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Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-02-21/Features and admins

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Features and admins

The best of the week

New featured picture: Andromeda Galaxy. The light that formed this image took 2.5 million years to get to Earth, arriving just last September on the 18th. The creator, Adam Evans, said last week on his Flickr page, "Check it out, some kind soul has uploaded my photo to Wikipedia's entry for the Andromeda Galaxy. Very cool."


This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 12 – Friday 18 February


New administrators

The Signpost welcomes two editors as our newest admins.

At the time of publication there are three live RfAs: The Bushranger and Glane23, both due to finish on Tuesday 22 February, and Snottywong, due to finish on Monday 28 February.


From the new featured portal Law of England and Wales: justice must be seen to be done? An illustration from the 1470s of the execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger
From the new featured portal Somerset, a limestone gorge where Britain's oldest complete human skeleton, Cheddar Man, estimated to be 9,000 years old, was found in 1903
Several men sitting around a table
From the new featured article: Rutherford B. Hayes's cabinet in 1877
Two portals were promoted:
  • Portal:Law of England and Wales (nom) was promoted, with 29 articles (including 8 FAs and 3 FLs), and selected biographies, cases, legislation, pictures, and quotations. (picture at right)
  • Portal:Somerset (nom) was promoted, with 36 articles (all FA or GA), and selected biographies, pictures, and settlements. (picture at right)


Six articles were promoted to featured status:

  • Rinaldo (opera) (nom), a historically important opera and one of Handel's early masterpieces. Its tercentenary comes up in less than a week, on 24 February. (Brianboulton)
  • 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix (nom), a Formula One motor race held in 2008, in which most of the excitement surrounded a duel between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa. (Midgrid)
  • History of the New York Jets (nom), an American football team with one championship and much futility; its history goes back to 1959. (Wehwalt, The Writer 2.0)
  • Rutherford B. Hayes (nom) (1822–93), the 19th US President who served one term from 1877 to 1881, overseeing the end of Reconstruction and America's entry into the Second Industrial Revolution. Hayes was a reformer whose work was influential in civil service reform. He unsuccessfully tried to reconcile the divisions that had led to the Civil War. (Coemgenus; picture at right)
  • Minas Geraes-class battleship (nom), a pair of Brazilian dreadnoughts, in service from 1910, that caused traditional powers around the world to hail Brazil's new-found military potential (said to have "astonished the naval world"). Both ships were rapidly outmoded, but survived through the Second World War before being scrapped. (The ed17)
  • John J. Crittenden (nom), a US career politician in the 19th century who served as Congressman, Senator, US Attorney General, Governor, and state legislator. Nominator Acdixon says that "had his 'Crittenden Compromise' been approved, the American Civil War might have been averted."


Seven lists were promoted:

Four featured lists have been delisted in February thus far:


Five featured sounds were promoted, in twelve parts:


From the new featured picture: "I'll huff and I'll puff": the wolf blows down the straw house in a 1904 adaptation of Three Little Pigs.
Five images in six parts were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
New featured picture: the Engadin, a long valley in southeast Switzerland, protected by high mountains on all sides and famous for its sunny climate. This is one of the few places in which the Romansh language is indigenous.

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