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23 July 2014

 

2014-07-23

Education program gaining momentum in Israel

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By Pine

Introduction

The Wikimedia Education Program currently spans 60 programs around the world. Students and instructors participate at almost every level of education. Subjects covered include law, medicine, arts, literature, information science, biology, history, psychology, and many others. This Signpost series presents a snapshot of the Wikimedia Global Education Program as it exists in 2014. We interviewed participants and facilitators from the United States and Canada, Serbia, Israel, the Arab World, and Mexico, in addition to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Education presentation by Dr. Martin Poulter of Wikimedia UK

Wikimedia education in Israel

Based on discussions with Michal Lester, Executive Director of Wikimedia Israel

Wikipedia Education in high schools

From left: Itzik Edri, Chair of Wikimedia Israel Board; Michal Lester, Executive Director of Wikimedia Israel; Jan-Bart de Vreede, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees; Rabbi Shai Piron, Israel's Education Minister
Workshop for teachers in June 2014
Wikimedia Israel recently announced that the Israeli Minister of Education had given verbal approval to including Wikipedia training in the instruction of teachers for high school students. Now Wikimedia Israel is looking for ways to implement this training by finding willing collaborators within the Ministry of Education. During the past eighteen months relationships have been created with schools throughout Israel. WMIL conducted workshops and lectures for teachers. The last workshop was few months ago and after that five school principals or teachers have had meetings with Wikimedia Israel volunteers or staff about including Wikipedia education in their schools. Michal indicates that these principals understand the potential of Wikipedia for their schools. The approval of the Minister of Education is an important milestone in the development of the education program and much more collaboration between Wikipedia and high school teachers is likely in the future.
The willingness of high school teachers to learn Wikipedia editing varies. Some teachers are reluctant, while others find it to be a good tool, especially for teaching prose writing which is done less frequently by students in the age of Facebook and Twitter. Students are often very willing to write for Hebrew Wikipedia, sometimes more so than teachers are.
Currently eleven high schools include Wikipedia education for gifted students. One school is near Tel Aviv in Herzliya, and the others are in Be'er Sheva.
In Herzliya, there are two classes involved, which to date have many articles in their sandboxes but not many have moved to article space. As of the time of this writing, approximately 15 articles are in sandboxes and 6 are in article space.
In Be'er Sheva, two Wikipedia volunteers help to instruct 10 classes of 35 to 40 students each. Initially, several volunteers came to help give each class a single workshop in Wikipedia editing, but the single workshops did not convey enough information, so two volunteers have repeatedly worked with the students during the term. Students have been well motivated by making Wikipedia articles an important part of their grades. A total of approximately 40 articles have been produced by the classes this year concerning the geographic area in the vicinity of Be'er Sheva.

Wikipedia Education in colleges and universities

Haifa University editing marathon in 2012
At the university level, there is great success with the Wikipedia Education Program in Israel. Students have written hundreds of articles. Wikipedia editors who volunteer to assist students can be very generous with their time, volunteering to take phone calls and visit classes frequently. The volunteers do this because they feel that this is a good way of expanding the content on Hebrew Wikipedia and the hope that a small number of students will become long-term Wikipedians.
Currently, four universities and one college use Wikipedia in the classroom: Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Sha'arei Mishpat College. A total of five volunteer Wikimedians mentor one or two classes each. Students are highly motivated because a large portion of their grades depend on their Wikipedia contributions.
  • At Technion, one instructor especially wanted to have more articles about women professors on Hebrew Wikipedia to inspire women students to consider careers in science. 20 articles have been produced about women researchers.
  • At Haifa University, 20 courses have participated in the Wikipedia Education Program since 2011. 167 articles have been created.
  • At Tel Aviv University, there was a course in the medical school in the first semester of academic year 2013-2014. Twelve class sessions involved adding medical content to Hebrew Wikipedia. See the Wikimedia Blog entry here. 64 new articles were created and 64 stubs were expanded. The course received good reviews from the students and was well received in the Hebrew Wikipedia volunteer community. The course also had unplanned beneficial outcomes including media stories from Israeli radio stations and newspapers, Israeli-Arab participants holding a subsequent editing workshop for Arabic-speaking high school students in their hometown, and a new collaboration between Tel Aviv University's External Relations office and Hebrew Wikipedia.
The first graduating class from the Wiki-Med course at Tel-Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine. 62 participants completed the course including 37 medical students, 22 dentistry students, 1 PhD life sciences student, 1 academic staff member, and 1 administrative staff member. The native languages of the students were Hebrew (30), Arabic (29), and Russian (3).


