Wikipedia talk:WikiCup/Scoring/Archive 6

The bot

I would like to offer my congratulations to the bot (and its creator) on successfully adapting to the new bonus point system. It has learnt from its experiences last year when it was unable to cope with an article (Western Jackdaw) which changed its name during the year and to which bonus points had to be added manually. Yesterday, it competently added bonus points to my Black bean aphid GA submission despite the article having had its name changed just two days earlier. Well done, bot :) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:26, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

It failed, however, to give credit for the 1.2x modifier on one of my GAs. It correctly noted it on my submissions page, but failed to transclude the points to the leaderboard.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:28, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I shall investigate. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 17:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Yes, it was broken for a bit, until I noticed and fixed it. It's working now I think? - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 17:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for your prompt work.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yup, over the New Year I threw together a new "live" system for the multiplier. The downside is that I can't publish a revised list of articles to work on (well I can, but it takes extra time rather than being a natural by-product of making the bot "go"). - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 17:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The bot seems to be down again. My GARs haven't been updated in several days now.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:54, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm? What behaviour are you expecting? It's giving you 48 GAR points at the moment, for the 12 GARs you had when the bot last ran. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 23:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I could have sworn that it was giving me only 40 points even after I'd added a couple more reviews. Glad to see that it's working.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:25, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of which ... my typical review looks like this or that. Do those meet the length requirements to be counted as a GAN review? - Dank (push to talk) 22:43, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, I would say yes. Resolute 16:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, they're absolutely fine. J Milburn (talk) 17:41, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Purchasing featured pictures. Should there be a limit?

What if people bought the time of a designer to create images that were able to be promoted to featured status? Would people feel perfectly comfortable with this as long as it was restricted to a certain #? I see the scoring says "Generally, the picture should have been created by you (either photographed, drawn, or created in some other way) or been given significant restoration work by you or been released under a free license because of your efforts." So I assume, because it says, "released under a free license because of your efforts" that includes buying the time of a designer with the arrangement it will be uploaded to the Commons and released under a free license. Biosthmors (talk) 16:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Bot not calculating my bonus points

The scoring guideline says "For every 5 Wikipedias (including the English Wikipedia) on which an article or portal appears as of 31 December 2012, the article or portal is awarded an extra 0.2 times as many points if it appears on did you know, or is promoted to good article, featured article, featured list or featured portal" (my emphasis)

• Portal:Sports is on 52 projects, meaning that should be receiving 200% bonus points, for a total of 105 points (35+70)
• Portal:Geography is on 79 projects, meaning that I should be receiving 300% bonus points, for a total of 140 points (35+105)

I have rightfully earned the overall lead for this round, and would like to have it listed so that I can savor it before my puny total of 205 is crushed by the more prolific content creators . Sven Manguard Wha? 15:40, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Possibly because they are portals. I need to get to bed right now, but I'll ping Jarry- hopefully he'll be able to take a look at it soon. J Milburn (talk) 23:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I'll update them. Just a note to say that it's the number of interwikis at the start of the year that matter. (As an aside, geography's an interesting claim as you didn't even nominate it, but I'm happy to accept it as you've clearly developed the portal.) J Milburn (talk) 11:58, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I became a co-nominator after the fact. It's not normal, but as you said, I put a lot of work into it, and even without the cup being in play, with me doing that much work, I felt that I had to indicate that I wasn't a neutral reviewer. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay, should be fixed, Sven Manguard, J Milburn. Sven, when you go to override the bot, you need to do so on your submissions pages. If you change it there, the bot should recognise you're trying to override it. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 00:02, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Bot improperly calculating my bonus points

I believe that the bot has improperly calculated my bonus points for "Sea" which was a greater than 5k DYK expansion. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:17, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't the bot put bonus points in their own column, not with whatever earned them?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:41, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. What I should have said was that the bot failed to give me 10 points for the DYK. The incorrect bonus points were a consequence of this. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I've manually updated the submissions page. If the bot doesn't correct the main list at it's next update, let me know. That is an incredible achievement- a 5-times expansion out of a core topic like that is something very impressive. An insane multiplier, too, even though it's just a DYK! J Milburn (talk) 14:58, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Next year's competition- brainstorm

We've got three months until the start of next year's competition, and so now's the time to talk about anything which should be changed. What worked? What didn't work? What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? Is there anything which needs to be introduced? Anything that needs to be gotten rid of? Are the points appropriately balanced? Feel free to throw out ideas, and then we'll have some more structured conversation/polling later. J Milburn (talk) 18:49, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to reweight the multipliers: I'd like to see length play a role, because the length of a GA or FA is probably proportional to the work, and probably a somewhat reduced notability focus.

Multipliers seem a little high overall; a single article can dominate the competition too easily, particularly if you get it DYK, GA, and FA. While I think all should be reduced, DYK notability multipliers are way, way, way too high, and should be cut back immensely, A DYK should not be worth more than a GA, no matter how notable the DYK, especially as most DYKs in the competition go on to at least GA.

Also - although this is directly to my benefit, of course - it does seem there ought to be some sort of multiplier system for Featured pictures, if we're going to have one for other content work.

It might also be a good idea to provisionally work Featured sounds in, just in case that finally relaunches. It's a really neglected part of Wikipedia.

If the ridiculous DYK multipliers are cut way, way back, GA-DYKs aren't much of a problem, although I'd say should only be available if you're credited for the GA.

Finally, please make far, far more of an effort to talk about non-article content in newsletters. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 22:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

How often has it come up that a DYK exceeded the base score for a GA? You would pretty much need it to be a 5k+ article that already exists on 50 other Wikipedias. Certainly doable if you expand an old stub, but has this been an actual problem this year? I don't work in the featured picture area at all, but I am curious what you think could warrant a multuplier? Is there anything that could be objectively measured, or would this be a subjective case? Or, perhaps, basing the multiplier on the number of Wikipedias the image appears in? Resolute 23:14, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

The biggest we got was 74 points for a DYK of sea. Obviously, the article has existed for many years (2 bonus points) and was huge when finished (5 extra base points). The topic was covered on over 150 Wikipedias, leading to a 7.2 times multiplier. J Milburn (talk) 23:28, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I should probably wait to hear from someone who does such DYKs. Check there aren't issues I don't know about. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:33, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Based on the amount of work they take, and how rarely they're done, I would advocate for bumping Featured Portals up to 50 points, keeping modifiers the same (since very few portals exist on most other projects, so it won't be an issue of unbalancing the competition). Yes, as the only person to claim portal points in several years, this does seem like a self serving request, but I'd very much like to see more people get into working with portals. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I would support this. I've been thinking about getting the Jane Austen portal up to snuff for a while; an increase in points would provide a nice incentive. Ruby 2010/2013 03:17, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

You know, I think that FPs may be undervalued. There are currently 3,610 FPs on Wikipedia. Since the start of this competition, I had 43 FPs, and I currently have 22 FPCs (divided into two sets), 20 of them passing, and it's likely that, by the end of this competition, I'm likely to get up to around 72. It seems that producing 2% of all FPs on Wikipedia for the competition should have put me a bit further ahead, but because article content has huge bonus points, producing far less featured content can produce far more points. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 08:39, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm really not convinced by that argument. We don't award points based on the rarity of the content promoted (otherwise VPs and FSs would, when they were recognised, have been worth loads of points), we award points based on its difficulty and its contribution to the encyclopedia. Articles necessarily have a certain priority over pictures, and that's written in to the FP criteria; the majority of people who come to Wikipedia come to work on articles, not pictures, and we are, first and foremost, about articles. Someone could even construct a "Adam's produced a huge chunk of the project's FPs; clearly he's the only one who even cares" type argument. (That wouldn't be particularly convincing, but I'm sure you take my point.) J Milburn (talk) 08:48, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I've been putting literally almost all the time I possibly could into FPs this September. These are hardly quick, and hardly easy. Further, article's priority is not written into the Featured picture criteria. What would be writing it into the criteria was saying that, for example, FPs could only be submitted if used in GAs and FAs. What's actually written into the criteria is that it has to be used on English Wikipedia, which is hardly the same thing.

