Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2023-01-01

Recently selected administrator ComplexRational answers some questions about their Request for Adminship (RfA) which ended on December 21, 2022 with 175 supporters, one neutral, and none opposed.

1. Congratulations on your unopposed RfA. Why do you think it was so successful?

Thanks for your congratulations! I believe that among the most significant factors were my nominators, Vanamonde93 and Barkeep49, who are highly regarded by the community and whose words (which I am very thankful for) therefore carry considerable weight. Additionally, I would say that experience gained over time and a clear track record in both content creation and back-end areas were important (not to boast, of course), as opposed to hypothetically spreading myself too thin or prematurely aiming for something for which I was not ready.

2. What made you decide to run for admin and how did you prepare for the process?

I had not given adminship serious thought until a few months ago. At that time, I was on the fence because despite having familiarity in some areas, primarily new page patrol and recent changes patrol, I felt that long periods of semi-activity risked putting me out of touch with recent policy changes or otherwise would not inspire confidence in !voters who understandably want active admins. This was also during a three-month period without RfAs (May–August 2022), during which I followed (but did not comment on) threads on the RfA talk page in which this gap and a need for more admins were discussed, which led me to carefully consider my credentials and do an optional RfA candidate poll (ORCP) in September; I sought feedback from longtime editors and RfA regulars to figure out where I was standing.

My ORCP was short but went surprisingly well; words of confidence from SandyGeorgia and Vanamonde93 (both on- and off-wiki) – which led to Vanamonde offering a nomination and SandyGeorgia recommending me to Barkeep49 – gave me the clarity and confidence boost to commit to RfA. However, I knew that I would not have time for an RfA until this month due to real-life commitments and also believed that a three-month buffer would be enough time to build a plan with my nominators and nip any potential issues in the bud. This preparation included drafting and revising answers to the three standard questions, pointers on how to conduct myself during the process, and discussing some plausible scenarios so as not to feel overwhelmed or overly surprised during the RfA.

3. How would you describe your experience being a candidate at RfA?

In all honesty, I did not expect my RfA to go as smoothly as it did. At some points, I was uncertain about the wording of my responses and whether anything directly challenging the question (above all for Q4 pre-rewording and Q9) would lead to an influx of opposes, but I was relieved when other users commented on these matters, essentially reading my mind. This allowed me to reformulate my responses before posting them, and eased tension built upon my reading of some contentious RfAs in which a single "wrong" answer or "damning diff" could be enough to change the minds of many – especially if there was a deliberate trick in the question – or even sink the RfA altogether. By the halfway point, though, I felt much more relaxed and also somewhat flattered, thanks to the votes of confidence from many experienced users and knowing that my answers were considered satisfactory. While I had also read through very uncontroversial RfAs and realized mine wasn't a statistical outlier in this sense, I wondered until the very end whether my recurring periods of lower activity or relative lack of experience in controversial areas would draw some opposition (I expressed this both at ORCP and in correspondence with my nominators), and therefore was very pleasantly surprised that this was not the case.

4. What do you think of neutral votes like HelpingWorld's?

Neutral. It's certainly a fair point for users to have no opinion on a candidate with whom they have not interacted or point to possible inexperience in certain admin areas. Although the onus is typically on the !voter to research the candidate, and it's not uncommon to remain undecided after doing research, I notice that most !voters – even those who don't "know" the candidate, as was the case at my RfA – decide to support or oppose. Along those lines, I'd say that with roles reversed, if I could not decide to support or oppose along similar lines, I would probably abstain rather than !vote neutral unless I felt there was something important to present. Nevertheless, there's nothing harmful about such a neutral !vote, and in principle I feel that neutral !votes can still meaningfully contribute to the discussion at RfA.

5. What suggestions, if any, do you have on how to improve the RfA process?

Fundamentally, I agree with the issues highlighted in the 2021 review, and so I would say that anything promoting the idea that "adminship is no big deal" or giving candidates a clearer idea of what to expect when stepping up would improve the process and encourage prospective candidates to run. It's hard to suggest specific improvements, though; the atmosphere of an RfA is inherently unpredictable and some possible solutions to this have been recently rejected. One thing I could suggest would be a detailed statistical analysis of recent RfAs and a compilation of various user criteria to offer greater insight as to what unwritten expectations are for candidates.