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2014-07-23

The World Cup hangs on, though tragedies seek to replace it

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By Milowent

Last week I predicted that the World Cup dominance on the report would be over—but I was wrong. The World Cup Final fell on the 13th of July, which was actually the first day of the week covered by this report, not the last day of the last report. Hence, five of the Top 10 this week are again World Cup related-topics.

However, this week also focuses on much more serious news including the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine and the ongoing fighting in and around the Gaza Strip, which is the cause of increased viewership of a number of related articles in the Top 10 and Top 25. Although Gaza Strip was only #7 this week, in the Top 25 you'll find Israel at #14, Hamas at #17, and Israeli–Palestinian conflict at #25. And the crash in eastern Ukraine not only led to Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 at #2 and Buk missile system at #3, but also caused renewed interest in the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (#19), and the 1988 shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 at #22. Aside from football and these tragedies, the Top 10 is rounded out by the appearance of Nelson Mandela at #8 (July 18 was Mandela Day and celebrated by a Google doodle), and the recent science fiction film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes at #10, which just beat out "Weird Al" Yankovic for a place in the Top 10.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.

For the week of 13 to 19 July 2014, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 2014 FIFA World Cup C-class 916,405
Down from 1,179,986 views last week, but still enough to lead the list. And since we've also determined that the views which Amazon.com has recently been getting (and put that article #1 last week) seem to be bot-influenced, it's been taken out of the running.
2 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 NA 887,329
The tragic shooting down of this passenger aircraft over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 aboard, makes it to #2 on the list this week with only three days of views. While Russian-backed media is frantically trying to offer alternative and even absurd explanations for this event, it seems quite likely that Russian-backed insurgents, who had recently downed some Ukrainian planes in the same area, mistook the Boeing 777 for a Ukrainian military plane (though Ukraine would like to call it a "terrorist act" like U.S. President Ronald Reagan did regarding Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983). We can all agree it was a tragedy, however. A full investigation will need to take place, though that is being hampered by the lack of government authority and ongoing fighting in the region.
3 Buk missile system C-Class 840,636
A missile fired from this Russian-developed surface to air missile system is the suspected cause of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. View counts of this article spiked very understandably on the 17th, and remain well above normal. Interesting, though the normal daily view counts for this article were in in 200s-300s range in the two months prior to the crash, they did rise to the 600-900 view range in the three days before the crash, likely as a result of reporting that the insurgents in eastern Ukraine had recently obtained and were using this weapon.
4 FIFA World Cup Featured Article 831,347
The broader article on the history of the World Cup competition continued to be accessed by people looking for World Cup information.
5 Germany national football team B-class 641,544
Germany has now won four World Cups (1954, 1974, 1990, and 2014).
6 Lionel Messi Good Article 587,197
The Argentine forward and captain of the national team is a contender for the title of "best footballer on the planet", though he was unable to lead his team to victory in the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13. Somewhat as a consolation, he was controversially given the Golden Ball award for being the best player of the tournament.
7 Gaza Strip C-Class 505,588
The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, part of a very long and complicated history of conflict, is no doubt the cause of the popularity of this article this week. The military operation is dubbed Operation Protective Edge by Israel. Hamas probably has a different term, I expect; indeed the Arabic wikipedia version of the Operation Protective Edge article is called "The War on Gaza (2014)".
8 Nelson Mandela Good Article 504,588
July 18 was Nelson Mandela International Day, which was also celebrated this year with a Google doodle.
9 Mario Götze B-class 500,377
This German footballer with the stylish neckbeard scored the championship-winning goal for the German national team at the 2014 FIFA World Cup Final on July 13. This was good enough to make the Top 10 this week.
10 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes C-Class 467,674 This American science fiction film, the sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, was released in Australia on July 9 and the United States on July 11, with largely positive reviews from critics. It is up from #13 last week.