Further, as the article pages are judged only on Wikipedias they appear in, not by length, it's entirely possible to get massive amounts of points for not that much work, if you pick well. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:03, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't say that they were quick and easy; all I said was that we don't judge content based on its rarity. And the priority of articles quite clearly is written in to the featured picture criteria. We judge encyclopedic value by how much a picture adds to an article, and encyclopedic value is given priority over technical or artistic value; pictures exist to serve articles, not vice versa. Pictures are free-standing on Commons, but certainly not here. I don't really want to be drawn into a debate, here; I'm happy to put it up for a vote, but I maintain that your arguments are shakey at best. J Milburn (talk) 10:36, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

In any case, articles are worth up to about 140 points before bonuses (10 DYK + 30 GA + 100 FA), so it's not like raising FP points slightly would put it that near. And, as I've said, length doesn't matter, only number of Wikipedias so a very short GA can easily be worth far, far more than an FP. I think some mere DYKs have outpointed FPs. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 10:52, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

All the language Wikis needs images. Commons is the repository of images for all the Wikis. A number of pictures shown on the en-Wiki are not FPs on en-Wiki, but are FPs on Commons. I suspect that Commons has a higher bar for FPs than the en-Wiki, but I find that a bit puzzling and I might be wrong. I have nominated a number of FPs on Commons successfully and not gone on to nominate them for FP on en Wiki. I think that you would deserve a few extra points (perhaps double) for going to the extra trouble of getting them recognised as FP on Commons for use on many language Wikis and this would involve having your images judged by a different set of reviewers, perhaps with unexpected outcomes. This bonus would be somewhat similar to the bonus for a GA or FA being represented on many Wikis. Of course, Commons is a different Wiki to en-Wiki. Note that on Commons a FP nominator can only have two pictures nominated at a time, so this could be a bottle neck if planning a huge number of individual FPs, but I think sets of images can be nominated. Incidentally, have you seen the Commons Picture of the Year competition? Snowman (talk) 14:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

In all honesty, Commons FPC behaves in completely random ways, so far as I can tell, when dwealing with historical works. Things I'd have thought would have passed easily don't get enough votes, what I think of as hard sells pass on the 5th day. Honestly can't even bein to guess what's going on there. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 12:45, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

• There is nothing for those that have an interest in semi-automated edits, script-assisted semi-automated edits, and fully automated edits (bots). Snowman (talk) 12:38, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I would aim to keep it that way. The WikiCup is about content creation, and I am strongly opposed to bot-created content. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
• It is understandable, but there may be something of a bit of haste about some of the projects undertaken by the WikiCup participants. I think that protocols might help. What about getting a meaningful peer review done prior to a FA, if the competitor is not a specialist in the topic? Perhaps, competitors could declare their special interests or that they are generalists. What about competitors taking-on no more than a maximum number of GACs or FACs at the same time? Snowman (talk) 12:38, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  FAC already has limits on concurrent nominations (iirc, only one. Two if you are a co-nom with someone else). I wouldn't support a limit on GANs separate from the GA project's own rules. Certainly with the current backlogs there, I could easily rack up a pile of waiting nominations. And yes, SandyGeorgia will probably come around at some point screaming about bad noms at FAC, but the honest truth is that I've never seen anyone present data to support the idea that there is even a problem. I do know of one person who caused grief by trying to rush unfit noms through GAN, but that was a one-off situation and they no longer participate in the WikiCup. Resolute 14:25, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  Agreed- if this is a problem, we need to do something about it, but I'd want to see some evidence that it's a problem first. J Milburn (talk) 14:55, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  The evidence may be subjective. How is an article that is presented to FAC or GAC too soon identified? Snowman (talk) 21:27, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  Let's not beat around the bush: Do you have any evidence, or do you not? J Milburn (talk) 21:33, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  I do not have any relevant evidence. Snowman (talk) 21:56, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

• What about extra points for organising a functional multidisciplinary team of at least four editors for big core topics? Surely, this is the only way to approach some of the core topics that the Wikicup aims to improve. Snowman (talk) 12:38, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  I wonder if some of the big multidisciplinary core topics that the WikiCup aims to improve may not be suitable for one main editor, unless he or she has relevant expertise. Perhaps, the WikiCup points could encourage liaison work or forming collaborations of editors to improve big core topics. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 10:39, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

  I am definitely interested in seeing the WikiCup encourage good collaborative efforts, but I wonder whether the massive points that all participants would be awarded for work on a core topic are incentive enough. J Milburn (talk) 10:45, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

  Perhaps, the massive multipliers tend to encourage superb individual efforts and not collaboration. Of course, GACs or FACs are forms of collaborations; however, there are other sorts of collaboration, which would start earlier in article development. Why not have extra points for participating in any of the Wiki Projects collaborations of the month and achieving GA or FA. Here the decision to go for FAC or FAC may not be entirely up to the WikiCup competitor, at least while the collaboration lasts. Such articles would be chosen by a Wiki Project, presumably because of some inherent value or complexity. Snowman (talk) 11:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

• It might be interesting to think what could deserve a lower score; negative points (ie subtraction of points) or a multiplier of less than one. Snowman (talk) 12:38, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The only thing I can think of that is deserving of negative points is if someone has had more than one GAN review reversed (and by that I mean that the WikiCup competitor was the one doing the reviewing and their decisions were contested and reversed). People go to GAN for easy points and sometimes don't put an appropriate amount of effort into them, either promoting something that clearly isn't ready or failing something because they don't want to that much time to any one review. That needs to be discouraged. A caveat, however, is that there really isn't a GAN appeal process in place. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
    • But surely if a GAN that they were awarded points for was removed, then just the points earned for the GAN should be removed. I see no point in "fining" competitors because of something like this especially when some might be new to GAN reviewing. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 18:25, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
      • I can confirm that GA reviews that were later overturned have been removed from submission pages, but I've never docked points beyond removing ineligible claims. (So, I've never punished, just corrected.) I can also confirm that I have removed short and substandard reviews in the past. (A note, though, that short does not imply substandard, and substandard does not imply short.) J Milburn (talk) 21:54, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
• Some competitors make a lot of use their sub-pages to do editing and then move big chunks of text into articles. I think that all competitors should be banned from doing this, because I think that all the competitors edits should be obviously transparent by being done directly to the main article pages. Snowman (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  I fail to see how this is a problem, actually. Resolute 14:44, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  This is standard practice across Wikipedia. I'm hesitant to ban WikiCup participants from doing something that everyone else can do; I'm also unclear on why this would be a problem anyway. Surely, the opposite would be the problem- WikiCup participants trying to make it look like they've contributed more to an article than they really have. J Milburn (talk) 14:59, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  If this were instituted, I can just see it leading to people writing articles locally on their computers or in something like Google Docs, so, even less transparent than userspace. Chris857 (talk) 15:05, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