6. What do you look forward to most now that you're an admin?

Although admin work is generally unglamorous, I look forward to being able to make a dent in administrative backlogs as they appear, and to directly address issues such as copyright infringement and fast-paced vandalism to maintain the integrity of the affected articles. It's really just a few extra buttons to save some steps and time while doing work similar to what I did before, with the same end goal.

7. What advice would you give to an editor considering running for adminship?

Adminship is fundamentally about demonstrating trust and proficiency to use additional tools to maintain the high quality of the encyclopedia – as I said before, it's unglamorous work at face value, but it's for the benefit of the project. As such, my advice to you as a prospective admin is to stay focused on a handful of areas in which you are knowledgeable and enjoy working, while avoiding inflating your résumé or collecting hats in preparation for an RfA. I would also say that being undecided about whether to go through RfA is not a bad thing at all – two of the biggest potential pitfalls are overconfidence and power hunger – so I recommend that you open a poll at ORCP or privately contact more experienced editors (ideally someone you "know" on-wiki) and ask them for feedback. If someone offers to nominate you without an explicit request, even better. Lastly, in preparation for the RfA (this is advice from my nominators), don't rush into it: take time to prepare answers for the standard questions, tie up any loose ends in things you've worked on (e.g., ensure your content creations are tidy and updated), and wait until you can fully commit to the RfA before starting it – in the sense of having ample time and being in the right headspace.

Category:Wikipedia RfA debriefings

Sometimes, you hear about editors who edit on their phones. There are two main ways experienced editors edit using a mobile device: using desktop view on a mobile device or using mobile view through a standard web browser. What you don't usually hear about are people who download the dedicated Wikipedia app on their mobile devices even if it is technically an option. As far as I know, I'm the only experienced editor who has tried to edit somewhat frequently with the Android version of this app. I don't have an iOS device so my observations may not be relevant in that context. While I have had brief experiences with the app before this essay, typically when editing on my phone I would use desktop view.

As an experienced editor, what stood out to me immediately was this:

• It is impossible to create a new page
• It is impossible to see recent changes
• In preview, redlinks show up as blue (or sometimes as bold text).
• There's a box that claims my edit quality is "perfect"
• Typically, you can only edit individual sections, but you cannot edit subsections directly. If you know how to access it, there is also a way to edit a page in its entirety.
• Most templates do not display
• There is no access to help resources or learning how to contribute literally anywhere unless you manually know how to search for the exact page titles. Almost no new editor is going to know how to do that.

I'm a 20-year-old with basically no understanding of computer science. My perspective is mostly from someone who has grown up in a world geared towards user friendliness and the Android Wikipedia app does not perform the way I've become accustomed to expect. While mobile view doesn't have the full functionality of desktop view, it functions much better in comparison. Despite all of this, the app has definitely grown on me over time. I'm glad that technical issues were fixed even if I was surprised that I had any sort of role in identifying them. I plan to keep using the app and seeing how it improves over time – I think it can get better and I'm cautiously optimistic after my experience interacting with WMF staff.

When I first started trying to edit through the app, what got to me most was the sheer frustration of it all. Very few things felt like they were intuitive, it was like learning how to edit all over again. The first thing that surprised me was that when I logged in, it automatically downloaded articles from when I briefly experimented with the app in 2019 because of a default setting to sync across devices, which makes sense in hindsight even if it caught me off-guard.

I tried to see if I could create this page through the app, it let me search existing subpages of my userpage but it would not let me create a page that did not yet exist. Once I had created this page in desktop view on Chrome, the page automatically loaded because I had previously searched for it. From a reader's perspective, I did not like the default way to browse functions. I didn't even realize there was a way to change this until JTanner (WMF) pointed it out to me. The default option mimics a web browser: unless you click "new tab", you have to click the back arrow x times (depending on how many links you have clicked) to get back to the main page or have the option to see your contributions. This felt clunky and unnecessarily frustrating from my perspective. A lot of things felt like that, honestly. Not exactly intuitive and things kept surprising me. It took me a few days to even notice that I could access my watchlist.

