Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-12-20/Features and admins

Featured articles
Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status:
 * Flower Drum Song (nom), Rogers and Hammerstein's penultimate Broadway musical (1958), which came under fire for what was seen as an outdated portrayal of Asian-Americans. The script was entirely rewritten in 2001 for an equally controversial but more politically correct version (nominated by and ).
 * Euryoryzomys emmonsae (nom), a rice rat from the depths of Brazilian Amazonia (Ucucha).
 * The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest (nom), a mid-1990s revival of the 1960s Jonny Quest franchise, featuring teenage adventurers who investigate strange phenomena, legends, and mysteries in exotic locales.
 * , a notable American Jewish synagogue that is home to one of the largest Reform congregations in the US . (picture at right)
 * , a technique that dates back to the 10th century and has experienced a resurgence in the current era of higher oil prices.
 * (b. 1943), an English musician and a founding member of the rock group Pink Floyd . (picture at right)
 * , an unsuccessful Allied air raid on Norway in 1945; it was both the largest air battle ever fought over Norway and the worst day of the war for the Royal Air Force Coastal Command.
 * , a light infantry regiment of the North Korean People's Army that existed briefly during the Korean War.
 * Kampung Boy (TV series) (nom), a comprehensive look at the animation by Malaysian cartoonist Lat, from conception to reception.
 * (1874–1948), the Derbyshire working-class boy who rose to be Peer of the Realm, via the US.
 * (d. 1207), a medieval English Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Rouen.
 * Lactarius volemus (nom), considered a choice edible mushroom and sold in markets in Asia. A distinctive feature is the large amount of latex ("milk") that it exudes when the gills are damaged, leading to the common names "weeping milk cap" and "voluminous-latex milky" ( and ). (picture at right)
 * (1819–80), which, together with related articles such as Pedro II of Brazil and Honório Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná, is a significant source for understanding the 58-year reign of the second Emperor of the Empire of Brazil ( and ).

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer to select the best of the week.
 * "I spent a couple of very enjoyable hours reading this week's crop and trying to pick out the best, though sometimes the comparisons are impossibly difficult. How could I compare Lactarius volemus, a thoroughly researched and well-written article on a fungus, with Shale oil extraction, a survey of numerous industrial techniques that must have been ferociously difficult to assemble, or with Roger Waters, a detailed biography of one of Pink Floyd's founders? In the end I saw two as especially noteworthy. José Paranhos, Viscount of Rio Branco is part of a series of featured articles on 19th-century Brazilian history that are being written by Lecen and Astynax. It's not likely to be a well-known topic to most of Wikipedia's English-speaking readers, and the nominators have done a fine job of telling the story of Rio Branco's life while unobtrusively providing the necessary historical background. My other selection is Temple Israel (Memphis, Tennessee), which traces the history of a Jewish congregation in Memphis for over 150 years. The nominator, Jayjg, has done a remarkable job of assembling a detailed history of every period in the congregation's life. The article does not neglect the congregation's relationship with the wider world: the American Civil War, William Jennings Bryan's campaign against evolution, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Civil Rights era all make appearances in the story. The result is a beautifully constructed slice of American history, and it's my pick for best of the week."

Two featured articles were delisted:
 * Grace Sherwood (nom; copyright violations, plagiarism, sourcing, and images).
 * Our Gang (nom; referencing).

Featured lists
In the past two weeks, sixteen lists were promoted:
 * (nominated by )
 * 30 Rock (season 4) (nom) (,, and )
 * Family Guy (season 8) (nom)
 * (,, and )
 * 30 Rock (season 4) (nom) (,, and )
 * Family Guy (season 8) (nom)
 * (,, and )
 * 30 Rock (season 4) (nom) (,, and )
 * Family Guy (season 8) (nom)
 * (,, and )
 * Family Guy (season 8) (nom)
 * (,, and )
 * (,, and )
 * (,, and )
 * (,, and )
 * (,, and )

Two featured lists have been delisted in December thus far:
 * List of Northwest Territories general elections (nom; lead, referencing, and formatting).
 * List of Kylie Minogue concert tours (nom; lead, referencing, style).

Featured topics
Six topics were promoted:
 * Pará class monitors, with seven good articles (nominator ). River monitors were heavily armoured, and normally mounted the largest guns of the riverine warships.
 * Battleships of Austria-Hungary, with 19 articles (nominator, and ). The navy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a major force in European geopolitics until World War I had built a series of battleships between the early 1900s and 1917, partly to defend its Adriatic coastline.
 * Courageous class battlecruiser and aircraft carrier, with one featured article and four good articles. These three ships were built as battlecruisers during World War I and were converted to aircraft carriers in the 1920s. Two of the ships were sunk early in World War II, but the last one survived the war, only to be scrapped in 1948.
 * Battlecruisers of the Royal Navy, with two featured articles and 21 good articles.
 * Nirvana studio albums, with two featured articles and two good articles. Nirvana is an alternative rock group based in Aberdeen, Washington. The group has produced three studio albums, 20d singles, three live albums, two extended plays, three compilation albums, and two box sets
 * Reign in Blood, with two featured articles and two good articles. Reign in Blood is the third studio album and the major label debut by the American thrash metal band Slayer. It was released on 7 October 1986.

