Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Features and admins

Features and admins

The best of the week

New administrator

The Signpost welcomes Vejvančický (nom) as our newest admin. Vejvančický, from the Czech Republic, has more than 16,000 edits and two and a half years' experience in a wide range of areas, including new-page patrolling, and our currently backlogged speedy deletion and AfD processes. He has an impressive list of mostly Czech-related pages he is working towards creating at the English Wikipedia.

Featured articles

Six articles were promoted to featured status:

"No Rest for the Wicked" (Supernatural) (nom), the third-season finale of the television series Supernatural. (nominated by Ophois).
Jersey Act (nom), an attempt by the English thoroughbred-breeding establishment to ensure the "purity" of their breed. However, it never really worked as they intended (Ealdgyth and Malleus Fatuorum).
George Macaulay (nom), a Yorkshire cricketer in the 1920s and 1930s who managed to offend important people and never fitted with the cricket establishment because of his aggression and hostility (Sarastro1)
Nguyen Chanh Thi (nom), a South Vietnamese general who tried and failed to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem in 1960, and escaped to Cambodia. He was responsible for three months of riots and mutiny in South Vietnam (YellowMonkey).
Francis Tresham (nom), who, according to nominator Parrot of Doom, is considered by many to be "the dirty little sneak who wrote the Monteagle letter, a piece of evidence which allowed the government to find Guy Fawkes sitting in the dark, waiting to light the fuse which would have blown up the House of Lords, and killed the king and all those with him."
Andrew Johnston (singer) (nom), which nominator J Milburn previously nominated for deletion. He asks whether this is the first such victory rescued from the jaws.

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Jimfbleak to select the best newly promoted article from this week's offerings, together with the four promotions last week.

“

My benchmark for the quality of a Wikipedia article is whether I find myself reading from start to finish an article on a subject of which I know nothing; all ten of these FAs passed that test. It was interesting to discover that it seems to have been perfectly acceptable for a teacher in Nixon's America to enrol her charges as political cheerleaders, although less of a surprise to find that Yorkshire cricketers can be nearly as irascible as their Australian counterparts.

Jersey Act, perfidious Albion at work again, was a small but perfectly formed example of what a good collaboration should be, and Bring Us Together was a fascinating peek into the US of 40 years ago. However, overall I was torn between two of the five biographies, Francis Tresham and Barnes. For me, Sid Barnes with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 edges it, if only because it's harder to write well about something as intrinsically boring as cricket than it is for a gunpowder plotter!

”

Featured lists

Ten lists were promoted:

List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy (nom). The battlecruiser was the brainchild of Admiral John Fisher, the same man who sponsored the construction of the famous HMS Dreadnought. (nominated by Sturmvogel 66)
Gordon Bennett Cup (ballooning) (nom), the world's most prestigious gas balloon race, which ran from 1906 to 1938 and was later resurrected in the late 20th century. (The Rambling Man)
List of international cricket five-wicket hauls by Ian Botham (nom). Fewer than 30 bowlers have taken more than 15 five-wicket hauls at international level, with Sir Ian Botham being one of them (27). (Harrias)
Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award (nom), awarded annually to the goaltender who finished the season with the best save percentage in the National Hockey League (NHL).(ChrisTheDude)
Hugo Award for Best Fanzine (nom), named after magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback, often regarded as "The Father of Science Fiction". (PresN)
Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album (nom), awarded to recording artists for quality works such as songs or albums in the bluegrass music genre. (Another Believer)
List of Plymouth Argyle F.C. players (nom). Rory Fallon is the only player listed who has represented his country at the World Cup while with the club, doing so in 2010. (Argyle 4 Life)
List of Best in Show winners of Crufts (nom). The Best in Show award, first presented in 1928, is given to the dog chosen as winner of the annual Crufts dog show. (Miyagawa)
List of NME number-one singles from the 1960s (nom). It compiles the number-one singles of NME, a British weekly popular music newspaper, during the 1960s. (Rambo's Revenge)
Mariah Carey albums discography (nom). Carey, notably the best-selling female artist of the millennium, released twelve studio albums and four compilation albums among others. (Petergriffin9901)

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator AngChenrui for his choice of the best:

“

Tough choice really, considering that almost all the featured lists have to do with pop culture and sports. I found List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy—an exception here—highly informative and well-written. List of Best in Show winners of Crufts was a good read as well, since its not everyday that you hear about championship-winning dogs. I liked the last two in the list above; I suppose many of us here can identify with the music listed there. However, Choice of the week goes to Gordon Bennett Cup (ballooning) for me. The Cup is the oldest gas balloon race in the world, as you would find out, and the article sure piqued my curiosity. In this age of technology and faster-than-sound travel, it is a pleasure to be reading about slower-cruising aerial vehicles. Of course the competition is not without incident too; last month's race saw the disappearance of two Americans, both of whom were never found.

”

Featured pictures

New featured picture mentioned by the judge: PET is a nuclear medicine imaging technique that produces a 3D image of functional processes in the body. But is the body turning clockwise or anticlockwise? Can you switch your perception from one to the other?

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

Andean fox (nom), a South American canid (created by Christian Mehlführer).
Original manuscript of Chopin's Polonaise in A flat, Op. 53 (nom), a rare artefact of the great composer's work, from 1842, that adds significantly to two Chopin articles. Reviewers praised the quality of the scan (from the Heineman Music Collection, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City).
Positron Emission Tomography (nom), a whole-body animated projection of a PET acquisition for tumour diagnosis (Damato).
Uranus (nom), massive Solar System gas-giant planet, taken by the NASA's spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. Structural details are just discernable at the full resolution.
Tripneustes ventricosus (nom), commonly called the West Indian Sea Egg, is a species of sea urchin common in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Florida at depths of up to 10 m (Nick Hobgood).

Choice of the week. Nergaal, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost: "A good variety of pictures was promoted to featured status this week, but in the end, the choice is a pretty obvious one. It is rare that the project receives a donation of a high-quality artefact such as a copy of the original 1842 manuscript of Chopin's Polonaise in A flat, Op. 53, for solo piano. It is a high-quality scan of the score of one of the most popular compositions by Chopin. The composer's own autograph is visible in the top right corner of the page. Notable mentions are well deserved by other two promotions: the colorful animated projection of a whole-body PET scan, as well as another historic image, taken by Voyager in 1986 of the seventh planet."

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25 October 2010 (all comments)

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That rotating image thing is defintiely messing with my head. 67.220.5.154 (talk) 02:36, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's how to switch: watch the chin; when it comes around closer to you, you need to reconceptualise it as on the far side. Tony (talk) 05:15, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, do we have a Wikipedia article explaining this optical illusion? I found that closing my eyes momentarily and reopening them often "reset" my brain into thinking that the image was rotating in the other direction. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 08:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scarily, i found the body rotating one way, the "innards" the other, at the same time. Awkward. Great image, though. Cheers, Lindsay^Hi 08:59, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That would make me very dizzy. You could earn lots of money as a medical subject. :-) Tony (talk) 09:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can look to The Spinning Dancer, Jacklee. bahamut0013^words _deeds 17:11, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that was an interesting article! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

After staring at the rotating image for 15 minutes I looked down at the Sea Egg image and its spines started growing! -- œ ^™ 09:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On a completely different note, I just thought that congratulations should go J Milburn for nominating an article for deletion and when the result was keep, instead of thinking "oh well, bugger it", actually doing the hard yards and getting it to FA. A remarkable effort. Jenks24 (talk) 16:14, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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