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Brawny

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By Xanthomelanoussprog and Hafspajen
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 16 August to 24 August.


A gold dinar, minted for Muhammad al-Ikhshid, Egypt AH 333
Warren Harding and the finger of destiny

Six featured articles were promoted this week.

  • Carrow Road (nominated by Dweller and The Rambling Man) Carrow Road is the ground of Norwich City Football Club. The club's original ground, The Nest, was located in a disused chalk pit and had subsidence problems from the collapse of old workings. Forced by the Football Association to move as the Nest was "no longer suitable for large crowds" (a 30 foot deep hole had appeared at one corner of the pitch) the club was able to acquire a sports ground used by a local mustard maker.
  • Dave Gallaher (nominated by Shudde) Dave Gallaher (1873–1917) was a New Zealand rugby union footballer best remembered as the captain of the "Original All Blacks"—the 1905–06 national team, the first New Zealand side to tour the British Isles.
  • Imperator torosus (nominated by Sasata and Casliber) The Imperator torosus or brawny bolete is a fungus found in warm dry places in southern Europe, especially Hungary. The meaning of the name "brawny" and the epithet torusus, or "strong", in its Latin name are also reflected in the common French and German names for this bolete fungus; the flesh has an uncommon amount of chitin in its structure giving it an almost rock-like feel.
  • Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid (nominated by Cplakidas) Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid was a commander of troops of the Abbasid Caliphate, who became ruler of Egypt and parts of Syria in 935 CE. The previous governor had failed to keep order over the province, and ibn Tughj launched an invasion by land and sea, forcing out the governor and rebellious troops. Ibn Tughj was appointed governor by the caliphate; on his request he was subsequently named "al-Ikhshid", the title held by the kings of Ferghana, his ancestral homeland. He required everybody to address him only as "al-Ikhshid". He had a reputation for extreme caution in his policies, and was relatively uncultured, but with a passion for perfumes.
  • Sieges of Taunton (nominated by Harrias) The town of Taunton occupies a strategically important position on the route between Bristol and Devon and Cornwall. During the first of the English Civil Wars the town was subjected to three sieges by Royalist forces between September 1644 and July 1645. Taunton had a somewhat ruinous castle, but no town walls; the sympathies of the townspeople lay with Parliament and the Puritans.
  • Warren G. Harding (nominated by Wehwalt) Harding was the 29th president of the USA, serving from 1921 till his death in 1923 from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was a popular incumbent who shares a middle name with a certain Signpost editor, but his reputation took a nosedive after his death when some of the friends and acquaintances he shoehorned into the federal administration were found to be corrupt. Harding had either been unaware of or had ignored the illegalities committed by his appointees. He had at least two mistresses, one of whom, Nan Britton, published an account in 1927 of how he had fathered a daughter with her, a claim supported by recent DNA testing. Harding was reckoned to have "good looks, affability, enthusiasm, and persistence", but his oratory was vague and gaffe-filled, a style which H.L. Mencken famously mocked as "Gamalielese". Harding had a tendency to sit on any available fence, which he did with women's suffrage and Prohibition.
The cricket pavilion at Leyton

Four featured lists were promoted this week.

  • Lil Debbie discography (nominated by Azealia911) Lil Debbie is the stage name of Jordan Capozzi, an Italian-American rapper. She was a member of The White Girl Mob, but was "kicked out ... due to being disloyal to the other members of the group". Lil Debbie has released a number of solo mixtapes and singles.
  • List of Essex County Cricket Club grounds (nominated by AssociateAffiliate and ChrisTheDude) Essex County Cricket Club was established in 1876, and has played in first-class matches since 1894. The County Ground at Leyton was the club's home until 1977. They are now based at another County Ground in Chelmsford, with some matches played at the Castle Park in Colchester.
  • List of United States Army campaigns during World War II (nominated by Tomandjerry211, Hawkeye7, and Gecko G) The United States Army fought in a number of campaigns during World War II, beginning with the Burma campaign which began in December 1941. Campaigns in Africa, Italy, France and Germany resulted in the defeat of German forces in May 1945. The extremely hard-fought island-hopping campaigns across the Pacific Ocean were brought to a conclusion by the army-developed atomic bombs dropped on Japanese cities in August 1945.
  • List of accolades received by Fashion (film) (nominated by Prashant) Fashion was a 2008 Indian drama film directed by Madhur Bhandarkar and produced by UTV Motion Pictures.

