Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-07-19

The best of the week

Operatic excerpt from the new featured article, Tosca|center The Finale of Act I, sung by Pasquale Amato and the Metropolitan Opera chorus (1914 recording). As the public enter the church singing a Te Deum, Scarpia plots rape and torture.

Wikipedia has 15 new featured articles:

• Tosca (nominators Brianboulton and Wehwalt), the opera by Italian composer Puccini that premièred in Rome in 1900.
• SMS Blücher (Parsecboy and Dank), in a tragedy of errors abandoned and sunk in 1915 after being hit by British gunfire. The British rescue of survivors was then aborted because of a bombing raid by a German Zeppelin that mistook the Blücher for a British battle cruiser.
• Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga (Sturmvogel 66, Dank, and Cla68), which figured prominently in the development of Japan's "carrier striking force doctrine", a revolutionary military strategy at the time. The doctrine was of significant value to Japan at the start of the Pacific War in the early 1940s.
• "Once More, with Feeling" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (Moni3 and Courcelles), first broadcast in 2001 and unusual in its conception as a musical. Notably, this nomination included a 29-second video excerpt of one of the songs.
• Lindow Man (Nev1), the name given to the preserved body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss in North West England in 1984. There is evidence that he was strangled and hit on the head, and his throat cut, some time during the 1st century AD. The article has had feedback from Jody Joy, Curator of the British and European Iron Age Collections at the British Museum, and is eligible for the GLAM/British Museum joint Featured Article Prize (see the original Signpost coverage). A reconstruction of the man's head on the basis of radiography is here.
• Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (SuperMarioMan), a 1960s British sci-fi TV series that has since been broadcast in more than 40 countries. The article is "probably the definitive resource about the series on the web", according to reviewer Bob Castle.
• 22nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Historical Perspective), the shocking tale of an infantry regiment in the Union army during the American Civil War. Of its 1,100 men, roughly 300 were killed in action, 500 were discharged due to wounds or disease, and 175 were lost or discharged due to capture, resignation, or desertion.
• Triaenops menamena, nominated by Ucucha because "bats are an underrepresented topic on Wikipedia—a pity considering their diversity and the many interesting aspects of their biology."
• Tarrare, an 18th-century French soldier with some distinctly unsavoury habits. Nominator Iridescent says that "cat lovers may want to give this one a miss".
• Sentence spacing (Airborne84, with previous input from Ruhrfisch). This is a surprisingly rich historical topic, and coincidentally Wikipedia's own practice is currently the subject of debate at the Manual of Style.
• Peter Evans (swimmer) (YellowMonkey), an Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1980s who won gold and bronze at both the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.
  

  

• Amanita bisporigera (Sasata), one of several deadly toxic "destroying angel" mushrooms.
• Black Currawong (Casliber), a bird native to the Australian state of Tasmania. It steals food from other birds and its call has been likened to "part song and part human laughter".
• RKO Pictures (DCGeist), the Hollywood film production and distribution company that pioneered a sound-on-film technology and supported the careers of such luminaries as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Mitchum, and Cary Grant.
• Cotswold Olimpick Games, an annual public celebration of games and sports including sledgehammer throwing, fighting with cudgels, jumping and dancing, held near Chipping Campden in the English Cotswolds. Nominator Malleus Fatuorum comfortingly reassured reviewers, "I promise, it's all true".

Choice of the week. Nominator and reviewer Ucucha is a man of many talents, including fluency in Dutch, German and English. The Signpost asked him to select what he believes was the best new FA. "I was impressed by Sentence spacing. This is a minor topic, but there is a surprising amount to say about it. Britannica doesn't have an article on the subject, but it is a highly encyclopaedic topic. Sentence spacing is a topic that virtually everyone knows a little about, but only a resource like our new featured article can provide the relevant details."

Three featured articles were delisted:

• Hurricane Dennis (quality of sourcing, citations and comprehensiveness)
• Mount Rushmore (prose, sourcing, weight and comprehensiveness)
• Krill (quality of sourcing, citations and comprehensiveness)

Seven lists were promoted:

• List of battlecruisers of Russia (nominated by Sturmvogel 66), the lead list of a soon-to-be good topic: Battlecruisers of Russia.
• List of Hull City A.F.C. seasons (Mattythewhite), which sets out the results of each season for the English football club Hull City A.F.C.
• List of Detroit Tigers first-round draft picks (Staxringold), including two players who were part of the Tigers' 1984 championship team.
• List of parasites of the marsh rice rat, which, according to nominator Ucucha, "is the first of its kind on FLC, and indeed is only the second such list of parasites on Wikipedia".
• List of Washington & Jefferson Presidents head football coaches (GrapedApe), four of whom were inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
• List of Red Hot Chili Peppers band members (WereWolf), a list of members of the popular alternative rock band.
• Order of battle of the Battle of Trenton (Magicpiano), detailing the order of battle for a major moral victory for the American army in the American War of Independence.

