Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-01-24/News and notes

News and notes

News and notes: Features and contests, new administrators

Featured articles and pictures

Mahatma Gandhi became a featured article last Saturday, though the process was not entirely smooth sailing (fortunately, at least nobody had to go on a fast in order to get the article featured).

In responding to objections and concerns, ashwatha, who made the nomination, put a considerable amount of effort into dealing with these. As a result, the article underwent significant expansion while its nomination was being considered.

The article also went through several images of Gandhi as editors worked to track down a photograph whose legitimacy for Wikipedia use was unassailable. The initial image had no source information; when it was traced to the French Wikipedia, it was discovered that the source information listed there was for an entirely different image, over which the newer image had been uploaded. A third image was found on the internet that might be suitable, but finally the article ended up with yet a different image, this one borrowed from the Dutch Wikipedia and identified as being in the public domain.

Other new featured articles from the past week include Common Unix Printing System, Aquarium, the cities of San Jose, California and Johannesburg, MTR, Link (Legend of Zelda), and H II region.

Only one picture was given featured status last week:

Danny's contest resurrected

After a long delay (see archived story), the winners in the second edition of Danny's contest were announced on Sunday. Danny apologized to the contestants for the delay, explaining that his duties in administering the Arbitration Committee election, which coincided with the official cutoff for contest submissions, had put the judging process on hold.

Now that the judges have reconvened, the winners announced were Battle of Alesia, Turquoise, and Page table. Turquoise is already a featured article, and Battle of Alesia is currently a featured article candidate.

Honorable mentions went to Paper plane, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and Andamanese languages. Grutness also received a special mention for submitting four separate articles related to New Zealand.

Requests for adminship

Four users were newly minted as administrators last week, Vague Rant, Dbiv, Gabbe, and Jni.

All of the successful candidates were overwhelmingly supported. Vague Rant (nominated by Frazzydee) received 53 support votes and Jni (nominated by fvw) received 25, while each had token opposition from one voter. For both of these users, the one opposing voter was apparently voted that way because of a conflict with one of the support voters, and several users protested against it.

The self-nominations of Dbiv and Gabbe were both unanimously granted adminship, with Dbiv receiving 14 support votes and 1 neutral vote, and Gab receiving 17 support votes.

Nominations for Piotrus and Alteripse are now pending. Piotrus, who has been heavily involved in topics related to the History of Poland was nominated by Páll. Alteripse has been heavily active in medical topics and was nominated by TacoDeposit. They will end Monday, and both look likely to pass. Another nomination, a self-nomination by Curps is also pending. It will end Monday, and also looks likely to pass.

The only unsuccessful nomination was a self-nomination by ABCD whose nomination ends Monday. He received 4 support votes, 8 oppose votes and 3 neutral votes. Many of the oppose and neutral voters felt that he was not involved enough in the community and does not make edit summaries.

Late last week, several more nominations were filed. Omegatron nominated himself on Friday, and has 3 support votes and 0 oppose votes. Dinopup also nominated himself on Friday and his nomination does not look likely to pass, as he has 1 support vote, 1 neutral vote and 5 oppose votes. The main reason behind the opposition is inexperience.

The greatest controversy of the week was over the nomination of Mike Garcia, who is the same person as former banned user Michael. Mike Garcia was unbanned several months ago and placed under the supervision of Danny, and is generally believed to be making good edits, but there was much opposition to his adminship. After some debate, Jimbo Wales intervened to cancel the nomination and end the discussion.