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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-08-23/Features and admins

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Features and admins

The best of the week

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By Dabomb87 and Tony1
A new eye-catching featured picture: Kelvin–Helmholtz instability can result from the turbulent mixing of two fluids of different density. It is sometimes observed in cloud formations, on the surface of gas giants such as Saturn, and when wind blows over a water surface. A mathematically generated GIF animation was converted to a video to be much more friendly to slow internet connections at virtually the same quality.

Administrators

The Signpost congratulates four editors on their promotion to adminship.

  • GorillaWarfare (nom), formerly Theunicyclegirl, who has been with us since July 2006. She is an active vandal-fighter, contributes to AfDs, and helps with the backlog of unreferenced articles.
  • Nev1 (nom), a prolific content contributor in areas related to Greater Manchester. This was Nev1's second successful RfA; he passed his first in 2008, but voluntarily gave up the tools in January 2010. Nev1 could have been re-promoted without going through an RfA, but believed "it would not be honest to claim an extant mandate from two years ago".
  • Jmh649 (nom), a Canadian emergency physician. "Doc James" (his signed name) has been active since July 2008, and a substantial contributor to important medical articles; these include obesity, gout, and streptococcal pharyngitis (commonly known as strep throat).
  • Fainites (nom), a Wikipedian since December 2006, has been a productive editor in the often-fraught subject of psychology. He is a primary contributor to three featured articles in the topic: reactive attachment disorder, Rudolf Wolters, and attachment theory.

Featured articles

The Silky Sifaka's "aerial disturbance" roar in response to large birds
One of six sound files in Silky Sifaka, our featured article Choice of the week
A small stream rushes over rocks through a forest.
A long-exposure shot of Fir Creek, a tributary of Bull Run River
The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status:

  • Underground Electric Railways Company of London (nom), the holding company for the lines opened during 1906 and 1907; they survived dodgy financing and over-optimistic passenger estimates to become the dominant transport organization in London (nominated by DavidCane).
  • National Anthem of Russia (nom), adopted in December 2000. Alexander Alexandrov wrote the music, and Sergey Mikhalkov the lyrics (the melody had been used for the Soviet anthem) (Zscout370).
  • Stephens City, Virginia (nom), with a population of 1,500, was just south of the boundary between union and confederate states and was adjacent to a major free black community before the Civil War. It narrowly escaped torching by Union forces during the Civil War. (Neutralhomer)
  • Silky Sifaka (nom), a large, critically endangered lemur characterized by long, silky white fur. The male uses its specialized toothcomb to gouge trees before scent-marking with its chest. The article includes six sound files exemplifying this primate's extraordinarily varied auditory displays. (Simponafotsy and Visionholder, with taxonomic assistance from Ucucha). (sound file above)
  • Ricketts Glen State Park (nom), a state park in Pennsylvania covering 13,047 acres (53 km2), with a complex natural, economic and cultural history (Dincher and Ruhrfisch).
  • Bull Run River (Oregon) (nom), a tributary of the Sandy River in Oregon. It is the primary source of drinking water for the city of Portland, Oregon (Finetooth). (picture at the right)
  • Mount Cayley volcanic field (nom), a remote volcanic zone on the Coast of British Columbia. The name comes from Mount Cayley, the largest and most persistent volcano in the zone (Volcanoguy).
  • Royal National College for the Blind (nom), founded in 1871 in Hereford, UK, for blind or partially sighted students. It is the home of the first association football academy for visually impaired players, and houses the National BlindArt collection (TheRetroGuy and PaulLargo).
  • "Road to the Multiverse" (nom), an episode of the animated television comedy series Family Guy, in which the main characters use a remote control device to travel through a series of various parallel universes (GageSkidmore).
  • Whitechapel murders (nom), the ghastly murders of eleven women—mostly prostitutes—in the 19th century. Although the true killer has yet to be revealed, the murderer is widely thought to be the "notorious, but elusive, individual known as Jack the Ripper" (DrKiernan).
  • 90377 Sedna (nom), an astronomical object, about two-thirds the size of Pluto, which currently lies about three times as far from the Sun as the outermost planet, Neptune, and takes about 12,000 years to orbit the Sun (Kheider and Serendipodous).
  • Mark Tonelli (nom), an Australian Olympic swimmer of the 1970s and 1980s. He successfully lobbied for the right of Australian Olympians to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics despite the government's wish to boycott it to protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; he was stripped of the captaincy of the national team for poor behaviour (YellowMonkey).
  • Acra (fortress) (nom), a fortified compound in Jerusalem of the 2nd century BCE. (Astynax and Poliocretes)
  • Rosetta Stone (nom), an Ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele with engraved text that was vital to the understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The collaboration was part of the British Museum Project (Captmondo and Andrew Dalby). (picture at right)
  • Hotel Chevalier (nom), a 13-minute English-language film released in 2007 (Skomorokh).
  • Thomasomys ucucha (nom), "a little rodent from Ecuador with a nice name", according to nominator Ucucha.
  • Charles Domery (nom), another of Iridescent's "eating disorders of the French Revolutionary Wars" mini-series, in which a Polish soldier was captured by the British and subjected to a bizarre dietary experiment.

