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Features and admins

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
New featured picture, the V-22 Osprey in flight over New Mexico; this $27bn project has created a tilt-rotor aircraft that is capable of advanced vertical and horizontal movements.


This week's "Features and admins" covers Sunday 1 May – Saturday 7 May


New administrator

The Signpost welcomes Catfish Jim and the soapdish (nom) as our newest admin. He is primarily a content editor, focusing on subjects relating to Scottish history and geography, and is a member of WikiProject Scotland. He says that he has fallen into an informal anti-vandalism role, and intends to work more in this area as an admin.

If The Signpost had an award for the most imaginative username, Jim would be a very strong candidate.


From the new featured article: SMS Bayern down by the stern and sinking at Scapa Flow, 1919
From the new featured article on WWII German commander Ernst Lindemann, who inspects the crew on the Bismarck, 24 August 1940
Senate House, home to the University of London's administration offices and library. This example of the 1930s monumental style was designed by Charles Holden, the subject of a new featured article.
From the new featured article on the green children of Woolpit: the village sign, depicting the children
After two weeks off from promotions, featured articles has caught up, with an impressive 19 promotions:
  • Calabozos (nom), a volcano in the Southern Volcanic Zone, one of the three distinct volcanic belts of South America, lies in an extremely remote area of poorly glaciated mountains. (Nominated by Ceranthor)
  • Abdul Karim (the Munshi) (nom), an Indian Muslim who became a secretary to Queen Victoria, and influenced her views on India. Described variously as "exemplary and excellent", and "thoroughly stupid and uneducated". (Wehwalt and DrKiernan)
  • Olivia Shakespear (nom), a minor novelist and playwright who was WB Yeats' lover and Ezra Pound's mother-in-law. (Truthkeeper88)
  • SS Edmund Fitzgerald (nom), subject of a popular song, this 222-metre (728 ft) ship sank in a huge storm with 11-metre waves on a Canadian lake, with all hands lost; the cause remains a mystery. (North8000)
  • George Headley (nom), a brilliant but controversial West Indian cricketer, mainly in the years before the Second World War. (Sarastro1)
  • Hurricane Ginger (nom), the second-longest lasting Atlantic hurricane, a 27-day phenomenon in 1971. (Hurricanehink)
  • Pigeon photography (nom), an aerial photography technique invented in 1907: it involved a homing pigeon that would be fitted with an aluminum breast harness to which a lightweight time-delayed miniature camera could be attached. A version of this article has been in the German and Czech Wikipedias, and has now been brought to English-speakers by the nominator, Hans Adler.
  • Charles Holden (nom), an early modernist architect who left a lasting architectural legacy in London. His largest buildings remain prominent examples of the 1930s monumental style, but he is probably best known for and had the longest lasting influence with his stations for London Transport. (DavidCane) picture at right
  • U.S. Route 131 (nom), a 266-mile (428 km) highway that follows a major corridor in the state of Michigan. (Imzadi1979)
  • Hygeberht (nom), the only Archbishop of Lichfield, UK, ever. Nominator Ealdgyth says, "a very obscure little guy, but [surrounded by] papal intrigue, royal prestige-seeking, and wild accusations".
  • Green children of Woolpit (nom). Extra-terrestrial aliens who landed in 12th-century England? (Drmies, Ealdgyth, and Malleus Fatuorum) picture at right
  • Science Fantasy (magazine) (nom), one of the mainstays of British science fiction for 17 years, from 1950 to 1967. (Mike Christie)
  • Peace dollar (nom), the fourth in what will eventually be a ten-article topic about the Great Redesign of US coinage from 1907 to 1921. (Wehwalt)
  • Ernst Lindemann (nom), a German naval captain and the only commander of the battleship Bismarck during its eight months of service in World War II. (MisterBee1966) picture at right
  • Macrotarsomys petteri (nom), a rat that has had a dramatic shrinking in its range on the island of Madagascar, possibly due to climate change and the direct impact of human activity. (Ucucha)
  • SMS Bayern (1915) (nom), launched during World War I, was the lead ship of the Bayern class of battleships in the German Imperial Navy. (Parsecboy) picture at right
  • USS New Ironsides (nom), a wooden-hulled broadside ironclad built for the US Navy during the American Civil War. The ship spent most of her career blockading the Confederate ports of Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina in 1863–65. (Sturmvogel 66)
  • Zoo TV Tour (nom), one of the most well-covered and documented tours in popular music; it was a key part of U2's reinvention in the 1990s, during one of its peaks in commercial popularity. (Y2kcrazyjoker4)
  • Trade dollar (United States coin) (nom), one of the most reviled coins in the history of the United States. (RHM22)

Four lists were promoted:

New featured picture: a clear representation of the structure of the DNA double helix
The sheet music cover for a well-known piano piece by American rag composer Zez Confrey (1895–1971); his Kitten on the keys is a new featured sound.
Six images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":

Six sounds were promoted.


From Wehwalt's new featured article, Peace dollar: the obverse (left) and the reverse of the coin.


Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
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Where's Atlantic Coast Conference football championship games? I promoted it to Featured topic on May 4th here. GamerPro64 01:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at the box at the FT log and saw May "0 FT"; I was dog-tired after preparing this huge page (21 FAs?). The lost FT would no doubt have been picked up next week (which will be the case). Thanks. Tony (talk) 13:03, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So this is where the spike in article views for pigeon photography came from! If someone had notified me of this story in advance, I could have corrected it: The article was started here, on the English Wikipedia, by Jennavecia and Malleus Fatuorum in June 2009 as Bavarian Pigeon Corps. In the same month it went to DYK and was nominated for deletion among persistent hoax concerns. This is where I got involved and rewrote it completely. Once I was reasonably happy with it, I translated it to German and took it through German GA. In that state it was featured on the German mainpage in February 2010. But the main development happened here. Hans Adler 15:32, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, pity, we certainly would have included that information as "good copy". Thanks. Tony (talk) 18:00, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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