Wikisource:News/2014-03

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Featured text for March 2014
The featured text for March 2014 is Association Football and How to Play It, a 1908 guidebook by John Cameron. (Main page template)

The book is a basic guide to playing football, focussing on advice rather than technical matters, with some background about the sport as it was in the Edwardian period. Cameron was a British football player who, at the time of publication, had just left Tottenham Hotspur, where he had held the position of player-manager and led the team to win the FA Cup. Prior to that he had played for Everton, Queen's Park, and (his first team) Ayr Parkhouse, as well as one game for Scotland in 1896.

Time alters everything, and it has undoubtedly done so in football. Where one used to play with half the village on one side and the same on the other, it is now restricted to sides composed of eleven players. As I have been requested to write on the modern game it is not worth while dwelling upon how it was played a hundred years ago. Football is really supposed to be a Scottish game, but it was in England that a proper Association with defined rules was first started.

This was in the early sixties, and since then the F.A. has grown to be one of the most powerful bodies connected with sport of any shape or form. They are a most wealthy association, and their power is paramount. It must be said that they have had everything to do with making the game what it is at present. Although autocratic, they deal thoroughly and honestly with both clubs and players, and it will be a bad day for the game when any body of clubs break away. At the time of writing rumours are very rife, but it is to be sincerely hoped that once again "rumour is a lying jade." Friendly matches were the order of the day in the early stages of the game. Then came the establishment of the English Cup Competition for all clubs in the Kingdom. This was in the year 1871, and it was only after eleven years had elapsed that the Cup went to the North, when Blackburn Olympic were the winners. May we say en passant that a Scottish club, namely, the Queen's Park of Glasgow, took part in the final contest in 1884 and 1885, but were beaten by the Blackburn Rovers in both cases. After that the Cup had a long sojourn in the North, and it was not until 1901 that my old club, Tottenham Hotspur, managed to bring it back to the South. Again, since then, the North have had a monopoly of it, and Southern enthusiasts are longing for it to have its resting-place somewhere in the South.
 * (Read on...)

Collaborations for March 2014
In March we turn our attention from early 20th-century fiction to the fine arts. In the Victorian period increasing leisure time among the middle classes saw an expansion of interest in handcrafts. Many publishers and authors jumped at this interest and catalogues of the time were filled with "how to" books. The initial work selected for March's Proofread of the Month is Embroidery and Fancy Work (1889) published by The Belford-Clarke Company. Fancy work seems to include painting in oils and water-colours, wood-carving, clay-modelling, and leather work among the several topics covered in this book.

Author page connection with Wikidata items, which has been the Maintenance of the Month task for about one and a half months, is still running on in March. Wikidata gives us the possibility to connect our pages to their items and to use data in our pages. Author pages could use Wikidata to obtain the author's given name, surname, birth and death years, description, alias(es), and image, as well as sister-project links and several authority control identifiers.

Administrator confirmations
Two administrators were confirmed in February 2014:


 * AdamBMorgan (talk | contributions)
 * Jeepday (talk | contributions)

Four administrators are having their confirmation discussions in March 2014:


 * Angr (talk | contributions)
 * Htonl (talk | contributions)
 * Mpaa (talk | contributions)
 * Zyephyrus (talk | contributions)

One user was appointed as an administrator in February 2014:
 * Clockery (talk | contributions)