If you've read this far, here are some additional notes of interest from the raw WP:5000, which is updated every week and is the source data for the Top 10 and Top 25 lists: Though Iran Air Flight 655 (#22) was the only other past air tragedy to make the Top 25 as a result of the crash in Ukraine, many other flight incidents had increased views this week, including Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (#65), Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 (#190), TWA Flight 800 (#238), Pan Am Flight 103 (#1002), Korean Air Lines Flight 902 (#1480), and United Airlines Flight 232 (#3956). For whatever reasons, these appear to be the prior air disasters that readers were most motivated to read up on.

It took 467,674 views to make the Top 10 this week, and 271,026 views to make the Top 25. That's rarefied air among our 4.5 million articles, of course. 193 articles received over 100,000 views this week, with Masters of Sex (#193) the last to do so. Gotham (TV series) (#640) was the last to break 50,000 views; Backstreet Boys (#2277) last to hit 25,000 (no jump in views caused this position, apparently the Backstreet Boys are steadily around the 2277th most important thing in the world these days); and the 2013 film G.I. Joe: Retaliation (#5000) was last to make the WP:5000, with 16,603 views.

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2014-07-23

Institutional media uploads to Commons get a bit easier

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By The ed17
The promenade deck on the German steamer König Albert, newly uploaded from the Library of Congress thanks to the new GLAMwiki Toolset Project.
This video of a Eurasian spoonbill is now used in over 50 Wikipedia articles.
From the Rijksmuseum: Katsukawa Shunei, a Japanese samurai who died in 1819.
Alexander Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, seen between 1890 and 1900.

Galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) today are facing fewer barriers to uploading their content onto Wikimedia projects now that the new GLAM-Wiki Toolset Project has been launched. The tool, which is the fruit of a collaboration between Europeana—the Internet portal providing access to millions of digitized files from all over Europe—and several Wikimedia chapters, relieves GLAMs from having to write their own automated scripts and gives them a standardized method of uploading large amounts of their digitized holdings.

Despite the large amount of work involved, Commons has a long history of partnering with outside institutions for media donations. The largest include the Dutch Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, the US National Archives, and the first mass image donation, Germany's Bundesarchiv.

In an email to the Signpost, Europeana's relatively new GLAM-Wiki coordinator Liam Wyatt noted that "the current system", which forces these GLAMs to write customized scripts or find a rare editor willing to do all of the work for them, "is not sustainable." The toolset, "for the first time", changes that dynamic, allowing "the reasonably-technically competent and motivated GLAM to share large amounts of multimedia to Commons ... this is a giant leap forward in giving GLAMs the ability to share with Commons on their own terms."

They will still need editors to donate their time to facilitate these partnerships, as someone needs to explain the value of Wikimedia projects and overcome objections. Still, as Wyatt says, both sides will no longer have to "spend considerable time managing the technical side of uploads ... all built by themselves by hand."

On the GLAM side, there is a fairly large amount of work that needs to be done prior to uploading any images, most of which revolves around the media's metadata. While a simple concept, it is exceedingly complex in practice; as a previous Signpost op-ed noted, "there will be no single unifying metadata 'standard' ... biosharing.org lists just under 200 metadata standards for experimental biosciences alone. ... any solution to handling digital objects must have a mechanism for handling a multiplicity of standards, and ideally within an individual object". Between that and the MediaWiki software, which does not natively come with simple methods of uploading metadata, much of the toolset's multiyear development was spent on this problem.

