Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-07-11/Features and admins

The Featured pictures visible page may soon be reworked, possibly being converted to a gallery to alleviate long loading times or split into distinct pages to avoid redundancy with Featured pictures thumbs. Meanwhile, there were 6 new admins, 11 new featured articles, 5 new featured lists, and 7 new featured pictures this week.

Featured pictures visible
As image galleries become more popular on Wikipedia, some users have begun to discuss the possibility of overhauling featured pictures visible, the page that shows all current featured pictures in one place, to reduce loading time and simplify the featured picture promotion process. Currently, nearly all images are displayed with a long dimension of 300 pixels, and with over 250 featured pictures, the page takes a significant amount of time to load on slower internet connections.

To alleviate the problem, Silversmith suggested that the page be converted to a gallery, which would use smaller image sizes. Solipsist pointed out that this would make featured pictures thumbs largely obsolete, and put forth the possibility of splitting "Featured pictures visible" into several pages according to categories. Solipsist also noted that eliminating the featured pictures thumbnail page would reduce the complexity of promoting featured pictures, but suggested that a variety of presentations can be useful for users trying to find a specific picture.

Featured pictures may also be getting additional exposure in the near future, depending on whether the Picture of the day gets added to the Main Page (see related story).

Admins
Six wikipedians received administrator status after their requests for adminship received wide support: Craigy144 (nom), Vsmith (nom), Woohookitty (nom), Starblind (nom), Feco (nom), and Talrias (nom).

Featured content
Eleven more featured article candidates were featured this week, namely Caulfield Grammar School, Doom (which its primary author, Fredrik, resubmitted for featured status after requesting that that status be revoked in May), Chagas disease, Monty Hall problem, Flag of India, United States House of Representatives (Following closely behind United States Senate, also Emsworth's work), IFK Göteborg, African American literature, History of Central Asia, Washington gubernatorial election, 2004, and Rail transport in India (the second installment of Nichalp's railway series).

Five featured list candidates were promoted this week: List of snakes of Trinidad and Tobago, English national cricket captains, Wisden Cricketers of the Year, List of popes (graphical), List of Test cricket grounds by date. Meanwhile, on Featured picture candidates, seven images were promoted.