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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-24/Features and admins

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Features and admins

The best of the week

New featured picture: User:Diliff's passing snap of Eilean Donan Castle in far northwest Scotland at sunrise
This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 15 – Friday 21 January (UTC)


New administrators

The Signpost welcomes Gimme danger (nom) as our newest admin. Danger has been editing for four and a half years and has participated in many Wikipedia tasks. Among these are the help desks, speedy deletions, backlogs, and assisting new editors' contributions; an example of Danger's larger achievements is the clearing of WikiProject Wisconsin's assessment backlog of some 5,000 articles. Danger self-describes as "fundamentally a gnome".


Featured articles

From the new featured article Bombing of Singapore (1944–1945): A Royal Air Force motor transport driver surveys damage in September 1945
NASA's Ariel fly-by in 1986. The second-largest of Uranus's 27 moons is water-ice and a dense non-ice component in equal parts
User:Cygnis insignis's picture of the basket flower from southwest Australia, from the new featured article Adenanthos obovatus
Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status:
  • Ariel (moon) (nom), the brightest of the 27 known moons of Uranus, discovered in 1851 and named for a sky spirit in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Almost all knowledge of Ariel comes from a single fly-by of Uranus performed by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986; however, it managed to image only 35% of the moon's surface (nominated by Ruslik0 and Serendipodous). Picture at right
  • Interstate 80 Business (West Wendover, Nevada – Wendover, Utah) (nom), a highway with historical significance, and which is the main street between those twinned cities on the Nevada–Utah border (Admrboltz).
  • Windsor Castle (nom), one of the best known castles in England, with a fascinating political, social, and architectural history (Hchc2009).
  • Maya stelae (nom), stone monuments fashioned in the Classic Period Maya culture that are remarkable for their stylistic variety (Simon Burchell).
  • Fantastic (magazine) (nom), probably the only magazine launched as a result of the Korean War, it lasted for 28 years, making it one of the more durable science fiction and fantasy magazines, and was instrumental in popularising the "sword and sorcery" genre (Mike Christie).
  • Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō (nom), commissioned in 1922, was the world's first commissioned ship designed and built as an aircraft carrier, and the first aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Cla68).
  • Section 116 of the Australian Constitution (nom), about a provision of the Australian Constitution that sets uncertain boundaries for establishing any religion, imposing religious observance, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion by the federal government; this clause has been judicially interpreted in a significantly narrower way than a similar provision in the US Consitution (Mkativerata).
  • Bombing of Singapore (1944–1945) (nom), the US and British air raids on the Japanese-occupied island during 1944 and 1945 (Nick-D). Picture at right
  • SMS Rheinland (nom), the third German dreadnought-type battleship built for the Imperial Navy (Parsecboy).
  • Battle of Sio (nom), a minor battle, but one of a series that nominator Hawkeye7 hopes to assemble into a featured topic on the New Guinea campaign.
  • Almirante Latorre-class battleship (nom), another article in The ed17's South American battleship series, this one tells the tortured tale of two Chilean ships ordered during the 1907–14 dreadnought arms race.
  • Pennatomys (nom), the "snowy winged mouse", an extinct Carribean rodent (Ucucha).
  • Adenanthos obovatus (nom), from the Southwestern Australian floristic region, which has more flowering plants than Europe and Asia put together (Casliber and Hesperian). Picture at right


Featured lists

From the newly featured List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: others): a Buddhist ritual gong-stand nearly a metre high, made of copper; the gong had been lost and reproduced in the late 12th to early 13th century.
Seven lists were promoted:

Four featured lists were delisted:


Featured pictures

Seven images were promoted; each can be viewed in medium size by clicking on "nom":


Featured sounds

One sound file was promoted: Bright College Years (nom and link to related article), a performance of the first and third verses of Yale's unofficial alma mater by the 2006 Yale Whiffenpoofs. It is the first choral a cappella performance to reach featured sound status.

New featured picture: Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the Cupola module of the International Space Station observing the Earth below during Expedition 24
Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.