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Iridescent to select his best of the week (and of course to dutifully disregard his own nomination). "I chose Silky Sifaka. To me, Wikipedia's great strength is its ability to treat relatively obscure topics with the same thoroughness it gives to the major topics. Readers can find equally good articles on major subjects elsewhere; but there's probably no other free resource which covers this particular species so thoroughly. With its combination of well-written prose neither over-technical nor dumbed-down, thoughtfully chosen images, and informative sound and video clips, this article is Wikipedia at its best." (sound-bite at the top)

Featured lists

Troy Tulowitzki, one of the Colorado Rockies' first-round draft picks

Nine lists were promoted:

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Chrishomingtang, who specializes in basketball-related topics, for his choice: "I picked List of Watford F.C. seasons as my favorite. The lead flows well and clearly explains the team's history. The table looks great and every abbreviation is explained in the key section. The entire list is well-referenced and well-illustrated by relevant images."

Featured pictures

A cast of the cranium of "Tournai", a member of an extinct hominid species who lived about 7 million years ago
A Chthamalus stellatus barnacle colony
18 images were promoted:

Choice of the week. We asked Makeemlighter, a regular reviewer and closer at featured pictures candidates, to choose his favorite among the past week's promotions: "With several outstanding images this week, it was a difficult choice. I kept coming back to the Freiburg panorama, so I'll make it my pick. This panorama is very sharp and well-stitched. As an American living in a suburban neighborhood, it's fascinating to see such a detailed image of this German city. I really get a great sense of what it must be like to live in Freiburg. It's particularly interesting to see the modern layout of a city that's been around since the 12th century. Be sure to check it out using the 360° viewer. " (below)

Featured picture Choice of the week: a panoramic view of Freiburg, Germany as seen from Schlossberg. Freiburg Münster (cathedral) can be seen in the center.
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  • Thanks for having a more logical CotW this time. J Milburn (talk) 20:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the mini-bios of admins ... a personal touch (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 21:26, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed. It takes a lot of work for something to be listed here, and a personal touch makes it all the better. (X! · talk)  · @962  ·  22:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, I think that's an excellent touch too. Another great Featured Stuff page for Signpost. Long may they continue. --bodnotbod (talk) 17:19, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'll chime in and say that i too appreciate this comprehensive format more than the strict lists of six months ago. If only we could see more of the featured pictures; I open about half of them in tabs. HereToHelp (talk to me) 17:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Agreed- why do we have pictures illustrating TFA and others when there are featured pictures which aren't shown? J Milburn (talk) 00:05, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

←Where are the TFAs? We got rid of that a few weeks ago. Tony (talk) 00:10, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Sorry, yeah, that was a rather stupid comment. J Milburn (talk) 09:57, 28 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]


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