  Not all ideas from brainstorming are prefect first time. I would like to advance the discussion in a slightly different direction. I have learnt that moving an article into a subpage is allowed, but there are a lot of rules surrounding this procedure. It seems to me that not all of the competitors have been following the guidelines all of the time. The guidelines say that sub-pages should not have categories, because these show up elsewhere, allowing access to the sub-page from links in the main-space. According to the guidelines, when the sub-page is made by coping an article the relevant edit summary should have a wikilink to the original article, so that the attribution is retained and easily traceable. Also, when some competitors copy a revised block of text back into the main space, the edit summary is something like "copying from my sandbox" (without Wikilinks) and some users have more than one sub-page used for editing, so it sometimes takes a while to trace the origin of the block of text. I am still finding out about the guidelines, so I might come up with another angle soon. Snowman (talk) 16:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I see no point for the aftoermntion proposed ban. It's easier for some users to work on content in a sandbox and c/p it over (if they're the only one who edited the sandbox). I think the biggest issue with this year's competion was multipliers. The # of wiki things seem to go to far IMO, you could advance into a round just by getting one important article to GA status. Despite this, I think multipliers could by done by page size as well, but on a smaller scale i.e. 1.25 mutipler for 30-50 kb, 1.5 multiplier for 50-100 kb, 2.0 multiplier for 100 k. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 12:24, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I would agree that the massive multipliers of points for some core topics are over the top. However, multipliers based on article size may not be a good idea, partly because I would not want to see editors tempted to bulk out articles with verbose filler. Pages over 50 kb prose size may need division; see WP:TOOBIG Snowman (talk) 12:31, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I also object to stopping people transferring articles from userspaces. I also don't see a problem with some of the smaller multipliers but I think it should be capped at 2.0x multiplier for 30 other wikis max to make it a slightly fairer playing field. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 16:58, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I should explain that it is quite common for users to start a new article on one of their own sub-pages, but it is more unusual for editors to transfer blocks of an existing article (or a whole existing article) to their own user space and edit it there and then transfer it back. I am still looking up the rules, but I think that if a sub-page is needed for an existing article it is recommended to use a sub-page of the talk page of the article and not in the users space. We had a discussion about it on the WB birds project about one year ago and this was the conclusion backed up by the guidelines. I hope to find the relevant Wiki guidelines soon. Snowman (talk) 17:06, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with that. As long as they don't cut the page from the mainspace then I don't see an issue. It probably makes it easier to make sandbox improvements if they are able to mould that which they are going to change instead of trying to work on a jumbled collection of sentences. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:14, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Copying out, working, and pasting back is perfectly normal; it's less common than creating articles in a sandbox, but it's exactly the same activity, just oriented towards expanding an article rather than creating one from scratch. Whether it's done on a subpage of talk or a userpage is pretty trivial if someone is planning to work on it alone; talk subpages are usually used for contentious or collaborative redrafting. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:45, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm a little lost- what's the problem with moving articles/sections of articles to user space to work on them, then bringing them back when they're done, again? And why is it the Cup's business what's people's processes are? --PresN 20:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Can I stick up for the current multiplier system? Let's look at what got the >2x multipliers this year: American football; Enrico Fermi; Canis Minor; Chalcogen; Magnus Carlsen; George S. Patton; Dassault Rafale; Henry VIII of England (that's one of mine!); Common Starling; Max Born; Third Epistle of John; Circinus (constellation); Tadeusz Kosciuszko; Enola Gay; Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.; Liao Dynasty; Aldabra; Sea; Onion; Middle Ages; Portal:Geography; this list goes on. None of them seem objectionable to me. Sure, I got a 4x multipler on my GA (with no hope of FA) on Henry VIII, so I'm slightly biased, but to be honest, if you think these articles are being overrewarded, why not write one? That is, after all, part of the reason we have multipliers in the first place. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 19:57, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm sticking up for the current multiplier system as well, even though the biggest multiplier I got was 1.4x. I don't really mind at all that someone could buff up a core article to FA and retire for the rest of the round- good for them, I say. Some of those articles have been languishing as mediocre starts for a decade, due to the massive amount of work that's required to improve them at all- and anyone who puts in that work deserves all the points they get, I say. Does that mean that Cwmhiraeth will likely sweep the final round if she pulls off 720 points on an FA for Sea? Yes, and she should- I fully feel that the amount of work it took to go from this to this deserves a multiplier at every step along the way. --PresN 20:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, fine. How about a multiplier system for images, then? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 08:18, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

How would that work? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:03, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Number of articles used in? Number of Wikipedias the article it's used in appears in? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:51, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Although, the WikiCup Project is proud that the "Sea" was awarded a GA on 9 July 2013 with this article, the first three quotes listed below indicate problems in the article, probably at the level school physics for 16 year old pupils in the UK. I note that the peer review (Wikipedia:Peer review/Sea/archive1) ran between 24 April 2013 and 25 May 2013 and was short. I note that the GA review (Talk:Sea/GA1) was long. I do not know, but I wonder if the WikiCup bonus points are encouraging competitors to take up topics for the wrong reasons and even topics that competitors are not familiar with. Did something go wrong here? Can the WikiCup Project learn anything from this? Snowman (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Quote 1. "This is half the 24 hours and 50 minutes that the Moon takes to make a complete rotation of the Earth and return to the same position in the sky." Of course it takes the Moon one lunar month (about 28 days) to rotate around the Earth. Snowman (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Quote 2. "This means that its [the Moons] gravitational pull at the Earth's surface is more than twice as great as that of the Sun." Of course, the Sun's gravitational pull on the Earth is about 200 times that of the Moon. Snowman (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Quote 3. "The sea offers a very large supply of kinetic energy which is carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity differences, and ocean temperature differences." Of course, salinity difference is not kinetic energy. Snowman (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Quote 4. "... when the Sun, Moon and Earth are all aligned (full moon and new moon), their combined gravitational pulls results in abnormally high "spring tides". When the Sun is at 90° from the Moon as viewed from Earth, it counteracts the pull of the Moon and the tidal range is smaller, causing "neap tides" to occur." This may be one for those interested in gravity, but the article here suggested that the pull of gravity (inverse square of distance between orbs) influences the tides, but actually the gravitational gradient (inverse cube of distance between orbs) is relevant. The rotation of the Earth moves the surface of the Earth up and down gravity gradients resulting in changes in gravity at the Earth's surface and tides. Snowman (talk) 19:42, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

To add some clarity - the article couldn't have been that terrible as it just became a Featured Article a short time ago. Miyagawa (talk) 10:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't think one needed to be a physicist to improve an article on a general topic like the sea. I think your statement at point 2 above is incorrect, but in any case, mistakes of the type you mention were ironed out through the input of more knowledgeable users. Nor did I expand the article because of the WikiCup scoring system. It was selected as an entry for the Core Contest, an endeavour to improve the coverage of core topics on Wikipedia. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:56, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that a GA should not contain basic errors of physics. The four quotes from the "Sea" article show that errors of physics were included in the article, when it was awarded GA status. My comment about quote 2 is correct (see below for links to corroborating websites). Of course, a FAC will tend to improve any article including articles with mistakes, but that does not make the mistakes less terrible. When an editor is writing about tides, the pull of gravity, the orbit of the Moon and kinetic energy, I would have thought that the editor would be aware that this involved the mathematical science of physics. I might be presumptive, so please indicate if I am wrong, however, my assumption is that the author (or authors) of the four quotes did not display an understanding of the relevant topics at a mathematical or conceptual level. I would say that some big topics would require multidisciplinary collaboration. Snowman (talk) 14:52, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Regarding quote 2: In case anyone has any doubt about my comment on quote 2; see Answers.com and www2.astro.psu.edu. These are just the first two pages that I found after a two minutes web-search, I am not sure if they are RS or not, but I am sure that there are plenty of RSs that would confirm it. Snowman (talk) 14:52, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Look, this is not the venue to discuss errors in an article. You know what was? The GAN and FAC that it went through. Where, I note, you did in fact review it. And did not oppose it, which you should have if you thought it was no good- or started a GAR before that, or opposed at the GAN you helped review. To continue to post long, rambling discussions of errors you found in an article months prior in an unrelated venue is a bit obsessive, and quite rude when you weren't willing to oppose at the appropriate time. --PresN 16:59, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

