Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-03-28/Features and admins

This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 19 – Friday 25 March

2,000th featured list
On 14 March, the English Wikipedia reached a milestone with the promotion of its 2,000th Featured list (FL). Featured lists are determined by the community to be the best and most useful stand-alone lists on Wikipedia. The featured list process was created in May 2005 by Filiocht, and the first featured list, List of North American birds, was promoted on 1 June 2005. The criteria against which nominations are judged focus on the list candidate's usefulness, completeness, accuracy, neutrality, style and prose, and have been changed to reflect the community's higher standards for content-forks and red links (see previous stories).

The 2,000th FL designation is shared by the six lists simultaneously promoted by director Dabomb87:
 * List of Baltimore Orioles first-round draft picks (lists the 57 players selected in the first round of the MLB draft by the Baltimore Orioles baseball team)
 * Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist (presented by the World Science Fiction Society to artists of works related to science fiction or fantasy which appeared in low- or non-paying publications)
 * List of international cricket centuries by David Gower (includes details of the 25 occasions on which the former English cricketer David Gower scored 100 or more runs in a single innings)
 * List of New England Patriots seasons (the season-by-season results for the New England Patriots, an American football team)
 * Scotland national football team 1872–1914 results (the season-by-season results for the Scotland national football team from the first international football match to World War I)
 * List of Governors of Washington (the heads of the executive branch of the U.S. state of Washington)

Harrias, nominator of List of international cricket centuries by David Gower, had this to say about one of his FLs being among those designated as the 2,000th FL: "It's nice to be a part of history, but to be honest, writing the (joint) 2,000th is merely a number: each one of the 1,999 (ish) FLs promoted previously are just as important as these six. I think the FL process is actually among the better ones for recognised content on Wikipedia! The reviewing team is quite small, but tends to be pretty friendly, especially once you've experienced the FLC process a few times."

On 20 February, Giants2008 was made the third featured list director. Giants2008 joined Wikipedia in March 2008; he has made 9,000 edits, is a primary contributor to nine featured lists, and has been an active reviewer at both featured lists and featured articles. We asked him for his thoughts on being director and on the FL process: "I've always felt that reviewing lists provided a nice change of pace from checking standard articles. The lists at FLC have a wide variety of styles, and I enjoy working with nominators to get the most out of them. FLC is also cordial as a whole, which makes interacting with nominators easy. When I accepted the position as FL director, the most important factor for me was that I enjoy the reviewing that comes with it. There's a lot of extra work that comes with being a director, but since I like it I'm willing to devote the time necessary to ensuring the next 2,000 FLs are the highest quality possible."

In another milestone, arrangements have been made for one featured list and two featured sounds to appear on the main page each week.

Ten other lists have been promoted to featured status in the past two weeks: Latin Grammy Award for Producer of the Year List of 1952 Winter Olympics medal winners, The Simpsons (season 13), Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, U.S. state reptiles, List of Oakland Athletics first-round draft picks, Venues of the 1994 Winter Olympics, Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (E–F), and List of Oakland Athletics managers.

One list was demoted:
 * List of YuYu Hakusho episodes (season 3)

New administrators
The Signpost welcomes two editors as our newest admins.
 * Fæ (nom), from the UK, can be found doing anti-vandalism work and CSDing and is heavily involved in GLAM collaborations, the Hoxne Hoard featured article, OTRS and Commons.
 * Valfontis (nom) brings more than five years' experience as a Wikipedian to the role. She is an active member of WikiProject Oregon, has worked for WikiProject Spam, and is familiar with AfD and reporting vandals to AIV. Valfontis has helped to promote five articles to GA status, and one to FA.

At the time of publication there are two live RfAs: Neutralhomer and Salvio giuliano, both due to finish Saturday.

