Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-31/Features and admins

Features and admins

The best of the week

New administrators

This week saw no new admins. Looie496 resigned as admin after a recall request against him succeeded, with five administrators "in good standing" supporting recall. Closing admin Kingpin13 wrote "Looie496 may at any time start another Request for Adminship, and a promotion there would override this recall. It should be noted that some of the administrators supporting recall said they might support an RfA." The request for recall made was in response to a controversial unblock performed by Looie496, while the block was under discussion at the administrators' noticeboard. This recall makes Looie496 one of the shortest-serving admins ever, since his RfA was in October (see the "F and A" blurb, The Signpost's story about a notable admin recall last July, and Wikipedia:Administrators open to recall/Past requests).

At the time of publication there are four live RfAs, all to close soon: Acdixon, Ponyo, Gonzonoir, and Smartse.

Featured articles

Seven articles were promoted to featured status:

Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies (nom) (1822–89), an Italian princess who married the second Brazilian Emperor, Dom Pedro II. (Nominated by Lecen and Astynax).
1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash (nom), the story of a Douglas DC-6 aviation accident that involved several technical "features" that seemed to conspire against the flight crew. (Wackywace).
C. D. Howe (nom), who virtually ran the Canadian economy for more than a decade after the Second World War, and is remembered for founding Air Canada and the CBC. (Bzuk and Wehwalt.)
Painted turtle (nom), the most widespread, numerous turtle of North America, with supercooled blood that resists winter freezes; it has been the subject of controversies in taxonomy and commercial harvesting. (NYMFan69-86 and TCO.) picture at right
William Warelwast (nom) (died 1137), a medieval Norman cleric, Bishop of Exeter, England, and a royal clerk for King William II. (Ealdgyth and Malleus Fatuorum.)
C. R. M. F. Cruttwell (nom), a respected historian with a fine war record, who was dean of an Oxford college at 33. What could go wrong for him? asked nominator Brianboulton. "Well, in 1922 he had the misfortune to meet, and fall out with, the young Evelyn Waugh, a resourceful and unforgiving enemy. For the next 17 years the name "Cruttwell" was introduced repeatedly into Waugh's novels and stories, always as a nasty or ridiculous character."
Carousel (musical) (nom), which according to co-nominator Wehwalt "may be the most beautiful musical ever written". (Co-nominator JeanColumbia.)

Featured lists

Four lists were promoted:

List of 1948 Winter Olympics medal winners (nom) (nominated by Arctic Night and Courcelles)
List of churches preserved by the Churches Conservation Trust in Northern England (nom) (Peter I. Vardy).
U.S. state dog breeds (nom) (Miyagawa).
Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album (nom) (Another Believer).

Featured topics

Gunpowder Plot (nom) was promoted to featured status, with seven featured articles and seven good articles. The Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland in 1605 by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. It is a highly significant, complex, and multilayered part of English history. (Nominated by Parrot of Doom.)

Featured pictures

Who'd have thought math could be this much fun? The generalised Lyapunov fractal for some sequence that went way above *The Signpost's* head.

Eight images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":

Laciniate conch shell (nom; related article), of a species of sea snail. Created by George Chernilevsky.
Lyapunov fractal (nom; related article), bifurcational fractals derived from an extension of the logistic map in which the degree of the growth of the population, r, periodically switches between two values A and B. We thought you'd like to know. Created by BernardH.
Petrified Forest National Park Tepees (nom; related article), the Tepees in Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona. Created by Finetooth.
Italian wall lizard (nom; related article), a species of lizard native to some Mediterranean areas. This male was photographed in Tuscany. Created by Richard Bartz.
Kora-Khokhoi preparing to move (nom; related article), an aquatint of a Khoikhoi family dismantling their huts, preparing to move to new pastures. Created by Samuel Daniell in 1805.
Intermediate phases of the Biham–Middleton–Levine Traffic Model (periodic intermediate phase) and Intermediate phases of the Biham–Middleton–Levine Traffic Model (disordered intermediate phase) (nom); related article), two of the principle phases in what is possibly the simplest system exhibiting phase transitions and self-organisation. Created by Purpy Pupple.
Utopia, Limited poster (nom; related article), advertising this Savoy Opera, which was also known as The Flowers of Progress. The music was by Arthur Sullivan and the libretto by WS Gilbert. This colour lithograph of the Drawing Room Scene advertises an 1894 D'Oyly Carte Opera Company production in New York City. Created by Strobridge & Co. Lith. Edited by Adam Cuerden).
Redeye gaper (nom; related article), a fish of curious appearance, this one caught off the coast of North Carolina. Reviewers Greg L and Twilightchill praised the lighting in the photograph. Created by Steve Ross, edited by Citron. picture below