Wyatt told us that the tool's overall impact will be to make Commons more palatable to GLAM managers who are deciding between Commons and its chief competitors, Flickr and Google Art Project. "If you're a busy GLAM multimedia manager, both of those platforms are significantly more user friendly in their upload usability to a non-technical person", Wyatt says.

"We can talk about the value of free knowledge and the massive visibility that Wikipedia provides until the cows come home, but if we can't enable those GLAMs that do want to share their content with us to do it by themselves, with their own metadata, at their own pace... then we are placing ourselves at a significant disadvantage."

While still in its infancy, the toolset has already allowed Fæ, a London-based Wikimedian and former trustee of Wikimedia UK, to upload hundreds of thousands of images from the New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Rijksmuseum, and historical American Buildings Survey. The Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision), the first GLAM to use the tool, uploaded 500 videos of Dutch birds (cf. press release).

Four Wikimedia chapters (Netherlands, UK, France, and Switzerland) provided funding for the project, which Europeana has spent four years developing. It was first announced in 2011.

How does it work?

The toolset's software developer, Dan Entous, told us that the toolset:


From the New York Public Library: a 1700s map of what they called the "Far East". In contemporary terms, you are seeing India, China, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other nearby countries.

In brief

  • Eligible affiliates: The WMF has determined which affiliates will be eligible to apply for funding in the FDC's first round. The only entity categorically denied at this stage is Wikimedia India, while six have outstanding requirements. These include Hong Kong, which has still not returned unused funds from two previous projects—a 2010–11 grant for education toolkits, which caused the FDC to deny the chapter's 2012–13 fiscal year funding request (sparking an angry protest), and Wikimania 2013, which we previously understood to include only a missing financial report. Serbia is facing similar issues with unused funding and unsubmitted financial information.
  • Understanding Wikipedia articles: Phoebe Ayers has released a YouTube video explaining how to assess the quality of Wikipedia articles.
  • Media Viewer request for arbitration: The Arbitration Committee accepted the Media Viewer request for comment case initiated by 28bytes. An RfC to make the Media Viewer disabled by default was implemented by administrator Pete Forsyth, then reverted by WMF deputy director Erik Möller who further threatened to temporarily remove Forsyth's administrator rights (see Signpost coverage: "Echoes of the past haunt new conflict over tech initiative"). The committee is being asked to answer several questions about policy and community norms, the consensus-forming process, and implementing community consensus against WMF wishes. The evidence phase of the case closes 27 July, and the workshop phase closes 31 July.
  • Wikimania scholarship recipients announced: The WMF has published the usernames of individuals who received scholarships to Wikimania 2014, which will be held in early August in London.
  • New quarterly reviews: The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has conducted three new quarterly reviews: Wikipedia Zero, Core features (Flow), and the MediaWiki Core team.
  • "Victory" in Italian legal case: The WMF has declared "victory" in a long-running lawsuit between the WMF, Wikimedia Italy, and an Italian politician. After two allegedly defaming statements were published on the Italian Wikipedia, the politician, Antonio Angelucci and his son sued the two organizations for €20 million. According to the linked post, the court wrote that the WMF "offers a service which is based on the freedom of the users to draft the various pages of the encyclopedia; it is such freedom that excludes any [obligation to guarantee the absence of offensive content on its sites] and which finds its balance in the possibility for anybody to modify contents and ask for their removal." The WMF alone has been exonerated with this; a ruling on Wikimedia Italy is expected "shortly".
  • US train the trainers event: Wikimedia DC is hosting a workshop facilitator event over the US Labor Day weekend, 29 August to 1 September. Funded slots are available for ten participants, with a deadline of 15 August for applications.
  • Free access: The New Yorker will make available everything they publish on or after the the end of July, to anyone with an Internet connection. Calling it a "summer-long free-for-all", they plan to stop in "the fall". Given the Northern Hemisphere's summer, that means that all new content should be available for at least one month, and maybe two.
  • Content translation: The Wikimedia Foundation has released a content translation tool, a development that could revolutionize content creation on the Wikimedia projects. A beta version of the software is available for testing in Spanish and Catalan, including support for references and templates.