One featured topic was promoted this week.

  • Almirante Latorre-class battleships (nominated by Sturmvogel 66) The Alimrante Latorre class consisted of two "Dreadnought"-type battleships built for the Chilean navy by British yards. Unfortunately for the Chileans, construction started in 1913, one year before the Great War began. The two ships were commandeered by the British navy, one being converted into an aircraft carrier. The Chileans got one of the ships back in 1920, but the British kept the aircraft carrier.

Twenty-one featured pictures were promoted this week.

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I am delighted to see that the featured pictures are displayed on this page, with attribution, and allowed to speak for themselves as images, rather than play a minor part in accompanying a huge slab of original text that usually gets posted here and I'm quite sure that nobody ever read. In a hyperlinked encyclopaedia like this one, it is quite sufficient to have a link to the article should one wish to learn more about the subject. I hope this pattern continues for all future Signposts, and congratulations to all those image makers who saw their work promoted. -- Colin°Talk 09:00, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there does seem to be a divide between the visually-orientated, such as yourself and those who are more word-orientated, as it were. I remember an elderly gentleman perusing the second-hand pornography on a market stall. The trader asked him if he would prefer pictures or words. Here we like to cater to both types; feedback indicates that there's plenty of readers as well as gawkers. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 12:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced there is any divide wrt "featured pictures". The clue is rather in the name. The previous signpost coverage of FPs read like the dullest "Did you know" rejects. Quite why anyone would want to ready 20-odd summaries of random topics, the selection of which wasn't because they were interesting topics or well written and engaging summaries, but because some photographer somewhere took a half decent picture and added it to a WP article (or cleaned up a scanned painting, etc, etc). -- Colin°Talk 14:43, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did struggle through those descriptions hoping to see something interesting but I would like to have seen the photos. With my slow Internet I rarely clicked on any links. This will slow down the entire page for me, but anyway ...— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, they're "Featured" and they're "Pictures"- they're selected by a voting procedure to be featured. Your complaint about the standard of the pictures should be taken up with the voters. The two regular contributors to the FP section of FC (WPPilot and Hafspajen) both have English as their second language. If you think the summaries aren't well-written, then start writing some- there's nothing to stop you contributing. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. If there's some feature or change that a reader wants to see in the Signpost, the best way to make that happen is to contribute themselves. We might never think of it on our own. Gamaliel (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do wonder if there is a language-barrier problem to this discussion. I haven't made any complaint about "the standard of the pictures" -- I actually congratulated the winners. And why on earth should anyone waste their time writing better summaries -- my whole point is that we don't need them at all. If someone has the talent to write excellent summaries of topics, then they should spend that talent on the Lead section of our articles, not on a section in a newsletter dedicated to images and not dedicated to topics or articles. As for my contributions, well, I take photos. And occasionally they get featured. User:Gamaliel's comment makes no sense. I've been complaining about the FP section of this page for years, so you've all had plenty opportunity to consider a different way of doing it. And now that you have done it differently, and it is so, so much better, and clearly takes an awful lot less time to prepare, just keep at it. The best thing the editors of Signpost could do would be to listen to their readers from time to time, rather than make patronising remarks along the lines of "if you think you can do better, show us". -- Colin°Talk 08:33, 5 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That wasn't intended to be patronizing. I was just trying to make the point that we are not always equipped to act on reader feedback due to time and skill constraints, so the best way to make change happen is to participate in that change. We do want and encourage reader feedback and we act on it whenever we are able. I personally was not aware of your viewpoint on FPs here (it sounds you've been voicing it well before I started participating in the Signpost so I wasn't around to see it) but I certainly am now. From my perspective, this gallery change was a new experiment, not something people were clamoring for. Either way, the reader response has been positive so far and that response will be a big factor in deciding whether or not to make the change permanent. Gamaliel (talk) 14:21, 5 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've been asked to point out that English is in fact WPPilot's first language, not second. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 11:30, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, Xanth, this is far better than how you left this prior to publication, where you hadn't actually described any of the featured pictures in the first place, just had a mess of appallingly-laid-out images surrounding a bare list. If this is what you're actually submitting for publication, a gallery is by far the better option. You seem to be spending a lot of time complaining about the gallery, without actually putting in the work for your preferred option. Given the choice between a gallery and unfinished or half-arsed descriptions, I think the gallery wins every time. There's genuine cause for debate if a lot of care is put into the text, but I don't think that's been a general rule for a while. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:47, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't complained about the gallery at all. WTF are you on about? Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 12:04, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The usual system is for someone else to do the pictures, while I work down from the FAs. I'll let Adam do the work this week, see if he manages to get down to the FPs. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 12:10, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-04-30/Featured_content Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-05-21/Featured_content. I was the major FC editor for pretty much a year before I burned out. It's entirely doable by oneself, just not advisable to do it regularly, which is one of the reasons I burned out in the end. I don't think I need to prove myself because someone points at me and says "You're going to do it!" Adam Cuerden (talk) 12:40, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In my original post, I tried to make a positive constructive comment about the change to the FP section, though of course when saying it has improved one naturally has to mention the perceived negatives of what went before. Due to the rather bizarre responses by Xanthomelanoussprog, I may have adopted a more critical tone in subsequent posts. Sorry for any offence. It is useful to compare last week's FP content with the two posts by Adam Cuerden above. Adam's text at least made some attempt to describe the featured picture, along with some information about the subject, whereas last week's seems to have treated the FP section in the same manner as FA and FL.
Consider if you were a journalist writing about the Sony World Photography Awards. What's your #1 priority in covering that story? To display the winning photograph(s). If push comes to shove, and you have limited space in print, all you show is the photograph and a caption. If you have more room, then you can describe the winning photograph ("An Orangutan took a banana leaf and put it on top on his head to protect himself from the rain..."). If even more room, then you can discuss the award system and interview a photographer. What you wouldn't do is write "The orangutans (also spelled orang-utan, orangutang, or orang-utang) are the two exclusively Asian species of extant great apes. Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were considered to be one species. However, since 1996, they have been divided into two species." and then find you didn't have room for the photo. The only reason that content is featured is because the image is great, and absolutely nothing to do with how well written or how interesting the topic is. So please, just make sure you display all the featured pictures in a nice format, and if you do want to write any text at all, make sure it is about the picture or the process that went into taking or restoring or scanning it. Ideally doing so alongside the image to make it easy to work out what you are talking about. -- Colin°Talk 15:41, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to add my two cents, I'm also very excited to see the featured pictures in gallery form this week. This page looks great! Michael Barera (talk) 13:28, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the gallery is good—interesting info about any of the pics could, I guess, be included in a caption. Nice work, thank you, FC people. Tony (talk) 04:39, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While I like the gallery form I most want to know whether the elderly gentleman Xanthomelanoussprog referred to preferred images or words when it came to pornography.--Roisterer (talk) 05:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice to notice that people are not against galleries. I propose though a combination of the old and the new style. I think the featured pictures should still have a brief description, many times there is an interesting and educational history behind it. Those who doesn't care for the text, just jump over it, no problem. But the galley is a great idea, some FP'S could BE DISPLAYED AS USUAL; and the rest that don't fit in could be displayed in the GALLERY. Tis kind of dumping everything in a gallery with no further explanation is not a real presentation of the finest works Wikipedia has to offer, though the idea of a gallery is very good idea. If we describe FA's and List, why should we skip FP's? Some people do appreciate those descriptions, too. I think a good compromise could be achieved here. Hafspajen (talk) 14:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But the huge problem with what we had before was that instead of celebrating "finest works Wikipedia has to offer" (the images) we got original prose instead of the images. That original prose didn't get featured and neither did the topic of the prose, and in fact the topic has no bearing on whether the image gets featured: we simply need an encyclopaedia article that uses it. Now, writing about the image is clearly easier, encyclopaedic and relevant if the image is actually a painting that is notable in its own right. But what we really need to get away from is using the fact that someone took a great photo of Tower Bridge, say, to inflict one's own original and non-award-winning writing about bridges on our readers rather that showing them the bloody photo! I suggest that given the quantity of featured articles and lists to cover, that the patience of any reader to read a random paragraph on a random topic has long gone by the time they reach the FP section. If you must entertain them with prose, make sure it is relevant and interesting, rather than doing it simply because that's what we always did, and never do it at the expense of the images that were featured. I suggest that any prose is placed adjacent to the image it concerns, to maximise the chance they may enhance one another. Please. -- Colin°Talk 17:38, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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