Featured articles
Ten articles were promoted to featured status:
 * , Major League Baseball's 105th championship series, in which several records were tied and broken. (Nominated by )
 * , first issued only months after the assassination of US President Kennedy in 1963. Co-nominator Wehwalt says the double whammy of hoarding and rising silver prices meant that "the half dollar failed to circulate despite massive mintages, and effectively destroyed the half dollar as a coin used in trade. It has never recovered, and the coin is only struck today for collectors." ( and )
 * , which proved unpopular with Americans in commerce. "Nonetheless, it continues to be minted, now with a reverse that changes yearly", says nominator.
 * History of Sesame Street (nom), the American preschool educational television show, now a cultural icon. (Christine)
 * , theoretical physicist best known for the Born–Oppenheimer approximation, the Oppenheimer–Phillips process, and the prediction of quantum tunnelling, neutron stars and black holes. He worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons.
 * , the death of a 15-year-old boy at the hands of a teacher. The case was important in the development of modern laws surrounding corporal punishment.
 * , from the very early days of motorsports: on a dusty road outside Le Mans, drivers in huge, rickety cars fought, driving on temporary wooden-plank roads, being blinded by tar. "It was a miracle no one died", says co-nominator, with.
 * Planet Stories (nom), now one of the most sought-after pulp science-fiction magazines from the 1940s and 1950s.
 * Flow (video game) (nom), originally played millions of times as a free flash game and then successfully used to launch to prominence an American independent video game developer co-founded by two University of Southern California Interactive Media Division students.
 * Suillus salmonicolor (nom), or "the slippery Jill", a widely distributed, slimy, and (somewhat) edible mushroom.

One featured article was delisted:
 * Technopark, Kerala (nom, for reasons of sourcing, prose, MOS and comprehensiveness)

Featured pictures
Twelve images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
 * Aerial photo of Laguna Beach, California (nom; related article), a seaside resort and artist community in southern Orange County, California. Creator User:WPPilot took what is apparently the only photo of the whole city. "I fly a route that takes me down over Laguna and then up the ridge to get this perspective. Few people ever see this view."
 * Tabby cat (nom; related article), a young male in a resting pose. (Created by User:Alvesgaspar.)
 * Ferrari F40 (nom; related article), one of 1,315 Ferrari F40s produced between 1987 and 1992. It was the first production car to reach 200 mph (320 km/h). (Created by Will Ainsworth, slightly modified by User:Bob Castle.)
 * Container ship (nom; related article), the 196-metre-long Delmas-operated container ship, the Nicholas Delmas, unloading containers at the port of Zanzibar in Tanzania.
 * Upper Belvedere night shot (nom; related article), a magnificent Baroque palace in Vienna. (Created by User:Murdockcrc.)
 * Lime Butterfly (nom; related article), photographed in Bangalore, India. (Created by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim.)
 * Highly enriched uranium (nom; related article), a large billet, hand-held and clearly not very radioactive. (Created by the US Federal Government.)
 * Chernobyl radiation map in 1996 (nom; related article), a map showing caesium-137 contamination in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine (in curies per square kilometre). (Created by User:Nergaal.) picture below
 * Rufous-tailed Robin (nom; related article), also known as Swinhoe's Robin, Swinhoe's Nightingale, or Whistling Nightingale; this shot was taken recently in Thailand by User:JJ Harrison.
 * Asian Openbill (nom; related article), taken with great steadiness from a boat by User:JJ Harrison.
 * HMCS St. John's (FFH 340) (nom; related article), Her Majesty's Canadian Ship, launched in 1995 as part of the Canadian Patrol Frigate Project. (Created by Airwolf.)
 * Lion Tower, Tripoli, Lebanon (nom; related article), an important example of 15th-century architecture from this part of the Middle East. (Created by the Photographic Division of the American Colony, Jerusalem (most likely Elijah Meyers or Lars Larsson); digitally edited by User:Chick Bowen.) picture at right



Featured sounds
Four sound files were promoted:
 * Birdsong of the Black-capped Chickadee (nom; related article), recorded May 2007, Sandbanks Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada (created by User:Mdf).
 * Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (nom; related article) (1910), one of the most well-known works by this English composer (1872–1958), performed by the US Army Band Strings.
 * Taffanel's Andante Pastoral and Scherzettino (nom; related article) (1907), performed by Alex Murray (flute) and Martha Goldstein (piano).
 * Richard Strauss's Burleske (nom; related article), performed by the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, piano solo Neal O'Doan.

Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.