One featured topic, StarCraft titles, was delisted.

Featured pictures
Twelve images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
 * Little Penguins exiting burrow (nom), "This is just amazing. The timing is great even with the amount of setup it must have taken. No umbrellas though?", said reviewer, to which nominator ) replied: "A bit windy methinks", and that he'd have crushed a dozen burrows trying to set it up.
 * Bennett's Wallaby (nom), almost a fashion-shot taken by on Bruny Island, off Tasmania. The marsupial pouch is visible just above and between the legs. (picture at right)
 * Dusky Woodswallow with chicks (nom), as though frozen in time, about to feed open-mouthed chicks, shot at Mortimer Bay, Tasmania by . (picture at top)
 * Cab Calloway (nom), early 20th-century jazz icon Cab Calloway in song. The image was created by William Paul Gottlieb (1917–2006) an American photographer and newspaper columnist best-known for his classic photographs of the leading performers of the "Golden Age" of American jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. (picture at right)
 * Junior at Darlington (nom), the drama of a car-racing pit stop at Darlington Raceway in 2008 (created by | United States National Guard, brightness edited by ).
 * Sarychev Peak (nom), erupting on 12 June 2009 on Matua, an uninhabited volcanic island in the Kuril Islands chain north of Japan. The name of the island means “hellmouth” in the Ainu language (created by NASA).
 * Galeries Lafayette (nom), a ten-storey department store on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. The picture was constructed from 51 images in three separate exposures by.
 * G. D. Falksen (nom) (link to article, an American writer and essayist who is particularly known for his work within the steampunk genre (created by Tyrus Flynn).
 * Fan-tailed Cuckoo (nom) (link to article), a Tasmanian bird. Creator said "Another first-time observation for me. I've certainly heard them before though. I was lucky to get this photo."
 * Red-capped Plover (nom), created by, who said he had crawled about 500 m on his belly during the course of the day when he got this shot. "Heat haze became a very significant problem during the middle of the day (I couldn't get a sharp shot until some cloud cover came for a while)."
 * Japanese military paraphernalia (nom), "cold" weapons and other military artefacts, ca.1892–95, from a hand-coloured glass slide (created by T. Enami (1859–1929), a Meiji period photographer).
 * Topographic map of Florida (nom), created by (Eric Gaba), a French Wikimedian living in Brazil who is well-known for the quality of his cartography. He commented: "The projection is an Albers equal-area and the linear scale along the meridians is not constant like it could be in a polyconic projection for example. That's why, in a search of precision, I indicate the horizontal linear scale variation between the top and the bottom of the map." Reviewer, also a cartographer, said "this one looks very good indeed. Attention was given to the detail and the result is both aesthetically attractive and clear. Congratulations!"

Choice of the week., a reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost:
 * "There is a very wide range of new featured pictures this week, including several bird photographs. It was very difficult to select one; however, my favourite is the Dusky Woodswallow about to feed chicks in a nest. I wondered how long the photographer patiently watched the nest and how he managed to focus the moment on the sensor of his digital camera. I think the photograph from space of the Sarychev Volcano erupting, the photo-stitched interior of Galeries Lafayette store, the map of Florida, and the pit stop at Darlington are technically amazing, each with a good image description explaining the who, what, where, and when of the image."

Featured sounds
Three sound files were promoted to featured status.
 * Eisenhower speech, October 9, 1954 (nom). President Eisenhower travelled the US in 1954 to campaign for Republican Congressional candidates. During his tour, he delivered 40 speeches, often stating the need for "a vast new highway program". This clip includes such remarks, which he made in Cadillac Square, Detroit some three years before the creation of the Interstate Highway System.


 * File:Maple Leaf Rag - played by Scott Joplin 1916 sample.ogg (nom). A recording made by Scott Joplin in 1916 of his most famous rag, the Maple Leaf Rag. The recording was made on a piano roll in June 1916 less than a year before the composer's death from syphilis. The performance demonstrates the extent to which his physical deterioration from the disease affected his ability to play the piano smoothly. The roll was scanned into a MIDI file by a collector in New Zealand, then converted into a Piano soundfile by Major Bloodnok using Cubase.


 * Handel - messiah - 44 hallelujah.ogg (nom). The "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah, performed by the MIT Concert Choir, directed by William C. Cutter.