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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-31/Features and admins

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Features and admins

The best of the week

New featured picture: Utopia, Limited poster, advertising the 1894 D'Oyly Carte production in New York of the comic opera written by Gilbert and Sullivan the previous year. The image was from an original version consisting of 32 squares, which were stitched together by User:Adam Cuerden.


This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 22 – Friday 28 January (UTC)


New administrators

This week saw no new admins. Looie496 resigned as admin after a recall request against him succeeded, with five administrators "in good standing" supporting recall. Closing admin Kingpin13 wrote "Looie496 may at any time start another Request for Adminship, and a promotion there would override this recall. It should be noted that some of the administrators supporting recall said they might support an RfA." The request for recall made was in response to a controversial unblock performed by Looie496, while the block was under discussion at the administrators' noticeboard. This recall makes Looie496 one of the shortest-serving admins ever, since his RfA was in October (see the "F and A" blurb, The Signpost's story about a notable admin recall last July, and Wikipedia:Administrators open to recall/Past requests).

At the time of publication there are four live RfAs, all to close soon: Acdixon, Ponyo, Gonzonoir, and Smartse.


A painted turtle is swimming, apparently in an aquarium, and we see it front on at large scale, with its left webbed foot raised.
From the new featured article Painted turtle: in an almost comic shot, a swimming individual displays its yellow face-stripes and nasal groove while raising a webbed foot. Picture: US Bureau of Land Management
Seven articles were promoted to featured status:
  • Teresa Cristina of the Two Sicilies (nom) (1822–89), an Italian princess who married the second Brazilian Emperor, Dom Pedro II. (Nominated by Lecen and Astynax).
  • 1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash (nom), the story of a Douglas DC-6 aviation accident that involved several technical "features" that seemed to conspire against the flight crew. (Wackywace).
  • C. D. Howe (nom), who virtually ran the Canadian economy for more than a decade after the Second World War, and is remembered for founding Air Canada and the CBC. (Bzuk and Wehwalt.)
  • Painted turtle (nom), the most widespread, numerous turtle of North America, with supercooled blood that resists winter freezes; it has been the subject of controversies in taxonomy and commercial harvesting. (NYMFan69-86 and TCO.) picture at right
  • William Warelwast (nom) (died 1137), a medieval Norman cleric, Bishop of Exeter, England, and a royal clerk for King William II. (Ealdgyth and Malleus Fatuorum.)
  • C. R. M. F. Cruttwell (nom), a respected historian with a fine war record, who was dean of an Oxford college at 33. What could go wrong for him? asked nominator Brianboulton. "Well, in 1922 he had the misfortune to meet, and fall out with, the young Evelyn Waugh, a resourceful and unforgiving enemy. For the next 17 years the name "Cruttwell" was introduced repeatedly into Waugh's novels and stories, always as a nasty or ridiculous character."
  • Carousel (musical) (nom), which according to co-nominator Wehwalt "may be the most beautiful musical ever written". (Co-nominator JeanColumbia.)

Four lists were promoted:

Engraving
Crispijn van de Passe's contemporary engraving of eight of the 13 conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, the new featured topic. The Dutch artist probably never actually saw or met any of the conspirators, but it has become a popular representation nonetheless. Missing are Digby, Keyes, Rookwood, Grant, and Tresham. (From the UK National Portrait Gallery)

Gunpowder Plot (nom) was promoted to featured status, with seven featured articles and seven good articles. The Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland in 1605 by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. It is a highly significant, complex, and multilayered part of English history. (Nominated by Parrot of Doom.)


Who'd have thought math could be this much fun? The generalised Lyapunov fractal for some sequence that went way above The Signpost's head.
Eight images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
New featured picture: the curious redeye gaper. Nominator J Milburn said, "Note that the "cuts" are entirely natural – they are the lateral lines of the fish."