Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-24/Featured content

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Featured articles

The approximate ranges of the Corn Crake (left) and African Crake (right), the subjects of the new featured topic, Crex
   Breeding summer visitor
   Resident year-round
   Winter visitor

From the new featured topic, Crex

The call of the male Corn Crake

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Three articles were promoted to featured status:

Hudson Valley Rail Trail (nom), According to nominator Gyrobo, "this 4-mile (6.4 km) rail trail was once part of a useful rail corridor that was somehow despised by its various owners. In the 1980s it was sold for one dollar to a felon, then seized by the government and paved. Today, it's part of a larger trail network that spans two counties in New York."

Rogers Hornsby (nom) (1896–1963), an American baseball infielder, manager, and coach who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball. Sportswriters consider Hornsby to be one of the best hitters of all time. (Oriolesfan8 and Wizardman)

Russian battleship Sevastopol (1895) (nom), the last of three ships in the Petropavlovsk class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1890s. Sevastopol saw service in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. Slightly damaged during a surprise attack on the surprisingly English-sounding east-Russian Port Arthur in early February 1905, the ship later participated in several attempts to break out from the besieged port. The ship was scuttled to prevent her capture by the Imperial Japanese Navy and was never raised. The remains lie outside the entrance to Port Arthur. (Buggie111)

One featured article was delisted:

History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America) (nom: referencing)

Featured lists

Ten lists were promoted in the past two weeks:

List of 1984 Winter Olympics medal winners (nom) (Nominated by Parutakupiu.)

List of Oakland Athletics team records (nom) (Albacore.)

Lionel Conacher Award (nom) (Resolute.)

List of Major League Baseball players to hit for the cycle (nom) (Killervogel5.)

List of colleges and universities in Alabama (nom) (Spyder Monkey.)

List of international cricket five-wicket hauls by Shane Warne (nom) (Joesayers and The Rambling Man.)

List of deaths at the Berlin Wall (nom) (Violetriga.)

List of Real Madrid C.F. seasons (nom) (AdrianRO.)

List of World Heritage Sites in Africa (nom) (Ericleb01 and Arsenikk.)

Toni Braxton discography (nom) (Novice7.)

Three featured lists were delisted:

2006 NCAA Division I FBS football rankings (nom: lead, style, formatting, referencing)

2005 NCAA Division I-A football rankings (nom: lead, style, formatting, referencing)

List of elements by stability of isotopes (nom: referencing, style, formatting)

Featured topics

Two topics were promoted:

1991 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), with three featured articles and two good articles. The 1991 season was the first in more than 24 years in which no hurricanes developed from tropical waves, which are the source for most North Atlantic tropical cyclones (nominators Hurricanehink and Cyclonebiskit).

The Signpost asked Hurricanehink what brought him to the topic, and how he became interested in storms in the first place.

"I stumbled across the topic almost by accident in the summertime, after realizing that it was the most recent start-class Atlantic hurricane season article. With a surprising amount of information for a season 20 years ago, it was an enjoyable writing experience that covered two rather notable storms – the Perfect Storm and Hurricane Bob. My writing process has evolved with the times. When I first joined Wikipedia in late 2005, Google news was hardly on the map, so the breadth of sources was rather different.

"'In addition, as I have gotten older, I'm able to spend less time on the site, which causes me to spend more time on a given article. I feel that allows my writing to stay fresh. I'm a pianist and singer-songwriter, so what I write on the site is rather different from what I do in real life. Weather began as a hobby for me when I was seven years old, and it's just stuck with me for my whole life. There are no concrete plans for the next featured topic; they usually happen accidentally, depending on what storms end up being the most fun to write about!"

The second new featured topic is Crex (nom), with two featured articles and one good article. Crex are a genus of birds containing two species: the Corn Crake, which breeds across Europe and Asia and winters in southern Africa, and the African Crake, which migrates within Africa. Both are short-billed rails with blackish-brown upperparts, mainly blue-grey underparts, and barring on the flanks. Despite their huge breeding grounds and large populations, their future is uncertain due to the impact of human activity. (nominator Jimfbleak).

Featured picture

One picture was promoted among many rejections by those tough reviewers: Missing square puzzle (nom; related article), an optical illusion used in mathematics classes to help students reason about geometrical figures. (created by User:Fibonacci).

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What happened to the discussions about the editor's favorite FA? Buggie111 (talk) 00:10, 25 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- We did it for six months, and it was worthwhile IMO, but there was a lot of flack about it from FAC ("culture of reward"), and it was an awful lot of work. I felt the new year was a good time to give it a rest and explore different ways of appealing to readers. It can always be revisited if people want it. $Tony (talk)$ 11:43, 26 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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