Since most people are not familiar with the app, here are some screenshots that demonstrate what it is like:

• 
  An example of what "sharing a diff" looks like on my phone. There is an intended copy link function that does not work on my device.
• 
  What the share a diff option looks like on a Pixel 5 phone, when the copy a link function is working as intended.
• 
  The homepage I see when I click edits. Clicking my contributions shows my actual contributions across global projects, not just enwiki.
• 
  An example of what an editing streak looks like when it replaces the date of your latest edit
• 
  What previewing an edit before you publish it looks like outside of a user talk page. Notice that four tildes appear instead of my signature.
• 
  Example of the overlapping text issue that happens sometimes when editing larger pages
• 
  Another example of the overlapping text issue. This is the worst that I've ever seen it.
• 
  All pages are referred to as articles, regardless of namespace
• 
  My reply on my own talk page is not a "seen" page because interactions through the app do not count as pageviews.
• 
  This is what it looks like when you're on the talk page. Each escalating warning just shows up as an extra number beside the replies section, so it's possible someone wouldn't necessarily be super aware of that.
• 
  Example of syntax highlighting. Bold text is bolded, tags are green, links are blue, etc

There was one time I spent 7 minutes trying to type two sentences and the text scrambled across the screen. The end result looked like a test edit: [4]. A previous time, this caused the app to freeze and crash.

I also noticed that whenever I tried to edit an AfD, it would cause the app to crash. I emailed a video documenting the issue since I could not figure out how to upload video to Commons. This actually had a larger impact than even I realized:

I try my best to sympathize with people who are actually experienced in regards to technical matters. I don't understand the context or the underlying situation, so to some extent it's impossible to truly understand. I don't have the knowledge to offer feasible solutions. But I realize that it must really suck for people to come to you whenever something goes wrong and not see the massive amount of work that's involved to prevent other massive mistakes. In a manner of speaking, remaining issues are like the tip of an iceberg. I can't offer feasible solutions. However, I do think it's worth pointing out that I've never experienced issues like this on literally any other app and that it's very frustrating from that perspective. The Wikimedia Foundation as a whole exists at a scale that other organizations do not and has access to resources that other open source projects do not have. As someone who has grown up in a user-friendly world, I've never felt frustration to this extent in regards to technical issues with something that is associated with a top website.

While my experiences with this essay have sparked an interest in learning more about the technical side of Wikipedia, I did not file these tickets myself. JTanner (WMF) did this for me in response to this essay. The phrasing attributed to me in the tickets are not exact comments of mine, although overall they paraphrase my observations/suggestions.

In general, my experience communicating with WMF staff was fairly positive. I think that if this was considered the norm when the WMF recieves feedback from experienced editors, people would typically have a more positive view of the WMF. Instead, I've noticed that there's a lot of precedent for distrust and past conflicts. Ignoring these issues doesn't make them go away and acknowledging them is a crucial part in moving forward.

At the same time, I do appreciate that my concerns were validated, even if it was mostly by chance that I even got to have the opportunity to raise them to someone who was able to fix them. My adventure into learning more about editing via the app started from a tangential discussion at my talk page that had sprung from a previous discussion at Levivich's. I remembered that I had a WMF staff member post on my talk page once two years ago (MMiller (WMF)), pinged him, and he brought my concerns to JTanner (WMF), who could actually do something about any of this. She took the time to write lengthy replies and actually take action, like file Phabricator tickets on my behalf. My interactions with both of them have been more positive than what I had been expecting. Maybe it's because I'm mostly used to reading about the times where things go wrong. There's also something weirdly satisfying about my opinion mattering even if I realize that it might not be the best from a PR-perspective to have a random 20 year old identifying such issues. I doubt Facebook or Reddit would care that much about my opinion of their websites, so it's amazing to actually have a voice in a conversation like this.

This is the initial response I received about this essay:

There was a lot more back-and-forth from May 2022 to December 2022 (which is the month that I am writing this, I anticipate this to continue to happen). All of these comments can be seen in full at User talk:Clovermoss#Software development challenges. Most of these were comments pointing out issues as I identified them, what my general thoughts were, what I had written in previous versions of this essay, and JTanner helping me by placing Phabricator tickets on my behalf. This discussion actually technically started from a previous conversation about generalized newcomer experiences at User talk:Levivich/Archive 3#Growth team. Reading all of these conversations would probably take someone a few hours but they're there for anyone to read them.

Overall, I would say that I had a good experience communicating with WMF staff, but not everyone can say the same. One essay I think that explains the tension between the WMF and community to people who may be unfamilar with this is User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Community tension with the WMF. The overlap between the WMF and the community should not be comparable to a Venn diagram. Ideally, there should be more communication to limit misunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts.

