  • A tramp (nom) depicted in an 1899 American poster. Adam Cuerden recropped the original for better composition, treated the colours to approach the likely original unfaded version, and made other subtle improvements. (below)
  • Dendropsophus microcephalus (nom), a male of this frog species displaying its vocal sac while calling (created by Brian.gratwicke).
  • Tasmanian Darner (nom) Photographer Noodle snacks said the dragonfly "was sitting beside Lake Will, drying its wings, [and] by taking many shots to get a sharp one I was able to get something decent thanks to the obliging subject".
  • Metallic Ringtail (nom) are found in still-water bodies lakes, swamps, and alpine bogs. Noodle snacks, the creator, carefully identified the species from The complete field guide to dragonflies of Australia; he pointed out that both "metallic lustre and ringtail" are clearly visible.
  • Common Brushtail Possum (nom) an animal native to Australia, and taken with a flash, virtually the only way to capture images of nocturnal animals (created by Noodle snacks).
  • Ruthenium bar (nom), atomic number 44 (created by Alchemist-hp) (right)
  • Uluguru Mountain Ranges (nom), a panorama showing the Uluguru Mountains in Morogoro, Tanzania (created by Muhammad Mahdi Karim). (top)
  • Ernest Borgnine (nom), the actor, showing off his new Chief Petty Officer hat at the United States Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. (created by Mark D. Faram of the U.S. Navy) (below)
  • Peacock Flounder Bothus mancus in Kona (nom), four frames showing a flounder as it changes colour to match the surroundings, and then burying itself in sand (created by Mbz1).
  • Common collared lizard (nom), taken from an angle that the nominator stated was "perfect to show off the pattern on the body, and especially on the neck, from which the lizard takes its name" (created by Dschwen).
  • Central Heterochromia (nom), showing an eye condition in which there are two colours in the same iris. The image was created by Adam Cuerden, who told reviewers that "sometimes, yourself is the best illustration ... I thought, why not?"

Choice of the week: Juliancolton was a member of the 2009 Organizing Committee for the Commons Picture of the Year Award (see Signpost coverage). We invited him to choose his number-one featured picture for the week. "In my opinion", he told us, "the Uluguru Mountain Ranges (top) panorama is among the most impressive images promoted this week. Aside from helping to fill a notorious gap in coverage of Africa on Wikipedia, it has impressive technical quality. Panoramas are difficult to successfully create, and this particular one expresses quite a bit of skill on the photographer's part."

Two featured pictures were delisted:


This image of a 1899 American poster depicting a tramp (an itinerant vagrant), is a new featured picture.
Reviewers praised this picture of veteran American actor Ernest Borgnine for its brilliant character portrayal.
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Thumperward certainly deserves adminship. I hope when I'm in uni (which, of course, is one big dream) I can get my name up there, with 'Wikipedian since 8'. :) I'll be, like, 20 by then. Kayau Voting IS evil 03:28, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I reckon the picture of Ernest Borgnine aptly summarizes my thoughts on the excellent style this page has taken recently - hats off 'n smiles :) Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 11:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I really do like the new fleshing out of new admins, promotions to featured status etc. Makes them come to life. So much better than the bald way they were done before.--86.74.186.220 (talk) 21:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You guys are doing a fantastic job at this section, really very fun to read. Sadads (talk) 12:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everybody for your kind words. Readership of F and A has increased since the new format was introduced; I hope that translates to more page views and editorial involvement for the promoted articles and media as well. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:07, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, the format is very good. ResMar 21:39, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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