The Signpost

Features and admins

Featured list milestone

From the newly promoted List of Governors of Washington, the incumbent, Christine Gregoire (left). From List of Baltimore Orioles first-round draft picks, baseball player Mike Mussina, who was drafted by the Orioles and made five all-star appearances for the team (right).
This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 19 – Friday 25 March


From the list of Moons of Saturn, promoted May 2010: a raw image from the Cassini space probe of the equatorial ridge on Saturn's moon Iapetus, taken September 2007 at a distance of just over 60,000 kilometres
From Order of battle at the Battle of Camperdown, promoted April 2010, a painting of the Battle of Camperdown (1797) by William Adolphus Knell, now on display at Edinburgh Castle
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:

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:


New administrators

The Signpost welcomes two editors as our newest admins.

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


Early motorsports: from the 1906 French Grand Prix
Robert Oppenheimer (left) at the remains of the Trinity test in September 1945. The white canvas overshoes prevent fallout from sticking to the soles of their shoes
Ten articles were promoted to featured status:

One featured article was delisted:


User:Alvesgaspar's photograph of a tabby cat
Twelve images were promoted
The Lion Tower in Tripoli, an important example of 15th-century Lebanese architecture, photographed shortly after 1900
. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":


New featured picture: of more than a little relevance to events over the past few weeks, a map of caesium-137 contamination in 1996, a decade after the Chernobyl crisis. Restriction orders are still in place for the production, transportation and consumption of food contaminated by Chernobyl fallout.


Engraved portrait of composer Richard Strauss by Ferdinand Schmutzer (1922); a performance of Strauss's Burleske was promoted to featured status.
Four sound files were promoted:
Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.

















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