• Two views of space from our newest featured pictures
• 
  Rusty Schweickart during his extravehicular activity during the Apollo 9 mission, by NASA
• 
  Geraldine Ulmar as Yum-Yum in The Mikado by Benjamin Joseph Falk, restored by Adam Cuerden

Well, here we are! While the featured content promoted in December won't appear until our January issue, this marks the end of the featured content we'll be reporting on this year. We used to try to work a bit less behind, but, well, I've not been a consistent Signpost contributor, but I have done it over many, many years....

Tell you what, here's a peek behind the writing process, and why things are the way they are:

When The Signpost was published weekly or thereabouts, the amount of featured content in that week was small, and you could just copy-paste the lead in the worst case scenario. If you missed a week, having two or even three weeks in one article isn't that bad. You also have seven days to write about seven days of content; this isn't that bad.

But with monthly publication, if you miss a month, you just miss a month. Two months of content is simply too much to fit in one article. So it really needs to get out on time.

However, we publish around the 25th of each month. So, for example, let's say this month we covered things promoted from, say, November 15 to December 15. That gives ten days from the time the list of content meant to appear in the article is complete to publication time. Now, you can start preparing a bit in advance, but the period just before publication of an issue is full of a lot of other things that happen, like everyone trying to copyedit everyone else's articles and trying to get everything ready for publication. So that first ten days is probably lost, at the minimum. It's a lot harder, and it gets harder from there.

First off, unlike weekly publication, it's important to keep the writeups of the content short, so the article as a whole isn't too long. There used to be a huge push on Wikipedia to always make sure the first paragraph of the lead summarised the article as whole, after which the rest of the lead was meant to go back and fill in detail. Some featured articles are still written this way. Very few featured lists are. So you can't just copy the leads, you have to spend some time editing them down. So you need the time.

Of course, the way I set these up, at least, involves a search and replace on entries from WP:GO. So, for this month, I went to Wikipedia:Goings-on/October 30, 2022, Wikipedia:Goings-on/November 6, 2022, Wikipedia:Goings-on/November 13, 2022, and so on, and compile everything into one big file, keeping articles and lists seperate.

Here's the last few entries for this month in featured articles, as taken from there, using the editor so we get them in wikitext:

* [[Theodora Kroeber]] (28 Nov)
* ''[[Zork]]'' (28 Nov)
* ''[[Dime Mystery Magazine]]'' (28 Nov)
* [[Prince Alfred of Great Britain]] (29 Nov)

The list would be a lot longer, of course. I delete the dates at the end, then do a series of searches and replaces:

This gets us:

;[[Theodora Kroeber]], nominated by [[User:|]]:
;''[[Zork]], nominated by [[User:|]]:''
;''[[Dime Mystery Magazine]], nominated by [[User:|]]:''
;[[Prince Alfred of Great Britain]], nominated by [[User:|]]:

...And, with a bit of fixing of the italics that moved to the wrong place, we're done with the first step. There's ways around having to fix the italics, but are only really worth doing as code, not something you type anew each time.

I then go to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log before pasting these in, and fill out the user(s) responsible for each nomination before that [[User:|]] gets evaluated. Paste that into the featured article section, and the lists (which I process at the same time, since it's the same formatting) into the lists section, and I can move to images.

Now, if I had this set up as a simple press a button and the search and replace gets done thing, it wouldn't be big deal to do multiple batches. But I haven't done this. So instead, I.... type out all those search and replaces, and the variant ones used for featured pictures anew every month. Or, if I want to do multiple batches, then... every time I do a batch. Not ideal. Also, there's some polishing up to do after writing all the descriptions: Space the featured articles with illustrations so the images don't crowd, adjust the featured pictures to alternate tall and wide images so they look better on various screensizes (and ideally get a pleasant colour balance as you scroll down), and so on.

So it's better to do everything at once. And that means I want as much time to do it in. And that means I need to start work as soon after the last publication of the Signpost as possible, so that I don't get busy and miss completing it.

Anyway, with that overly-detailed explanation of simple regular expressions that I should probably just break down and write a bot to do, this is your Signpost correspondent, signing off!

Nineteen featured articles were promoted in November.

Rhea Seddon, nominated by Hawkeye7

Margaret Rhea Seddon (born November 8, 1947) is an American surgeon and retired NASA astronaut. After being selected as part of the first group of astronauts to include women in 1978, she flew on three Space Shuttle flights: as mission specialist on STS-51-D and STS-40, and as payload commander for STS-58, accumulating over 722 hours in space. On these flights, she built repair tools for a US Navy satellite and performed medical experiments.