This is a brainstorming exercise, which invites people to raise issues and discuss next years WikiCup competition. The invitation at the top of this discussion clearly extends to discussing "What did not work". Other editors have mentioned the "Sea" article and other high-scoring articles above. The quotes are examples of basic errors in a GA that were not corrected until the FAC. I am simply asking if anything about WikiCup competition needs changing with reference to an example of something that seems to me have gone wrong. Please note that these errors came to my attention and another reviewer's attention during the FAC and not earlier and they were amended at that stage. Snowman (talk) 18:41, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Handling of DYKs for GAs next year

Next year will be the first full competition where it will be possible for a GA to be featured in the DYK section. Because competitors would already be getting points for getting an article to GA status in the first place, my first instinct is that we should only allow DYK points for articles that qualify for DYK through a non-GA route (5x expansion and new article). The issue with this, however, is that it is common to start/improve an article, get a DYK for it, and then go on to get the article to GA status shortly afterwards. That would mean that you can claim points for both DYK and GA in some cases, but not in others, and that strikes me as unfair.

Therefore I propose that "an article can qualify for both DYK points and GA points only if it would qualify for DYK under the old system". In other words, if you create an appropriately sized article from scratch or are 5x expanding one before it becomes a GA, you can get both DYK and GA points. Additionally, if you 5x expand an article in the process of bringing it to GA, you can get both DYK and GA points (even if you're claiming it for DYK as a GA, not as a new article or 5x expansion). However if all you're doing is bringing the article to GA status, and you're not creating it from scratch or 5x expanding it in the process, it does not qualify for DYK points, only GA points.

Thoughts? Sven Manguard Wha? 18:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

If you have put it through DYK before making it a GA I have no problem. But if it is about claiming DYK points after it has become a GA and hasn't been through DYK before, If I may quote the late great Margaret Thatcher, No. No. No. Such a proposal opens the door for cheap points to be garnered through doing no work for them. This was one of the reasons I objected to it in the first place as it would be unfair, unsporting and against the spirit of the rules not to mention it could put some people at a disadvantage. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 18:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

A plurality of the community made the decision that newly minted GAs can be DYKs. I disagreed with the idea, for reasons that have nothing to do with DYK, but I got outvoted. So the fact of the matter is that no matter what we so, someone is going to feel cheated. Either we do it as you say, using last year's DYK rules and not the new ones, which will cause some people that have done GAs to feel cheated and at a disadvantage, or we figure out a way to incorporate points for good article DYKs, in which other people are going to feel cheated and at a disadvantage. I'd like to come up with some sort of clever and easy to implement solution that makes as few people feel cheated as possible, because the WikiCup is supposed to be fun, and it's not fun if people feel that it's stacked against them. But then again this is Wikipedia, a community that can find great unhappiness in the most trivial of things and is generally resistant to change, so at a certain point I'm going to give up trying to find a solution, at which point my preference would be to just use the old DYK rules too. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:51, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I think the issue is that for the purposes of the Wikicup, there isn't any additional (or at least shouldn't be) work for editors making GAs and then have them go to DYK afterwards. In fact, for us, it disadvantages GAs which have already gone through DYK. Miyagawa (talk) 20:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I should point out that one of my criteria for picking articles to take to GAN was if I could get a 5x expansion to qualify for a DYK and that just about all of my DYKs came from articles that later became GAs. So I don't see it as an issue, although I will have to check now to see if an article has already had a DYK or not.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, but I suspect that a lot of people won't be using that philosophy. I suspect that most people will view it as free points and will just focus on GAs safe in the knowledge that they can get extra points from DYK by doing nothing towards earning them if this is allowed. This is what I to object to because it stifles the incentive to create new articles and will be abused as a cheap tactic to get points by doing no work to get them. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I could care less about new articles per se; I want quality articles whether new or existing.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:21, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Vital / Core articles

I'll be honest - I don't think these are a particularly good guide to what's important. The lists seem incredibly arbitrary. It's a nice try, but... In particular, Wikipedia is meant to be the sum of all human knowledge. a hundred or even a thousand articles can only ever be an arbitrary selection from that sum; it would take far, far more than that to even begin to cover the basic topics. For example: Only 24 countries make the Vital article list. Only five rivers are listed, leaving out major ones like the Tigris, Volga, Euphrates, and Rhine. Under cities, Hong Kong is included, but not major cities such as Berlin, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Timbuktu. The Geographical features includes Desert, Mountain, and Forest, but not for example, Tundra, Plains, or Swamp. The works of literature includes the Iliad, but not the Odyssey or Aeneid. Despite this, both the Mahabharata and a selection from that work, the Bhagavad Gita, are included. We get all three of "Deity", "God", and "Goddess" - as if it's vital that we cover an incredibly general concept three different ways. Under Emotion, you can get credit for a vital article on Happiness, Love, Fear, or Anger, but not sadness. "History of..." things are generally not included, despite being recognised topics. The selection of languages is arbitrary. Major languages like Korean, Sanskrit are left out of the language list. "Sport" seems to have extremely arbitrary cutoffs, anyone could find at least one sport they'd be surprised wasn't listed.

Even looking at the expanded list, it's hard to believe anyone knew what they were doing. We get Handel's Messiah under baroque, and Handel's Creation under Classical. Apparently, the Romantic Era doesn't exist. "The Beatles" aren't listed, but an arbitrary selection of their songs are.

You can probably tell I was looking at the section on Arts.

Feel free to quibble with my specific comments, but my overall point is that the selection is arbitrary, and therefore, not being on those lists should not cause one to get less points, since the selection can't be considered a litmus test for importance. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you that the lists are pretty poor. That said, our use of the vital articles list is very minimal. The rule is "Any article on the vital level 3 list is eligible for double points or the points for appearing on multiple Wikipedias (if applicable), whichever is higher. They may not receive both." I think it's unlikely that there is a single article eligible anyway. Perhaps it should just be removed. J Milburn (talk) 18:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with both of the above points, sort of. The list of vital and core articles reflects the unconscious biases of its Western European and American authors, who grew up exposed only to Western literary canon, Western scientific tradition, and Western culture. This is, of course, a generalization (there's also content in there that is reflective of our Indian population of editors), but save India, it is as if almost nothing important ever happened outside of the continents of Europe and North America. Which is obviously false, despite what the American educational system (and possibly the European ones, although I haven't experienced those) would have you think.

Unfortunately, it's the best method we have among a field of other bad methods. Yes, it's subjective, but it's less subjective than the other method currently used, counting interwiki links. That method skews heavily towards recent events and figures, mainly in popular culture. For example, Lady Gaga has articles on 139 projects, while Bob Dylan, #2 on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest artists, has 89 hits. Elvis, #3 on that list, has 125. The Rolling Stones, #4 on that list, has 96, and Chuck Berry, #5 on the list, has only 56 (#1 is the Beetles, which have 151 articles). That same kind of skew takes place for sports, political, and cultural figures as well.

