Jump to content

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-02/Article contest

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Article contest

Durova wins 2009 WikiCup

After ten months of near-constant content creation, the 2009WikiCupdrew to a close on October 31, withDurovaclaiming the ultimate prize. Throughout the competition she alone managed the remarkable total of 3,705 points, made up of several different categories of featured content.

Durova fought past 59 other users in total in the contest, which began as a group stage in January 2009. Around 1,500 pieces of featured, good, orDid you know?content were created by contestants over the course of the competition as a whole, including nearly 40featured articles,over 200featured picturesand over 300good articles.

The competition, the format of which was originally based on anassociation footballcontest, began humbly in 2007 with 12 competitors and was based primarily onedit countsand unique page edits. This was won byDreamafterafter a win againstSunderland06in the final. The 2008 contest had a slightly more healthy competitor count at 24, and the format was still heavily edit count based. This was won byjj137,again beating Sunderland06 in the final round.

However, the format of this year's competition was changed significantly before and, often controversially, during the contest. The focus was shifted from edit counts to content creation, offering substantially fewer points for mainspace edits than for audited content. As well as the familiar featuredarticles,listsandpictures,along withgood articles,In the NewsandDid You Know?,points were awarded for lesser known areas of Wikipedia's audited content;featured and good topics,featured soundsandfeatured portals.This change drew the contest away from merely an edit count and encouraged higher quality contributions. Edits outside of the article (and, later, portal) space counted for nothing, and edits made with automatic tools such asTwinkle,HuggleandAutoWikiBrowserwere ignored.

The WikiCup will be held again next year, and editors may sign up now by adding their username and a choice of flag (which must represent a real location) of their choice to thesign-up list.The contest's format is to remain similar to this year's, with a strong possibility of minor changes preceding the start. Due to heavy interest, the initial round is planned to include one large pool, before the winning editors are split into more conventional pools in round two.