Growing Up Absurd, nominated by Czar

Growing Up Absurd is a 1960 book by Paul Goodman on the relationship between American juvenile delinquency and societal opportunities to fulfill natural needs. Contrary to the then-popular view that juvenile delinquents should be led to respect societal norms, Goodman argued that young American men were justified in their disaffection because their society lacked the preconditions for growing up, such as meaningful work, honorable community, sexual freedom, and spiritual sustenance.

This Year's Model, nominated by zmbro

This Year's Model is the second studio album by the English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, released on 17 March 1978 through Radar Records. Embracing new wave, power pop and punk rock, the songs draw from bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The lyrics explore subjects such as technologies of mass control and failing relationships, but in a manner that some reviewers found misogynistic. In later decades, This Year's Model has been acclaimed as one of Costello's best works, some critics commenting on its influence on punk and new wave.

"To Be Loved" (Adele song), nominated by MaranoFan (NØ)

"To Be Loved" is a song by English singer Adele from her fourth studio album 30 (2021). The song is about the sacrifices one must make upon falling in love and addresses Adele's divorce from Simon Konecki, attempting to justify to her son why their marriage did not succeed. The song received rave reviews from music critics, who highlighted Adele's vocal performance as one of her best, and one of the best of the year.

Science Fiction Monthly, nominated by Mike Christie

Science Fiction Monthly was a British science fiction magazine published from 1974 to 1976 by New English Library. It was launched in response to demand from readers for posters of the cover art of New English Library's science fiction paperbacks, and was initially very successful, its circulation reaching 150,000 by the third issue. It reprinted artwork by Chris Foss, Jim Burns, Bruce Pennington, Roger Dean, and many others. Well-known writers who appeared in its pages included Brian Aldiss, Bob Shaw, Christopher Priest, and Harlan Ellison. The high production costs meant that a high circulation was necessary to sustain profitability, and when circulation fell to about 20,000 after two years NEL ceased publication.

1905–06 New Brompton F.C. season, nominated by ChrisTheDude

During the 1905–06 English football season, New Brompton F.C. competed in the Southern League Division One. The team began the season in poor form; they failed to score any goals in six of their first eight Southern League games. By the midpoint of the season, the team had won only three times and were close to the bottom of the league table. The team's form improved in the new year, with three wins in the first seven Southern League games of 1906, but they ended the season in similar fashion to how they had started it, failing to score in eight of the final nine league games. New Brompton finished the season in 17th place out of 18 teams in the division.

Dime Mystery Magazine, nominated by Mike Christie

Dime Mystery Magazine was an American pulp magazine published from 1932 to 1950 by Popular Publications. Titled Dime Mystery Book Magazine during its first nine months, it contained ordinary mystery stories, including a full-length novel in each issue, but it was competing with Detective Novels Magazine and Detective Classics, two established magazines from a rival publisher, and failed to sell well. With the October 1933 issue the editorial policy changed, and it began publishing horror stories. Under the new policy, each story's protagonist had to struggle against something that appeared to be supernatural, but would be revealed to have an everyday explanation. The new genre became known as "weird menace" fiction; the publisher, Harry Steeger, was inspired to create the new policy by the gory dramatizations he had seen at the Grand Guignol theater in Paris. Stories based on supernatural events were rare in Dime Mystery, but did occasionally appear. In 1937 the emphasis on sex and sadism in Dime Mystery's stories increased, but in 1938 the editorial policy switched back to detective stories.

"Sweetheart" (Rainy Davis song), nominated by Heartfox

"Sweetheart" is a song originally recorded by American singer Rainy Davis. It was written by Davis and Pete Warner, and they produced it with Dorothy Kessler. The track was released in 1986 by independent record label SuperTronics as a single from Davis's 1987 studio album Sweetheart. A freestyle, hip hop pop, and synth-funk song, "Sweetheart" appeared on R&B and dance music-based record charts in the United States.

Matthew Quay, nominated by Wehwalt

Matthew Stanley "Matt" Quay (September 30, 1833 – May 28, 1904) was an American politician of the Republican Party who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1887 until 1899 and from 1901 until his death in 1904. Quay's control of the Pennsylvania Republican political machine made him one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the country, and he ruled Pennsylvania politics for almost twenty years. As chair of the Republican National Committee and thus party campaign manager, he helped elect Benjamin Harrison as president in 1888 despite his not winning the popular vote. He was also instrumental in the 1900 election of Theodore Roosevelt as vice president.

