Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-09-05/Features and admins

Features and admins

Bureaucratship comes to the fore

More requests for bureaucratship were made this week, and both the title and the process came under debate. Meanwhile, 9 users became administrators. 12 articles, 4 lists and 7 pictures were promoted to featured status.

Bureaucrats

Previously Andrevan pointed out that bureaucrats now had responsibility for changing usernames, and nominated himself (see archived story). He emerged unsuccessful, having garnered 50 support votes, 10 opposes and 1 neutral. Rdsmith4 (nom) also put himself forward and was promoted with 48 supports and 1 oppose. Currently Linuxbeak (nom) and Nichalp (nom) are being voted on.

As requests for bureaucratship are fairly uncommon, they have promoted a flurry of discussion. UninvitedCompany (a bureaucrat himself) proposed a change in title for "bureaucrats". Various suggestions were made (not all of them entirely serious) including "Super-Admins", "Daimons", "Lambies", "user rights administrator" and "Admins on Wheels". So far there is no consensus for changing to any of these names. Andrevan also created a poll to gauge the standard required for promotion of bureaucrats, which has attracted controversy.

Admins

Nine users were granted admin status this week - Jtkiefer (nom), Marianocecowski (nom), Nufy8 (nom), JesseW (nom), DanielCD (nom), Sam Hocevar (nom), Scimitar (nom), Asbestos (nom) and Beland (nom).

Featured content

Twelve articles were featured this week - Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport, Krag-Petersson, Hubble Deep Field, Cerebellum, Asthma, Sociocultural evolution, Witold Lutosławski, Wolf, Phishing, Shrimp farm, San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Jean Schmidt. It was decided not to promote the controversial Terri Schiavo article but another particularly controversial article replaced it on featured article candidates, the second nomination of Gay Nigger Association of America.

Over at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates four lists gained featured status - List of recognised political parties in India, List of Hong Kong ODI cricketers, List of spacewalks and moonwalks and The Oz books.

Seven featured picture candidates were promoted. Also notable was the nomination of the infamous Image:Autofellatio 2.jpg which ended without being promoted.