I believe it bonus points, and in incentivizing the improvement of vital articles. I just don't believe Wikipedia is at all good at determining what is and is not vital. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that if you can't have a complete list of what is considered vital articles, then you may as well get rid of this rule from the Wikicup because it is not right that a faulty system should be allowed to be the basis of bonus points. In my view, get rid of it. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

That ignores the fact that recent articles are disproportionately what people come to Wikipedia to read about. The interwiki system balances recentist/popularist concerns with academic ones (chemical elements appear in large numbers on all Wikipedias, for example) in a combined, non-Western-biased, ranking. I have to say, I love its output -- much broader than the vital articles lists or popularist measures alone. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 15:49, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we could look to Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles and compile a list of articles that would get bonus points if created and brought to DYK. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:46, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd also advocate looking at Category:Stub categories and expanding those for DYK or higher. WP already has so many articles; I'd love to improve what we already have (rather than necessarily just encouraging the creation of new ones). Some reforms were made somewhat recently about this (DYK's BLP 2x eligibility, bonus points for articles 2007 and earlier), but I think we could go further and perhaps encourage all pre-2007 stubs to get some kind of bonus? Thoughts? Ruby 2010/2013 21:26, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

There are no more points offered for BLPs than anything else, currently, but we already give two bonus points for every DYK of an article which was created 2007 or earlier. I'm not quite sure what you're proposing? J Milburn (talk) 22:22, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Errr, sorry I messed up what I was trying to say (that's what happens when working late sans coffee!). To further the BLP DYK and pre-2007 article bonus (which IMO are working great), I propose that we offer a further bonus for pre-2007 stubs (on top of the two-point bonus). (So expanders would get, say, an additional three point bonus for expanding an old stub). For instance, expanding an article like Valea Fetii River (Jiu) would get someone a bonus of 5 (a 2 pt pre-2007 bonus and a further 3 pt stub bonus). Hopefully I didn't render all of this too confusing...! I'm open to tweaking it and welcome feedback. Ruby 2010/2013 00:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

For it to be a pre-2007 article and to be getting DYK credit, it has to be getting DYK through the 5x expansion route. That's really hard to do if an article is of a substantial size already, so I would wager that just about all of those are stubs anyways. I say leave it as is. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree, leave it as it is. Though I will say since I thought we were doing a 5 years thing, shouldn't it be pre-2008 articles for next years competition? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:42, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

That definitely makes sense. Perhaps, if not room for an "old stubs" rule, there would be room for higher bonus points for these topics? What do people think? J Milburn (talk) 09:07, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I think that we have to be very careful to make sure that we don't have so many multipliers and bonuses that it becomes too complicated to keep track of. The purpose of the WikiCup is to facilitate content creation and improvement through the use of a fun and friendly competition. Period. The secondary purpose is to facilitate content creation and improvement of highly important (however we define that) articles and articles that have languished for a long time. If we start tailoring the competition so much to the secondary purpose, we risk undermining the primary purpose (lots of very specific bonuses will lead to gaming, which makes it less fun for a lot of people). Not sure what that means in terms of specific multipliers, but something to keep in mind as we begin to discuss more and more detailed/specific bonuses. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I can definitely see where you're all coming from and am fine dropping the idea. I wouldn't want this competition to become too complicated to oversee/participate it (especially as I see a lot of new-ish editors signing up for next year). I also agree that 2007 should be moved up to 2008.

Would anyone consider increasing the number of points from 2 to 5 for the pre-2008 bonus? Ruby 2010/2013 19:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with that. Increasing the points gives more incentive to work on the pre-2008 articles. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:49, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Although I'm not entirely sure why one 500 word stub is more in need of improvement than another just because one is a few years older, since getting old stubs expanded is something that the cup seems to want to prioritize, bumping it up to five points certainly will encourage more people to do those. So yeah, I'd support bumping it up to five. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The bonus points really came into their own at FAC. Whereas you can nominate as many GAs as you like, and the limit on DYKs is theoretically very large, FAC is limited to one article at a time, two with a collaborator, and it takes over a month. The result was that no one was able to get more than three through in a round. This militates heavily in favour of large, important articles. No small articles were submitted to FAC that I noticed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Time for some straw polls!

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Ok, no one seems to be suggesting any radical changes, which is a good thing- it means we're getting settled. These polls will hopefully be enough to determine the changes that need to be made. If you have any other things you'd like to see discussed/voted upon, please add them to the section at the bottom. J Milburn (talk) 20:58, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Featured pictures

Do we need to do something to offer more points for featured pictures, perhaps by instituting some kind of bonus point system? If yes, how would this work?

Yes- featured pictures are under-valued

1. Yes. I was spending around 5 hours a day on FPs, and couldn't come anywhere near articles. Sure, I did well. But if I can create nearly 2% of all featured pictures in Wikipedia's history for this competition alone, and still never reach the higher ranks in any round, indeed, had to often drop work and do dozens of GARs to stay int he competition, something is fundamentally wrong. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:09, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

No- featured pictures are not under-valued

1. [Comment moved to discussion section by J Milburn, 09:47, 7 November 2013 (UTC)] Sven Manguard Wha? 01:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Well, technically, yes, because I think they look undervalued by comparison, but I think the bonus point / multiplier driven inflation is the problem there, not the FP score in and of itself. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Featured picture discussion

As Adam Cuerden demonstrated, it is possible to make a deep run (into the finals) with FPs valued as they are currently. I have to wonder whether Adam would have ranked even higher if not for the U.S. government shutdown, which caused him to lose access to National Archives scans (a key source for restorations) at a crucial time. It would seem that a better functioning U.S. Congress, rather than an adjustment to the number of points FPs are awarded, is what's needed here. I wish J Milburn and The ed17 success in making that happen. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:37, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. Sure, if you work several hours every day on things, to the detriment of everything else in your life in the penultimate stage, and still nearly get kicked out before the final round, then there's no problem. You don't know the situation, Sven. In the last round, my scanner broke down, and the shutdown happened, and the playing field was so ridiculously skewed to articles that there was no way to keep up. It's a fundamentally unfair system. FP bonuses will never give 6x bonuses, because the whole point of an FP is that it's something new. Something that may occasionally replace an extant, low res/unrestored image, but one that is at an obvious disadvantage. An FP that is, at time of promotion, in even 5 articles is a fairly rare occurrence, but if you look at older FPs, they are often everywhere. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

• As I've mentioned below, I think first say 3 entries in each category can receive double points. That way, 3 pictures per round would be worth double, but one would not necessarily win outright by doing only FPs. Also, FPs sets could be worth less per picture than a simple single FP. Nergaal (talk) 12:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • FP sets are exactly the same amount of work. It took me almost a month to do the big set, because there really is almost no difference in amount of work done; if anything, it's somewhat more work, as they all have to match. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 00:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    • I call bullshit on that. Getting a picture from a different book requires going to get that second boot too, then restoring perhaps in a different technique. I think if FPs get extra points, any set pictures should get only 1/2 of the regular points. Nergaal (talk) 01:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
      • Well, it's not bullshit. If anything, the scanning makes it take longer than things like Library of Congress work. Plus any rescans (the big set had around 2-4 scans per image in the end, some assembled from two different copies of the book), additional adjustments - if you check the big set, you'll find several had multiple uploads over time - and so on. Quite simply, specific images can easily have more variation between them than variation between sources. In addition, consider that the way sources are divided can vary extremely - Puck of Pook's Hill made sense as one set; but if I were to do more Gottlieb jazz images, each would almost certainly be a separate nomination. As well, I have, in some cases, multiple sources might make sense as one nomination: I have access to two very different images from Ruddigore, but as both are historic (although separated by about 40 years in creation date), it might well make sense to nominate both together.

