Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-08-30/Features and admins

Featured article milestone: 3,000

3,000th featured article

On 18 August, the English Wikipedia reached a milestone with the promotion of its 3,000th article to Featured article (FA) status. These 3,000 articles represent the best 0.09% of articles on Wikipedia—about one in every 1,120 articles. FAC Delegate User:SandyGeorgia said, "Congratulations to all the nominators and reviewers who contributed to reaching the 3,000 FA milestone on Wiki! I also note that FAC has reached a two-year high on monthly promotions, in spite of increasing standards, and congratulate all of the dedicated contributors – both writers and reviewers. We can always use more reviewers (without reviewers, we don't have FAs): see Reviewers achieving excellence for ways anyone can help out".

The threshold was reached when FAC delegate SandyGeorgia simultaneously promoted six articles, bringing the total to 3,001 articles. These articles were on a wide variety of topics: Whitechapel murders (11 murders in London between 1888 and 1891 by the notorious Jack the Ripper); Royal National College for the Blind (a residential college for the blind); Mount Cayley volcanic field (a volcanic field in Canada); "Road to the Multiverse" (a Family Guy episode); 90377 Sedna (a trans-Neptunian object orbiting the Sun); and Mark Tonelli (a retired Australian competitive swimmer).

The Featured article process (FAC) was initiated in June 2003 as "Brilliant prose"; we reached 500 FAs in February 2005 (see Signpost coverage); the 1,000th FA was promoted in June 2006 (Signpost coverage); the 2,000th was reached just under two years later (Signpost coverage). The deterioration over time of individual FAs and rising standards for promotion have meant that many early articles have been demoted; the number of FAs (promotions less demotions) has risen at an average rate of 34 articles a month from August 2008 to July 2010. In the first half of this year, 270 articles were promoted, and 70 were demoted, a rise of 200 articles or about 33 articles monthly.

Administrators

August has seen ten promotions to adminship, five of them over the past week alone:

• Dabomb87 (nom), from Texas, has some 60,000 edits to his name over his three years with us. He has been described as "doing anything he can to help out, ... with careful and thorough conscientiousness". He is a featured list director and has a prolific record of reviewing featured content, good articles, and DYK nominations.
• Nikkimaria (nom), a Canadian Wikipedian since 2005, has built up a strong record in content creation and reviewing, and has done valuable work at NewPages and RecentChanges. She has particular interests in English, history, and music, and speaks French.
• WOSlinker (nom) has focused mainly on working on templates—in particular the use of {{editprotected}}—and editing in fields as diverse as World of Spectrum (hence the user name), motorsports, and broadcasting. He nominated for an RfA after seeing last week's Signpost story on the precipitous decline in active admins over the past few years.
• Amatulic (nom) also nominated after seeing last week's Signpost article. Amatulic—an American scientist with an MBA in addition to an undergraduate degree in physics—has worked as an engineer for the past 25 years, mostly in the field of stealth technology; he has logged in almost every day since joining in 2006. He is experienced in dealing with user-level maintenance such as vandalism, spam, and article deletion, and participates regularly in dispute resolution on WP:Third opinion.
• Airplaneman (nom) has experience in the project's administration, discussions, and content work (airplanes, classical music, technology, science, and literature). He participates in the adopt-a-user scheme and is a member of the Welcoming committee.

New featured articles

Five articles were promoted to featured status:

• Banksia scabrella (nom), commonly known as the "Burma Road Banksia", a species of woody shrub found in Western Australia (nominated by Casliber).
• Seorsumuscardinus (nom), a genus of fossil dormouse from almost 20 million years ago, found in central and eastern Europe (Ucucha).
• "The Body" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (nom), "not your typical sci-fi/fantasy episode", said one of the nominators. A commentator was also quoted: "Any sneerer of Buffy in particular or genre work should simply be sat down in front of a television and told to shut up for three-quarters of an hour while they are shown 'The Body'" (Moni3 and Courcelles).
• Yorkshire captaincy affair of 1927 (nom), a dreadful squabble about the relationship between professionals and amateurs in English cricket, with undertones of class warfare (Sarastro1).
• Wandsworth Bridge (nom), the story of a bridge that crosses the Thames, among the last two in London privately built for toll revenue. It was rebuilt and opened as a free bridge under public ownership in 1940, "a distinctly unlovely piece of wartime functionalist design which replaced an equally unlovely piece of 19th-century cost-cutting design", says nominator Iridescent. (picture at right)

Choice of the week. Southpark is an FA veteran at the German Wikipedia, with many "Exzellente Artikels" under his belt. He has served on the jury of de.WP's "writing contest" three times, and is fluent in English. The Signpost asked him to select the best of the week's promotions on the English Wikipedia: "I enjoyed reading all of the articles and now have a new sightseeing destination for my next London trip. Maybe I'll even give cricket a second chance. I chose "The Body" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I especially like that this is an article that could never ever be written on the German Wikipedia. This in-depth treatment of a single television episode shows the special qualities of en.wp in an outstanding manner. It provides aesthetic and cultural background for a phenomenom that I hardly knew anything about except its mere existence. The article avoids fandom and insider-references without being overly technical or even boring. It tells the story of this special episode from several noteworthy angles. Thereby it communicates the emotional impact this episode has on its viewers (and producers) as well as it gives a detailed account of its production. I feel as much informed as I feel entertained." Southpark's blog on the judgment.

