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

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 ).
 * , an attempt by the English thoroughbred-breeding establishment to ensure the "purity" of their breed. However, it never really worked as they intended ( and ).
 * , 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
 * , 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.
 * , who, according to nominator, 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."
 * , which nominator 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 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:
 * . The battlecruiser was the brainchild of Admiral John Fisher, the same man who sponsored the construction of the famous HMS Dreadnought. (nominated by )
 * , the world's most prestigious gas balloon race, which ran from 1906 to 1938 and was later resurrected in the late 20th century.
 * . Fewer than 30 bowlers have taken more than 15 five-wicket hauls at international level, with Sir Ian Botham being one of them (27).
 * , awarded annually to the goaltender who finished the season with the best save percentage in the National Hockey League (NHL).
 * , named after magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback, often regarded as "The Father of Science Fiction".
 * , awarded to recording artists for quality works such as songs or albums in the bluegrass music genre.
 * . Rory Fallon is the only player listed who has represented his country at the World Cup while with the club, doing so in 2010.
 * . The Best in Show award, first presented in 1928, is given to the dog chosen as winner of the annual Crufts dog show.
 * . It compiles the number-one singles of NME, a British weekly popular music newspaper, during the 1960s.
 * . Carey, notably the best-selling female artist of the millennium, released twelve studio albums and four compilation albums among others.

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator 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
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.
 * 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., 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."