You also seem to have the bizarre idea that I only prepare one nomination ahead. This is not true; I grab sources when I can (and when I can afford them) for later. Changing to another book involves reaching over and grabbing it. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:54, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

• I can support this in principle, but don't see an easy way to assign bonuses. I'm not sure we can track how many Wikipedias used an image at a specific date like we can interwiki links. Resolute 14:54, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The problem with every type of bonus system I can think of is that they'd all be subjective. I keep coming back to the idea of a bonus for "the best example of an image of its kind" but how would you judge that? Are we looking for a "Best image of the Battle of Gettysburg" level of broadness or a "Best image of the American Civil War" level? How do we judge "best"? We could outsource it to Commons' valued pictures system, but that always came across as a "who showed up and asked" system. Adam is putting in a ton of work in FPs. I'd love to see other FP heavyweights like Evan-Amos and JJ Harrison get involved in the Cup, too. But as Resolute said, no easy multiplier system comes to mind, and I worry that if we up the base points than an FP gets, we might unbalance the competition in the direction of making FPs too powerful. As much as I want to see more featured pictures (and featured portals!), I do believe that Featured Articles should continue to be the kingmakers of the competition. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    • What do you all think about the idea of having a multiplier for creating an FP that is placed into an article that was GA class or higher as of the start of the competition and didn't have any images as of the start of the competition? Articles don't generally get to GA or FA status if there are images available for an article but those images aren't added in, so this would essentially be a bonus for providing a high quality illustration for an article where no illustration could be found before. It'd be tricky to avoid this being gamed, but it's the only non-subjective multiplier I cam think of. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:56, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
      • I agree, it would help promote the encyclopedic value of Wikipedia and the article by having fitting and high quality images to go with the text. A lot of my nicer books are filled with such images and currently they are preferential to Wikipedia for illustration alone. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:31, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
        • I'm not quite clear how this would work, as it isn't necessarily the case that a given featured picture, even if it fits in the article, is really going to add a lot to it. One might feasibly create a featured picture of a particular castle and then add it to the majority of articles which mention the castle (which may, for instance, include unillustrated biographies of medieval people). Am I really adding something to all of those articles? No, surely not. Same again if I take a picture of a particular species of clam and then add it to the articles about the clam's predators. J Milburn (talk) 15:19, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
          • That sounds like obvious gaming. If we do go for a bonus like this, we should specify that the FP has to be of the subject of the article, in an obvious manner (image of a location for geographic article, image of person for biographical, image of movie poster for movie, illustration from book for book, etc.). Sven Manguard Wha? 15:38, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
            • This seems like an awful lot of rules (and work, as there's no way a bot could do this) for very little payout. I also fear that there are going to be more edge-cases than you suspect. Is a picture of an author eligible if in an article about their book? Is a picture of a journalist eligible if in article about an event they famously covered? How about a scientist who discovered a species in the article about that species? How about a picture of a specific event in the history of Wales in the article on the history of Wales? I'm keen to avoid "judges' discretion" type bonus points, and I fear that this drifts close. J Milburn (talk) 17:16, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
• A possible way to have this is add an extra 5 points for each article the picture is prominently featured on (in the infobox or a truly relevant section). Nergaal (talk) 09:49, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Featured portals

Currently, featured portals are worth 35 points, more than a good article (30) but less than a featured list (45). It has been argued that based on their rarity and difficulty, as well as to motivate others to participate in the project, more points should be offered. How many points should portals be worth?

30, the same as a GA

35, where they are now

40, less than a FL

1. (Equal choice as 45) As the only person that has claimed FPO points in several years, I feel somewhat... err... 'scuzzy' supporting this, but the process really needs help (and it's not like I'm going to win the competition). Most of the 162 FPOs that exist now were promoted in 2007 under significantly lower standards and are in poor shape right now. If we can get people involved, we really should. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. It's a process that needs more eyes and more love. But it's navigational, not content in and of itself, so still less than a FL. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

45, the same as a FL

1. I don't know what do they involve, but I have seen veeeery few portals here so it is ok to encourage more of them. Nergaal (talk) 12:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. They are an enormous amount of work. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
3. (Equal choice as 40) As the only person that has claimed FPO points in several years, I feel somewhat... err... 'scuzzy' supporting this, but the process really needs help (and it's not like I'm going to win the competition). Most of the 162 FPOs that exist now were promoted in 2007 under significantly lower standards and are in poor shape right now. If we can get people involved, we really should. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
4. I know nothing about portals but I think that anything that is "featured" requires more work and should be rewarded accordingly. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:53, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

50, more than a FL

Featured portal discussion

Collaboration

Should we be awarding bonus points for collaborative efforts? If so, how should this work?

We should have bonus points for collaborations

We should not have bonus points for collaborations

1. No, but we should continue to give full points to each participant if more than one participant is heavily involved in bringing (co-writing, co-restoring, etc.) a work to DYK/GA/Featured status. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:26, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Per Sven. Nergaal (talk) 12:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
3. I would have to say no because I think it could encourage tag-team editing which might put others at an unfair disadvantage. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 18:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
4. Given the current structure and method of peer reviewing I'd say no to "bonus points", but there is already equal credit for working to bring an article up. The way it is seems best. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:34, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
5. Can be gamed extremely easily, as shown from round 3 in my 2013 pool. —Bloom6132 (talk) 01:29, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
6. I support the current scoring, where collaborative editing allows multiple editors to score points, but there should not be additional reward for editing in this manner. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Collaboration discussion

Define collaboration? The purest example of collaboration that I find exists on Wikipedia is the audited content process. You may have one primary writer in most cases, but our articles don't get through DYK, GAN or FAC without the commentary, suggestions, critiques and improvements from reviewers. The obvious intent is for co-written articles, but I'd like to think that if we consider this, we should also give a little for cup participants who participate in the reviewed processes as well! Resolute 00:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

You are, of course, right that before this can be instituted, we need to have a clear idea of what "collaboration" means. J Milburn (talk) 09:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

For the purpose of this discussion, what is meant is two editors claiming points for the same event. Hawkeye7 (talk) 17:58, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Did you knows

Concern has been expressed over very high-scoring did you knows. The easiest way to deal with this seems to be changing the 5 extra base points for longer did you knows to 5 bonus points; this means that scores from big multipliers are effectively halved. Should this be done?

Keep long DYKs as worth more base points; high-scoring DYKs are a good thing

1. I don't really see this as a problem. More points encourage people to write longer DYKs (which is always a good thing), rather than just stopping near the 1500 word threshold and creating a stub-like article. Ruby 2010/2013 22:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Agreed with Ruby2010. A 10 point DYK with a huge bonus is an article that is likely rather important, and that is what we should be encouraging. I can't imagine there were too many large scoring DYKs last year such that this is a concern. Though this question does make me curious to know what the highest scoring individual entries were at each category. Might be something worth getting the Cup bot to track next year. It might help quantify questions like this. Resolute 00:07, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
3. Per Ruby2010. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
4. Agree with Ruby2010. —Bloom6132 (talk) 03:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
5. The DYK size discriminator is important to prevent credible claims that the Cup dumps minimalist content onto DYK. I think the problem here can be addressed through other means than this. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Change the extra points to bonus points; high-scoring DYKs are a problem

1. Definitely. The bonus points in this get ridiculous, and make a mockery of competition unless you're working in the types of articles/content that are favoured. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:06, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Did you know discussion

Can someone explain me why do long DYKs deserve more points, but long FAs don't? Also, I haven't followed the cup this year, but which were the highest scoring DYKs? Nergaal (talk) 12:15, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Often because DYK's are from new articles or articles that required large expansion. Creating 5000 character articles from scratch isn't easy and I think the extra points do reward the extra work. I don't know what the highest were but I know I got larger points for DYKs on The Oval (Belfast) and Tony's Cronies. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 12:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

But a long FA requires exponentially more work than a short FA. Nergaal (talk) 14:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes, but not always. A short FA is often an indication that the subject of the article isn't something with a great deal of scholarly coverage (because the FA vetting process demands that articles be covered as completely as possible, so a topic with lots of coverage can't get away with being short). In that case, the difficulty of doing research becomes exponentially harder, because instead of having 127 scholarly reports and books to choose from, you're forced to find the 8 or 9 that exist and wring them all dry. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Further, there was a concern that we were encouraging the mass-creation of very short stubby DYKs- this suggestion wasn't without merit. The highest scoring DYK this year was sea. J Milburn (talk) 20:11, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Long articles

Should bonus points be awarded for longer articles at GA and FA?