New featured sounds

One stand-alone sound-file and a set of ten files were promoted:

• Pulse of the Earth (nom), in what might be a first for Wikimedia, a whole album of a notable group comprising 10 tracks, all at Commons. Nominator J Milburn says, "Hungry Lucy has previously released a number of their works under CC licenses, though not CC licenses that count as "free" under Wikipedia's policies. I contacted the band, asking if they'd be willing to release images/songs under a freer license, and they let me know that (contrary to what it said on archive.org) their latest album, as well as all the images associated with it, were released under cc-by-sa-3.0." The Signpost thanks the band for its generosity. (album cover and sound file for Track 1 at right)
• The "Jewel Voice Broadcast" (nom), the momentous radio broadcast at noon on 15 August 1945 in which Japanese emperor Hirohito read out the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War, announcing that the Japanese government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military. A translation is provided here (nominator Adam Cuerden). (picture at right)

New featured lists

Seven lists were promoted:

• List of FC Barcelona records and statistics (nom). FC Barcelona has won 20 titles in the top professional league in Spain (nominated by Sandman888).
• List of cities and towns in Utah (nom) Many city names reflect the Mormon heritage of the state's first settlers. (Bgwhite)
• List of St. Louis Cardinals first-round draft picks (nom) Two first rounders, Braden Looper and Chris Duncan, were part of the Cardinals' 2006 championship team (Wizardman).
• 1976 Winter Olympics medal table (nom), the count of medals won by participating IOCs at the 1976 Winter Olympics, held in Innsbruck, Austria. The Soviet Union won the most overall medals (27) and gold medals (13) (Parutakupiu).
• The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates (nom), nominated by Visionholder, a list of highly endangered primate species compiled by the IUCN/SSC PSG. Current endangered species include the Golden-headed Langur, of which there are only 60–70 remaining, and the Sumatran Orangutan (picture at right).
• Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance (nom), awarded for quality performances in the hard rock music genre. Recent winners included "War Machine" by Australian band AC/DC and "Wax Simulacra" by American band The Mars Volta (Another Believer).
• Grammy Award for Best Rock Album (nom) given for quality albums in the rock music genre. The American band Foo Fighters has had three of their albums win the award: There Is Nothing Left to Lose, One by One and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (Another Believer).

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Goodraise for his favorite: "It was an easy choice. The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates not only stands out for its well-written prose, but for its visual appeal, not to mention the rarity of biology lists with featured status. I particularly enjoyed reading the list because it surprised me. I wasn't aware that so many of our relatives live on the brink of extinction." (picture at right)

New featured topics

One topic was promoted:

• Oryzomys, nom, with six featured articles, one featured list and five good articles.

New featured pictures

Nine images were promoted. Each can be viewed in medium size by clicking on "nom".

• Australian blenny (nom), a small marine fish, reddish-brown with a white ventral side, which inhabits the shallow marine waters of the tropics. They are often found along the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea of Australia (created by Nick Hobgood). (picture below)
• Tachinid fly (nom), for which the challenging techniques of focus bracketing and focus stacking were used to achieve an all-round sharpness. The third frame is a composite of no fewer than six images. IdLoveOne said "I only wish it was a more likable animal". (Muhammad Mahdi Karim)
• Elegant sunburst lichen (nom), a lichen here growing on exposed sandstone. It is used in the rock face-dating method known as lichenometry. After discussion of colour variation and brightness, a third version was promoted (Jason Hollinger).
• Lee Bollinger (nom), an American lawyer and educator, Bollinger is currently the president of Columbia University. Colour noise was reduced on the advice of reviewers. (Created by Daniella Zalcman).
• The Face on Mars (nom), the highest-resolution image available of the famous "face on Mars" (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, cropped by Plumbago).
• The Whirlpool Galaxy (nom), an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici (NASA and the European Space Agency, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope). (picture at right)
• The dynamic sun (nom), a multi-wavelength extreme ultraviolet snapshot of the recent eruption and tsunami on the sun. Earth's magnetic field is still reverberating from the solar flare impact on 3 August, which sparked auroras as far south as Wisconsin and Iowa. Reviewer Lucas Brown said "Wow. Just ... wow" (NASA/SDO/AIA, edited by Hive001).
• Calvin Borel (nom), an American jockey in thoroughbred horse racing. Borel rode the victorious mount in the 2007, 2009, and 2010 Kentucky Derbies. Reviewer Raeky said "A wonderful capture done at just the right moment, his facial expression really shows character" (created by Joe Schneid). (picture at right)
• The Battle at La Hogue (1781) (nom), a high-quality copy of a large steel engraving, after the 1781 painting by Benjamin West of The Battle at La Hogue. This nomination prompted a technical fix to the thumbnail process by Wikimedia developers Tim Starling and Ryan Kaldari. The image is best viewed using the large image viewer. (Held by the Library of Congress, uploaded and retouched by Adam Cuerden).

Choice of the week. Jfitch, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost, "For me this week there was one nomination that really stood out over the rest. The Australian blenny has such quality and detail, which is made even more impressive when the fact that it is an underwater photograph is taken into account. The technical difficulties in achieving a shot like this are extremely difficult, and being able to capture the fish in such an elegant way really made this the only nomination that I could choose as my Choice of the week." (picture below)