Ulf Merbold, nominated by Kusma

Ulf Dietrich Merbold (born June 20, 1941) is a German physicist and astronaut who flew to space three times, becoming the first West German citizen in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft. Merbold flew on two Space Shuttle missions and on a Russian mission to the space station Mir, spending a total of 49 days in space. Between his space flights, Merbold provided ground-based support for other ESA missions. He continued working for ESA until his retirement in 2004.

"Water Under the Bridge" (song), nominated by MaranoFan (NØ)

"Water Under the Bridge" is a song by English singer Adele from her third studio album 25 (2015). Adele wrote the song with its producer, Greg Kurstin. Inspired by her relationship with charity founder Simon Konecki, who Adele dated for seven years and married in 2018, the song speaks of forgiveness and details the crucial point in a courtship of determining whether one's partner is willing to put in the work to make it succeed.

Project Waler, nominated by Nick-D

Project Waler was an unsuccessful Australian defence procurement exercise which sought to replace the Australian Army's M113 armoured personnel carriers with more capable armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs). It was initiated in 1980 and cancelled in 1985 without any vehicles being procured. The M113s used by the Army's armoured reconnaissance units were replaced by ASLAV wheeled armoured fighting vehicles that were similar to the designs considered under Project Waler. Most of the remaining fleet of M113s were upgraded. The M113 upgrade project was also unsuccessful, with the resultant vehicles being unfit for combat, and the Australian Government launched a new project in 2018 to replace them.

"Alejandro" (song), nominated by FrB.TG, IndianBio, and Sricsi

"Alejandro" is a song by American singer Lady Gaga from her third extended play (EP), The Fame Monster (2009). A synth-pop track with Europop and Latin pop beats, it opens with a sample from the main melody of Vittorio Monti's "Csárdás". The song was inspired by Gaga's fear of men and is about her bidding farewell to her Latino lovers named Alejandro, Roberto and Fernando.

Ai-Khanoum, nominated by AirshipJungleman29

Ai-Khanoum is the archaeological site of a Hellenistic city in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. The city, whose original name is unknown, was probably founded by an early ruler of the Seleucid Empire and served as a military and economic centre for the rulers of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until its destruction c. 145 BC. Rediscovered in 1961, the ruins of the city were excavated by a French team of archaeologists until the outbreak of conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. The onset of the Soviet-Afghan War halted scholarly progress, and during the following conflicts in Afghanistan, the site was extensively looted.

Zork, nominated by PresN

West of House.

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

>

"Love Story" (Taylor Swift song), nominated by Ippantekina

"Love Story" is a song by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released as the lead single from Swift's second studio album, Fearless, on September 15, 2008. Inspired by a boy unpopular with her family and friends, Swift wrote the song using William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet as a reference point. The lyrics narrate a troubled romance that ends with a marriage proposal, contrary to Shakespeare's tragic conclusion

Fatima Whitbread, nominated by BennyOnTheLoose

Fatima Whitbread (née Vedad; 3 March 1961) is a British retired javelin thrower. She broke the world record with a throw of 77.44 m (254 ft 3⁄4 in) in the qualifying round of the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, and became the first British athlete to set a world record in a throwing event. Whitbread went on to win the European title that year, and took the gold medal at the 1987 World Championships. She is also a two-time Olympic medallist, winning bronze at the 1984 Summer Olympics and silver at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

Theodora Kroeber, nominated by SusunW and Vanamonde

Theodora Kroeber (March 24, 1897 – July 4, 1979) was an American writer and anthropologist, best known for her accounts of several Native Californian cultures. She published The Inland Whale, a collection of translated Native Californian narratives in 1959. Two years later she published Ishi in Two Worlds, an account of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi people of Northern California, whom her husband, Alfred Kroeber, had befriended and studied between 1911 and 1916. She also collaborated with her daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin.

Prince Alfred of Great Britain, nominated by Unlimitedlead

Prince Alfred of Great Britain (22 September 1780 – 20 August 1782) was the fourteenth child and ninth and youngest son of George III and his queen consort, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In 1782, Alfred became unwell after his inoculation against the smallpox virus. His early death, along with the demise of his brother Prince Octavius six months later, deeply distressed the royal family. In his later bouts of madness, King George had imagined conversations with both of his youngest sons.

Twenty-six featured pictures were promoted in November, including the ones at the top and bottom of this article.