Yes, long articles deserve more points

1. There is a list by length somewhere, and if they are among the shortest there, they should not get the extra points. Nergaal (talk) 12:14, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Yes - quite simply, a small, self-contained subject is likely to get completeness far easier (and be far shorter) than a complicated article. The work involved scales with the necessary size of the article. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:30, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

No, the length of an article should not affect points

1. GA and FA are supposed to be about quality not quantity. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:04, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Agreed. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:06, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
3. Agree with C of E. Ruby 2010/2013 22:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
4. Have to agree with my peers. Size doesn't matter for GA/FA because these articles are expected to be in a completed state. It matters in DYK, because the 5 vs. 10 point articles are the difference between barely-past-stub and highly informative. Resolute 00:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
5. Agree with C of E, et. al. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:27, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
6. Agree with all the above. —Bloom6132 (talk) 03:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
7. Unlike DYK, where length is determined by how much work you felt like putting in, GA and especially FA are intended to represent broad and comprehensive treatments of the topic, respectively. The criteria aren't any easier to meet on a shorter topic. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Length discussion

I think FAs can be worth more, but penalize very short FAs. There is a list of the shorthest FAs somewhere, and say if it makes it in the first 20% of all FAs there, then slash its points. Nergaal (talk) 12:13, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

As currently structured, the Cup causes editors to focus on short articles as the most cost-effective way to get points for the amount of work/time invested. The bonus for longer DYKs helps to offset that somewhat, but doesn't apply to GAs or FAs and I believe that that skews the competition severely. Longer articles often require more time to complete than the 5 days alloted and fail the DYK criteria for time, even if the 5x criteria is met or exceeded (I'd be curious to know how much Sea was expanded after it qualified for DYK as it ended up one of the year's longer FAs at 74K). My own Japanese battleship Mutsu was at 14K when I started and it's at now 21K as it's going through FAC (reviewers welcome!) right now. So my 7K of improvements, only a 50% increase in size, didn't qualify for DYK although if I'd chosen to expand a shorter article(s) I could have gotten more points. Of course, that raises the obvious question of my decision to work on Mutsu and similar articles. The Cup is only a means to an end; I use it to help motivate me to work on a variety of good and featured topics on subjects that interest me. While I'm interested in winning, it's not the be all, end all for me. OTOH, if I have no real chance in winning then I'm not really interested in participating.
To cut to the chase, as the above may have qualified for TL;DR, I propose a multiplier for length for FA and GA-class articles that is exclusive of bonus points. To be clearer you would receive whichever is higher, bonus points or length points. The scale would run along the lines of 2x for 20K, 3x for 30K, etc. This would mean that Mutsu, instead of the 1.4x bonus that it did receive, would have gotten 2x, and Battlecruiser (47K) 4x instead of the 2.2x it qualified for. Now I'm sure that people will object that it will be possible to polish an existing long article and get bonus credit for a minimal amount of work, but that's already possible under the current system. And to be fair, that will only really be possible for GAs, as the more thorough reviews at FAC will require a lot more work to bring an article up to speed.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:18, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Good article did you knows

Newly promoted good articles are now eligible for did you know status. Should the WikiCup be awarding points for these did you knows?

Yes- new GAs should be eligible for GA and DYK points

1. Yes. The argument that DYK is fundamentally about creating new content was lost when GAs were admitted. Not all GAs are eligible, only those that have not been DYK before. The reverse has always been possible: write a new article as a GA and run it past DYK. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:20, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Hell, yes! A lot of the articles in my specialty that have any kind of bonus are already 2-3K and I only have enough info to get them to 7-8K. So not allowing me to get DYK points in addition to the GA points discourages me from working on them in lieu of short articles that I can expand enough for the 5x criteria to maximize the reward for my time and effort. I don't think that that serves the encyclopedia to bias the Cup towards expansion of only short articles.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

No- only "traditional" DYKs should be eligible for DYK points

1. No, No, NO. Once a GA has been awarded points, it should not get DYK points on top. One of the reasons why I object because it would be a cheap way for WikiCup participants to gain extra points through doing little or no work for them. Besides if you get a high multiplier that gets points for GA and then takes them for DYK, that is unsportsmanlike claiming easy points for no work which could put other participants at a disadvantage. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
2. [Old] DYK is fundamentally about creating new content (either from scratch or expanding content), while GA is about improving existing content. That's why I have no issue with people going to DYK and then going to GA - in order for them to do that they have to be creating the content - but I do have an issue with someone getting DYK points and GA points for only getting it to GA. It's possible to do cleanup and only a paragraph or two of additional content to get GA, if the article you're starting with is already in decent shape. It's not possible to get a DYK like that though. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
3. Agreed with C of E and Sven. One should not get points for doing nothing; for GA→DYK, you only have to nominate the article, while you have to do significantly more work from DYK→GA. —Bloom6132 (talk) 03:20, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
4. Agree with the above; to bring something to GA can be as simple as polishing the prose; not as much work as making a new article or expanding one. Taylor Trescott - ^{my talk} + _{my edits} 15:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
5. As some who voted against GA's being counted as DYK. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 17:51, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
6. DYK points are meant for creating articles or adding new content. GA points are meant for improving the quality of articles. -- Ypnypn (talk) 18:51, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
7. If you want points for improving an article, that's what GA and FA are for. If you want points for creating an article, that's what DYK is for. Double-dipping for the same work is bad. Preventing these from counting also makes it very unlikely that massive bonus points can be reaped from DYKs; new articles probably aren't widely represented on other wikis (and if they are, they deserve the bonus!). Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Good article did you knows discussion

• Riding the fence here. On the one hand, I don't see why there should be a difference between claiming points on a DYK, then subsequently claiming on a GA versus claiming both at once. I suspect I'm going to be in the minority on this one though, so I would propose a caveat. I have had articles promoted to GA before appearing on the main page as a DYK in the past. As rare as this would be given current backlogs, I would propose that articles that fall into this category should not be penalized. Resolute 00:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Also, I continue to maintain that it is hard to disqualify GA-DYKs on the basis of "cheap points for no additional work" while we give points out for Featured/Good topics. Resolute 00:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
    • I agree with your caveat. The issue isn't about the order, but that both are earned seperately. To claim both DYK and GA points, you need to not only bring the article to a high level of quality and completeness (GA) but also do so through substantial addition of content (DYK). Sven Manguard Wha? 02:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
      • Agreed. The order is not important; what is (potentially) important is the reason the article is eligible for DYK in the first place. J Milburn (talk) 09:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
        • Definitely agree with this. I normally write a new article to GA or FA standard, and then immediately nominate for DYK and GA. Which comes first is indeterminate. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
          • To repeat myself, I see no reason why adding 10K of text to one article can fail to qualify for the 5x DYK criteria, but is more than enough for five or more stubs and that many DYKs. The current structure for points virtually dictates a multitude of short articles and penalizes longer ones. Giving points for DYK points GAs that don't meet the 5x requirement helps to make up for that.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

