Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-02-21/Feature storm

Natural disasters continued to be popular topics among featured article candidates last week, and one such article completed the journey from creation to becoming a featured article impressively in just two weeks.

From fresh to featured in a fortnight
This singular accomplishment was by the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 article, which deals with a gale and blizzard that devastated the region that year. The article didn't even exist until 3 February, when Brian0918 started it with a few paragraphs, a table of the vessels destroyed in the storm, and various references and external links. Already as a new article, it earned a spot on the Did you know section of the Main Page on 6 February, which noted that it was the deadliest natural disaster ever to hit the Great Lakes.

Over the following days, Brian continued to work steadily on the article. On 9 February, he submitted it to peer review with the comment, "This is my first attempt at putting together an entire article". When Maveric149 responded that very little needed improvement, Brian went ahead and submitted it as a featured article candidate.

When the nomination was made, a few issues cropped up with image copyright tags, along with layout problems in several different browsers. After some discussion, the shipwreck table that was causing the layout problems was removed.

However, none of this dented the article's progression to featured status, as the only objections were easily handled. It was designated a featured article last Thursday, barely two weeks into its existence. Several supporters of the nomination urged its author, having produced such an impressive specimen, to please write more articles.

Since its creation, the article has accumulated 200 edits, 90% of which were made by Brian0918. It has even spun off several related articles &mdash; the original table is now a separate article on Shipwrecks of the 1913 Great Lakes storm, a list of individual victims is at Wikisource, and there is also an image gallery.

Lisbon earthquake article seeking redemption
The fate of another disaster article, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, remained uncertain as discussion went back and forth over several objections. In response to some concerns that the philosophical ramifications were inadequately covered, an expanded section on the earthquake's impact on Enlightenment thought was added.

Another objection raised was based on the article being publicly criticized as a source of misinformation, because the Washington Post apparently relied on it in saying that after the earthquake, priests went about hanging suspected heretics, whose sins they believed had caused the disaster (see archived story). This was withdrawn, however, after several people pointed out that the inaccuracy was no longer present in the article and it seemed unfair to deny featuring on these grounds.

Meanwhile, Markalexander100 found a possible explanation for the earlier mistake in an engraving of the aftermath, part of the description for which on About.com read, "criminals are being hanged under the supervision of soldiers and priests". To this he observed, "I suspect that the crimes involved were looting and suchlike rather than heresy, however." An image of the engraving was added to the article, but with an accurate caption this time.

Finally Sandover, who had nominated the article originally, reconsidered and said "it should be made much better on a number of levels, including the historical and philosophical." This was in spite of the fact that most of the other objections had already been resolved. His ultimate goal remained, however, to improve the article further and have it ready in time for the 250th anniversary of the event on 1 November this year.

New featured articles and pictures
A total of ten articles, including the Great Lakes storm article, received featured article status last week. Former Collaborations of the Week League of Nations and Space Race succeeded on their second and third try, respectively. The others were cricket recordholder A. E. J. Collins, Sikkim, Names of God in Judaism, Michel Foucault, Nafaanra language, War of the Spanish Succession, and the computer game BZFlag.

Activity returned in featured pictures last week, as two new images were so designated. One of them happens to be a very famous photograph taken by Dorothea Lange; the other is by Wikipedian Chris 73.