Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-04-11/Speed feature

Yet another new article went rapidly to

sped through the process in near-record time.

Started on 28 March at 00:40 (UTC) by Violetriga, Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) got some early exposure from being added to the "Did you know" template for the Main Page. Two days after creation, Violetriga submitted the article for peer review. After incorporating comments and making some additional expansion, she nominated it for featured article status on 3 April, and it was promoted last Friday, 8 April, at 03:19 (UTC).

Having completed this achievement, Violetriga wondered if ANPR had set a new speed record. Great Lakes Storm of 1913, which previously passed through after only 14 days (see archived story), was suggested as being the existing record. However, raising the issue prompted additional investigation to reveal several other articles that went even more quickly from creation to qualifying as featured.

.

, which he himself worked on, had remained on the page for five days, which is the normal minimum time period. Worldtraveller concluded that "if PZ had been left for the normal 5 days, I'd be the true winner by a day and a half".

Joining in the good-natured rivalry,

).

The competition also prompted some concern about people holding back contributions in order to compete for this "record", and losing the benefit of more time for collaboration. Others mentioned that any work to produce more featured articles should be inherently positive for Wikipedia. The pros and cons of tracking who has produced the most featured articles were also discussed. In the end, either is much like edit counting, and not worth worrying too much about.