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2014-07-23

Did you know?—good idea, needs reform

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By The Rambling Man and Crisco 1492
The English Wikipedia's did you know (DYK) section has been a feature of the site's main page since February 2004. From the beginning, the section has served as a place to highlight Wikipedia's newest articles; the first, pencil sharpener, was written by Raul654, who had only been an editor for six months. But over the last few years, the did you know section has gotten steadily larger and more complex, and non-notable or plagiarized articles have occasionally slipped through the reviewing process, leading numerous editors to call for reforms to the system.
We asked two editors who frequent the process, The Rambling Man and Crisco 1492, to weigh in on the debate. The views expressed are those of the authors alone; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.

The Rambling Man: DYK has lost its original purpose

I'll start in a position contrary to my declaration: I think DYK is a great idea.

Now for the bad news. It's not working. I've been editing Wikipedia since May 2005 and only recently, having worked on WP:ERRORS for a while, have I become aware of the slow but inevitable heat death of a behemoth of the main page. DYK pre-dates my involvement with the grand project by a couple of months, but looking back, and comparing the rules then to now there's been little change.

A long-term DYK editor, attempting to paper over the cracks

One tale often related is that DYK is intended for "new users" to be encouraged to create new material and "be rewarded" by way of a main page mention. Indeed many disgruntled DYK regulars have informed me that they wouldn't be the Wikipedian they are today without DYK having encouraged them to start editing and "make a difference". It may have been true, but it's now a fallacy. A quick look at the edit count of the most recent sets of DYKs placed on the main page shows average contributions per editor exceeding 10,000. Moreover, we actively encourage DYKs to "score points" in Wikipedia contests such as WP:WIKICUP. The push is no longer to encourage and retain new users, it's to win an arbitrary Wikipedia contest.

But to get an item on the main page, what is required? Meet one of a complex plethora of criteria, which generally involves a quid pro quo review often shortened to QPQ. The QPQ system of review at DYK is used as a replacement for quality reviews from multiple editors without conflicts of interest. Therein lies one of the major flaws. QPQ can be read as follows: "review my article favourably, I'll do the same, we'll both get our main page moment of glory". Until lately, DYKs have been earning frequent flyer miles at WP:ERRORS and have even made the odd sojourn to WP:ANI for distasteful content.

An endemic problem: the "hook". The purpose of a Did you know... section ought to be to draw people's interest to something that wasn't obvious, that titilates, interests, grabs their attention. Instead, we have banal and uninteresting hooks, some of which are so contrived that they beggar belief. "Did you know that Footballer A played in Match B?" is a common version. Worse is the hook that conflates unrelated information in order to disguise itself as interesting "Did you know that Footballer A was born in B, but ate apples in C?" These kind of hooks are regular visitors to the main page.

Finally, DYK is plagued by curious technical issues. It's a template nightmare. To start a nomination, you need to add a template to a template. How is this encouraging our new users who find all parts of Wiki markup a jungle? Also, the QPQ system means that once one or more of the complex criteria are met, a main page appearance for a nomination is "guaranteed". The hook will feature, but for no longer than eight hours (if the process is "working") and that's that. The mad rush to update the hooks three times a day results in low quality content being placed on the main page. A common counter-argument is that it's all about getting new interest, but since most editors are using DYK for other purposes, that wears thin.

But I like the concept, the original idea, show me some genuinely interesting facts about genuinely new and half-decent quality articles, and I'll show you a section of the main page we can all be proud of. Right now, we have a broken and dysfunctional process which needs be properly overhauled. The renovation process must involve all comers—not just the DYK hierarchy, who appear to believe there's no problem.

The Rambling Man is a British Wikipedian who has been editing Wikipedia since 2005.

Crisco 1492: DYK serves a purpose, even if it needs changes

Before I talk about if and how we should change DYK, there are two things that need to be addressed. The first is the widely held belief that Wikipedia does not need new articles (and, as such, DYK is no longer necessary). The second is the relationship between new editors and DYK.