• 
  Sigmaringen Castle by Jörg Braukmann
• 
  W. S. Gilbert by Elliott & Fry, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  Arthur Sullivan by H.J. Whitlock, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  Spinifex pigeon by JJ Harrison
• 
  David Scott stands in the open hatch of Apollo 9 by NASA / Russell L. Schweickart
• 
  Auxiliary Territorial Service women working on a Churchill tank by Lt. Taylor, War Office official photographer, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit by Balon Greyjoy
• 
  Acer negundo by Ivar Leidus
• 
  Yellow-bellied flyrobin by JJ Harrison
• 
  Caroline Hill by London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  Neue Nationalgalerie by A.Savin
• 
  Colias croceus mating by Charles J. Sharp
• 
  Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa by Jeremiah Gurney restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  SpaceX Dragon resupply ship of mission CRS-20 approaching the International Space Station over Namibia by NASA Johnson Space Center, edited by Nythar
• 
  Poster for W. S. Gilbert and Thomas German Reed's A Sensation Novel by Robert Jacob Hamerton, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  Aerial view of Somapura Mahavihara by Md. Ahsanul Haque Nayem
• 
  Advertisement for oriental rugs by Eugène Grasset, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  Cinnamon quail-thrush by JJ Harrison
• 
  Michael William Balfe by Atelier Nadar, restored by Adam Cuerden
• 
  The Monarch of the Glen by Edwin Landseer
• 
  Strawberry (whole) by Ivar Leidus
• 
  Strawberry (halved) by Ivar Leidus
• 
  Self-portrait of Jeremiah Gurney, restored by Adam Cuerden

Nine featured lists were promoted in November.

List of alismatid monocot families by Dank

Alismatid monocots are a group of 15 interrelated families of flowering plants. Like the earliest monocots, many of them are aquatic, and some grow completely submerged.

List of Lionhead Studios games by PresN

The now-closed video game studio behind such 2000s-era hits as Fable and Black & White.

List of accolades received by Drive My Car (film) by Harushiga

Drive My Car is a 2021 Japanese drama film based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami from his 2014 collection, Men Without Women. It follows Yūsuke Kafuku (Nishijima) as he directs a production of Uncle Vanya, while still grieving over the death of his wife.

List of Coppa Italia finals by Dr Salvus, Foghe, and Snowflake91

The Coppa Italia is an annual football cup competition established in Italy in 1922. The competition is open to all Serie A and Serie B clubs, as well as four teams from Serie C.

List of FIA World Endurance champions by EnthusiastWorld37

The FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) is an endurance auto racing series administered by the governing body of motorsport, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The series awards international championships, cups, and trophies to the most successful drivers, teams, and manufacturers in each of the series' categories over the course of a season.

List of accolades received by CODA (2021 film) by Birdienest81

CODA is a 2021 coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by Sian Heder. An adaptation of the French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier (2014), it stars Emilia Jones as the titular child of deaf adults (CODA) and the only hearing member of a deaf family, who attempts to help their struggling fishing business while pursuing her desire to be a singer.

List of international cricket centuries by Babar Azam by CreativeNorth

Babar Azam is a Pakistani cricketer and current captain of the Pakistan national cricket team. A century is when a player scores 100 runs in a single game of cricket. Azam has done this impressive feat tweny-six times in international matches.

List of Billboard number-one R&B songs of 1957 and List of Billboard number-one country songs of 2022 by ChrisTheDude

The magazine Billboard published its first chart, a list of popular sheet music, in 1913. Since then, it's become the American standard for lists of the most popular music, both as a whole and by genre. You can probably guess which genres and years these ones are for.

• 
  Foden steam wagon by Geni, one of our newest featured pictures

This traffic report is adapted from the Top 25 Report, prepared with commentary by Igordebraga, ElijahPepe, SSSB and Soulbust.

Ball in the post doesn't change the score
Ball in the box with no one going for
Ball in the net makes a goal...

• These lists exclude the Wikipedia main page, non-article pages (such as redlinks), and anomalous entries (such as DDoS attacks or likely automated views). Since mobile view data became available to the Report in October 2014, we exclude articles that have almost no mobile views (5–6% or less) or almost all mobile views (94–95% or more) because they are very likely to be automated views based on our experience and research of the issue. Please feel free to discuss any removal on the Top 25 Report talk page if you wish.

Note: The next Comix appeared in the 4 December 2023 issue's comix column.