Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-05-09/Features and admins
News and notes: Features and new administrators
Article on Wikipedia finally receives featured status
After two peer review requests which gained limited feedback, and two previously failed FAC nominations by 119 and Raul, Wikipedia finally received its featured status last week after being nominated again by 119. The only objection it received was by PedroPVZ, who claimed the article had too many references. Eight others showed their support which was enough to get it through in the end.
Its promotion didn't stop the article from being vandalised. After several minor cases which got quickly reverted, it was moved by Wikipedia is Communism on Sunday evening around 20:00 UTC. Fixing this move was delayed for several minutes when a replication lag caused the database to be locked. The article has since been protected from page moves.
Older featured articles being properly referenced
During a November 2004 debate over removing featured status from articles that did not cite their sources, it was found that almost 200 featured articles had no explicit references (early criteria for featured status did not require a References section). Some of these articles have slowly acquired references, but as of the end of March, 153 featured articles still appeared to have no references. On April 21 and 22, a request to cite sources was made on the talk pages of the remaining unreferenced articles. At least 20 of them were referenced within a week of these requests. Substantial progress is now being made, with 106 articles left on the list.
One of Wikipedia's most common criticisms is that the material is not reliable and that it cannot be trusted if anyone can edit it. The verifiability policy is aimed at addressing this issue through the primary method of citing sources. The issue is seen by many editors as particularly important for featured articles since they are held up as the best of Wikipedia.
New featured content
The flow of featured content steadied last week. As in the week before, 8 articles reached featured status. Along with Wikipedia, these were Civil Air Patrol, Rebecca Clarke, Dalek, Three Laws of Robotics, Technetium, Elagabalus, and Geology of the Death Valley area.
Six images were featured, slightly fewer than the preceding week:
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Incandescent Pahoeoe Fountain -
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New administrators
Despite Requests for adminship being unusually busy (see archived story) only 5 users were promoted to administrator status last week. JRM, Rama, Evercat, Worldtraveller and El C all received the coveted mop and bucket after their period of voting.
Evercat was reinstated as an administrator with 44 support votes four months after his voluntary stepping down following a disputed block on Libertas who disagreed with Evercat revealing information based on his IP address.
JRM and Rama received the most support with a massive 71 and 52 support votes respectively. JRM only received one opposing vote, while Rama received none.
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