Choice of the week. We asked Giants2008, a regular FLC reviewer and author of eight featured lists, for his pick of the crop: "Health- and science-related lists are fairly rare sights at FLC. This week, the process saw something come through it that touches on both subject groups: List of parasites of the marsh rice rat. It is a very high-quality list, particularly when it comes to sourcing; the exhaustive bibliography reveals a level of research that is a cut above typical FLs. The featured list process has long been open to criticism that it favors repetitive lists, as well as sports- and entertainment-related pages. This shows that specialized lists of strong encyclopedic value can prosper at FLC, and hopefully the process will soon see more work like this that breaks new ground."

This has been a bumper week, with 23 promotions.

Of particular significance, there are now featured pictures of 24 of the 81 chemical elements of which we can reasonably expect to gain featured pictures. It's a good start, and should the project ever achieve all 81, it would be worth celebrating. This week alone saw nine images of elements promoted:

• Scandium and Yttrium, both by Alchemist-hp.
• Hydrogen, Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, Nitrogen, all by User:Jurii, from Commons.

Four images are of historical figures:

• Kalākaua (c. 1882), the last Hawaiian Monarch. Unknown photographer, restoration by User:Greg L and Papa Lima Whiskey.
• Charles XIV John of Sweden (1818), a French Marshal under Napoleon who Sweden selected to be their king. Painting by Francis Nicolas Jouy, after an original by François-Joseph Kinson; photo by Gérard Blot.
• Edward Teller (1958), "the father of the hydrogen bomb". Original by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, restoration by Greg L and Papa Lima Whiskey.
• Ira Aldridge, restored by Adam Cuerden, who stumbled on this picture while searching for images to illustrate Shakespeare. "When I researched the image and learned Ira Aldridge's story, I was amazed: he claimed he was the inspiration for a racist comic skit about black actors mangling Shakespeare, and used that to get people to come see the 'silly black person'. They were instead treated to a performance of Othello that received rave reviews. Long before the idea of race-blind casting, he played Romeo, Richard III, and Hamlet, all to critical acclaim."

The art world is represented with images of two paintings from the end of the 19th century – At Breakfast (1898), by the Danish symbolist L. A. Ring, and The Wave (1896), by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Three promotions depict bird life: Crescent Honeyeater and Eastern Spinebill, both by Noodle snacks, and Upland Sandpiper, by Johnath.

Two others depict sea life.

• Marbled rock crab (male), by George Chernilevsky. This image was taken from above the crab. When asked about other angles one could photograph crabs from, George wrote: "I have photos of the big Warty crab (Eriphia verrucosa). I did them macro by the plan en claws and face. As a result I have been attacked by really strong claws. The camera has fallen to sand, and I have received blood-stained fingers. The crab hasn't suffered :)"
• The octopus Velodona togata, in a gorgeous full-colour lithograph by Ewald Rübsamen (1910), restored by Citron. A reviewer explained that lithographs are created by using acid to etch the plate; ink can then gather in the resulting pits.

Two images illustrate American history: The Ivy Mike nuclear weapons test, by the United States Department of Energy (1952), and Signal Hill, California, c. 1923, by The Aerograph Co. Restoration by Jujutacular.

There was an astounding image of the aurora as seen from the International Space Station – witnessed from this vantage point only by a handful of people: Aurora australis.

Choice of the week. Adam Cuerden, a regular reviewer and nominator at the English Wikipedia's featured picture candidates, told The Signpost, "My choice is a fascinating view into the past of Signal Hill, California in about 1923." (The finished version is displayed at the bottom of this page with a horizontal scroller.) "Oil was discovered there in 1921, and around two years later, we get this image where oil derricks prod the sky everywhere you look. One might ask for a bit more resolution, but the impact of this image is unmistakable, and sometimes, with historic media, you have to take what's available. The panoramic shot is an impressive stitching and cleanup by Jujutacular (a multitalented Wikipedian) of a historic set of photographs in the original image he had to work with."

Three featured pictures were delisted:

• Botticelli's Birth of Venus, because part of the painting is cut off.
• File:Twin Linear Aerospike XRS-2200 Engine.jpg and File:Twin Linear Aerospike XRS-2200 Engine edit.jpg, replaced by a better edit made by Papa Lima Whiskey.
• Orlando Furioso illustration by Gustave Doré, due to a bad crop and lower standards than set by the other featured pictures of Doré's work.

There were no promotions. One featured topic, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., was delisted, because one of its articles is still not a good article.

There were no promotions to adminship.

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