The belief that Wikipedia doesn't need any new articles is, to put it quite frankly, rubbish. Systemic bias has given this encyclopedia a clear bias towards Anglosphere topics. Significant subjects from non-English areas are still lacking (for instance, classic Malay literature, a field with almost 200 years of scholarship, was still a redlink at the time this piece was published), as are hundreds of thousands of more minor topics that are still notable. My first DYK, Salah Asuhan back in April 2011, was on one of the most significant works of Indonesian literature, and since then I have brought almost 600 articles on Indonesia to DYK.

I've yet to run out of topics, and can easily name another 15 or 20 articles that we should have.

"Off with their heads!"
We need less of this...
"Let's do it!"; "Alright!"
and more of this.

That's just one topic, in one country. What about the literature of Zimbabwe? Of Malaysia? What about the music of Argentina? And what about all of those important articles which are still stubs, and thus eligible for DYK through expansion? Plainly, there's still work to be done, and enough new content can feasibly be created to keep DYK running for years.

Some have questioned DYK's value in attracting and retaining new editors, in part because several established editors seem to responsible for much of the content. One must remember that even they were newbies once, confused over Wikipedia's labyrinthine policies and guidelines. My first article, Long Road to Heaven, was written in the 2002 Bali bombings article in 2007 before being moved to its own page; my second article was not until four years later. Because of the sense of pride I got in seeing Salah Asuhan on the main page, I kept writing and improving, branching out into new content, to the point that I have now created and/or been a major contributor to almost 100 pieces of featured content. Perhaps mine is not a typical story, but it is illustrative of DYK's contribution towards producing and retaining quality editors: it can give people the confidence (and the skills) necessary to write better articles and, in the end, contribute increasingly better work.

Now, back to the issue at hand: DYK. I don't know anyone who disagrees. DYK has room for improvement, and change is necessary. However, this change must begin from the beginning, then develop logically from there. We've already given DYK a clear mission statement, thanks in no small part to Prioryman. Next is consolidating and simplifying the rules so that they are both easier to understand for new editors and closer to the actual expectations of the Wikipedia community.

A minor example: for years now, the supplementary guidelines at DYK have used a rule of thumb of one citation per paragraph. This measure is now considered lacking by most of the Wikipedia community; it is not uncommon for verifiable information (i.e. information for which a reference could be found) to be removed simply because no reference is included yet. If all information being referenced is what the Wikipedia community expects, DYK rules should reflect that.

This is obviously a massive undertaking. Ten years of rule creep is a lot to clean out, and any substantial changes to the rules (such as the one I suggested above) would need input from the community. Not just the so-called 'DYK-ers'—a term I despise, because editors are individuals and not just part of a mindless 'them' repeating a single party line—but the Wikipedia community in general. Changes to DYK affect the main page, and changes to the main page affect everyone.

Working together in a collegial atmosphere, we should be able to hammer out a balance between quality and ease of accessibility for new editors, and then collaboratively work at enforcing these standards and helping editors fix their mistakes rather than discouraging them from further contributions. Let's not forget that, somewhere, there may be new editors able to write a thousand articles—if we just teach them how.

Crisco 1492 is an editor living in Indonesia who has been involved in content development, both on Wikipedia as a writer and off Wikipedia as a trainer. Since becoming involved with DYK in April 2011, he has taken part in over a thousand reviews and nominated more than six hundred articles. He also claims credit for the first DYK to run after becoming a Featured Article and the shortest DYK hook.

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2014-07-23

Why, they're plum identical!

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By The ed17, SchroCat, and Adam Cuerden
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 13 through 19 July.

Featured articles

Ten featured articles were promoted this week.

The Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg, from the new featured article
The Italian battleship Andrea Doria during the First World War, from the new featured article
A snoring rail, drawn in 1898; from the new featured article
  • Winnipeg (nominated by Nikkimaria) is the capital of Manitoba. The name Winnipeg comes from the Western Cree words for "muddy waters", although the city is fondly known locally as "Winterpeg", because of the weather, and "Gateway to the West", because of its location and transport links. The location was a trading centre for aboriginal peoples before French traders built the first fort on the site in 1738.
  • Andrea Doria-class battleship (nominated by Sturmvogel 66 and Parsecboy) These two editors are frighteningly proficient writers of warship articles. This latest featured article, on a class of Italian battleships that served in the First and Second World Wars, is Sturmvogel's 51st and Parsecboy's 44th. They are principally responsible for the largest topics on Wikipedia, including the 63-article Battlecruisers of the world, the 62-article Battleships of Germany, and the 71-article Light cruisers of Germany.
  • Si Ronda (nominated by Crisco 1492) Another entry in the many Indonesian films Crisco has written on, Si Ronda, or "the Watchmen", was released in 1930. Though it is now considered to be a lost film, the plot was from an orally transmitted lenong (similar to a stage play).
  • Drakengard (nominated by ProtoDrake) This Japanese video game was designed for the Playstation 2 and released in 2004. An action role-playing game, Drakengard kindled a series of video games that tell the story of a religiously motivated war between the Union and the Empire.
  • Jean Bellette (nominated by hamiltonstone) An Australian artist, Bellette is known for her paintings of the Greek tragedies Euripedes, Sophocles and Homer. She won the Sulman Prize in 1942 and 1944.
  • The Whistleblower (nominated by 1ST7) This 2010 docudrama chronicles the unusual story of a Nebraska policewoman who was recruited to serve as a peacekeeper for a private military contractor, but was fired after alerting fifty superiors to the existence of a sex trafficking ring that operated with assistance from the company. She later sued and won a wrongful dismissal suit against them.
  • Snoring rail (nominated by Jimfbleak) Another day, another flightless rail from Jimfbleak. The snoring rail is native to Indonesia, but its habitat is nearly inaccessible to humans ("dense vegetation in wet areas"). One ornithologist spent an entire year trying to find one. Unsurprisingly, we know little about it.
  • Falkland Islands (nominated by MarshalN20) This archipelago was claimed by the United Kingdom in the 1760s and finally permanently settled by them in the mid-1800s. Previous settlement attempts had resulted in Argentina claiming the land, but the British retook the islands in 1833. Even today, legacy from that action still exists: the two countries went to war over the islands in 1982, and Argentina has pressed their claims again in recent years. Certainly the islanders have expressed their desire, as in 2013 99.8% voted to stay with the UK.
  • 2013 Atlantic hurricane season (nominated by 12george1) Unusually, this year in Atlantic hurricanes was quiet, with no storms greater than a category three for the first time since 1994. It also had the fewest total hurricanes since 1982. Nearly a third of the year's storms hit Mexico; the largest, Ingrid, killed 23 people and caused least US$1.5 billion in damages.
  • South Carolina-class battleship (nominated by The ed17) In the early 1900s, warship technology was changing faster than one could take stock of it. One of the largest leaps was exemplified by the British Dreadnought, which packed triple the main guns, more armor, and higher speed than all previous battleships. The South Carolinas were independently developed, but came from the same school of thought. Their armament featured fewer total main guns than Dreadnought but arranged them far more economically. However, to keep the South Carolinas within a congressionally mandated weight limit, its designers were forced to limit their top speed, something that severely hampered the ships in the First World War.

Featured lists

Five featured lists were promoted this week.

Audie Murphy: a new featured list, and soon to be part of a featured topic?

Featured pictures

Twenty-five featured pictures were promoted this week.

Willy Stöwer's painting of U-21 sinking the Linda Blanche.
The Great Mosque of Central Java.
The Sony α77 II
The primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Slaunger's photograph of the only SAI KZ IV aircraft built during WWII landing at a Danish Air Show, in her original air ambulance livery.
A fifty-U.S.-dollar first-issue National Bank Note.


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