If I might question the reason for you !voting yes, If you were doing GAs before this issue even arose, why on earth should free points for no work incentivise you to do it now? In my view, you were putting in the content full in the knowledge that you were doing it for X points regardless and didn't need the incentive of free points to do it. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Most of my GAs were 5x expansions and I got credit for both which was a primary reason why I picked them; so I'm already getting free point by your lights. My point is that I should get credit for both for all my GAs, provided, of course, that they haven't already been DYKs. Why should it make a difference if the article was initially expanded 5x or not?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:43, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Sturmvogel 66: Because by 5x expanding an article to bring it to GA, you're doing a whole lot more work than someone that came across a B level article, did some copyediting, and took it to GAN. So you should be getting more points for your more work. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:05, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I can understand your viewpoint because those types of articles exist, but ask Cwmhiraeth what happened to Salt when she tried to do exactly that and ran into a reviewer who wouldn't accept a minor polish. Now I know that not every reviewer is so demanding, although I wish that more were, but frankly I'm not much concerned about the problem.

You have to understand that many of my articles did not qualify for DYK because they were 2-5K already and there wasn't enough material in my sources to enlarge them by 5x. So I sometimes added 10-15K of material to an article, but couldn't get a DYK out of the article. Compare that amount of work/text into stubs and imagine how many points I would get. Getting DYK points from GAs and some sort of modifier for length would go far from equalizing the situation, IMO.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:26, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Has it been considered to subtract DYK points from GA points, like maybe just leaving 2-3 DYK points if the article later becomes a GA? Regards, Iselilja (talk) 20:33, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Vital articles

Vital level 3 articles are eligible for double points if they are not already awarded double (or more) because of the number of interwikis. Do we need this?

Yes- keep vital articles automatically eligible

1. This one turned out to be moot. Every vital article worked on was worth more points due to interwiki links. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

No- vital articles do not need bonus points

1. The criteria for determining vital articles is flawed and arbitrary in my view. I don't think that a faulty system should be a good gauge to determine what should get more points thus it should be removed. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
2. The point of this competition is to work on any content. Why favor some viewed as "vital"? – Muboshgu (talk) 22:05, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

   The point of this was to encourage editors to work on improving important articles rather than obscure ones. A major criticism of Wikicup (and Wikipedia in general) in the past was that these articles are neglected, because they are just so hard to write. The bonus points encouraged the winner to improve Sea to featured status. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

3. As I said above, we're really not very good at creating 'vital article' lists. I'm not sure it's even possible to create a perfect one, as it is inherently subjective, but the one we have now really is quite poor, which is a shame. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
4. Quibbling over the quality of the vital article list aside, if the interwiki criteria moots it, then why complicate without necessity? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Vital articles discussion

Can someone give me an example of a vital article that would not be worth double points from interwikis? Nergaal (talk) 12:10, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

History of agriculture was the first I found; that would be awarded 80 bonus points, rather than 100, if it was taken to FA status. J Milburn (talk) 20:18, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Old articles

Articles created more than 5 years ago (so, for next year's competition, articles created in 2008 or earlier) are eligible for 2 bonus points if brought to DYK. Does this need to be changed?

Old articles do not need bonus points

2 points is fine

1. I don't really see why a 250 word stub created in 2006 is inherently more in need of expansion than a 250 word stub created in 2009. That being said, other people see this as having a good deal of importance, so while I see no need to give it more points, I'm also not in favor of removing this bonus. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:42, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

The bonus should be increased from 2 to 5

1. Yes, seems fine to me. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Would further encourage older articles, of which there are many, to get improved. Ruby 2010/2013 22:18, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
3. Support, though admittedly for partially selfish reasons. A not insignificant percentage of my editing relates to old stubs already. Resolute 00:14, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
4. Agree with Ruby2010. —Bloom6132 (talk) 04:05, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
5. 5 is fine, and I suggest having another point for any extra year. An article created in 2005 should be +8 points. Nergaal (talk) 12:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
6. Agreed with Negraal YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 17:50, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
7. I've seen too many recent AFD nominations of "this hasn't been referenced in 6 years, so we should just delete it". It's easy to ignore articles on niche topics that have had a stub created, but then been forgotten. And when they do connect to the wider web of topics, it's easier to overlook old, bad articles than redlinks. Giving incentives to counter this helps the project's goals. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Old articles discussion

I think that Nergaal makes a good point for discussion. Should for every additional year pre-2008, be given an extra point per year? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 12:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I had that thought myself a few days ago, but in thinking it over I wound up where I am now; not seeing why a uselessly short stub from 2006 is inherently more in need of improvement than a uselessly short stub from 2009. I'm neutral on the idea, but I might get behind it if someone could just give me a good justification for the emphasis on older articles. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:10, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with more bonus points, but these should not be multiplied for multiple wikipedias. They should be added at the end. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:32, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Bonus points never are, only base points. J Milburn (talk) 09:16, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I like the thought of an extra bonus point for every year. Is there anyone opposed to this? J Milburn (talk) 18:21, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

You know what, yes. Yes, I am opposed to it. I've asked several times for someone to give me a good justification for the emphasis on older articles, and no one has done that. I can't think of a good reason for it, no one else has given me a good reason for it, so I can't support creating a massive imbalance between an article from 2012 whose expansion is worth no bonus points and one that is from 2003 and worth 10 bonus points. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:08, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sven, this is of course just my mere opinion, but it seems to me that there is a greater sense of urgency to older undeveloped articles. I consider it troubling that more new articles make it to DYK then existing articles that have been expanded (I'm as guilty as anyone about this; sometimes new articles are simply easier to develop). Awarding significant points is a way to advance the goal of improving WP's existing content. Concerning why the points should be awarded for older articles, I think it is rather embarrassing that an article on Verlin (2008) or Cypripedioideae (2003!) is still in the state it's in. And five years is an arbitrary number that seems to have earned consensus; I have no particular thoughts on it. Ruby 2010/2013 17:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Topics

It has been suggested that there is a problem in awarding points for good and featured topics. Should topics remain eligible for points?

Yes- topics should be worth some points

1. All other featured parts of wikipedia are already included here. Nergaal (talk) 12:06, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. As long as you're only awarding points for content directly worked on by the participant. If they only work on one article out of, say, 10, they shouldn't get credit for all 10. – Muboshgu (talk) 14:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

   They don't, I only got credit for the 33 articles that I worked on out of the 63 in the Battlecruisers of the world FT.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:26, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

3. Very true. This one does improve the project, as it provides an incentive to work on every article in a topic rather than cherry picking easy ones. Should be worth more points. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:40, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
4. I don't see the harm in it, but I'm not in favor of giving it more points. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:05, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
5. Per Muboshgu. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 17:48, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
6. Agree with Muboshgu. —Bloom6132 (talk) 01:31, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
7. Improves the project in much the same way as Portals do, and encourages editors not to skip "hard" articles in favor of low hanging fruit elsewhere. Fair disclosure: I've got a plan to take ~6 stubby articles and push for a ~43-article GT in 2014, so I recognize I have a bias here. Clarification on what you're allowed to count is probably a good idea, though; no free rides. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 19:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

No- we should not be awarding points for topics

1. Per my comments below. Ypnypn (talk) 14:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
2. Per my long opposition to this process. Unlike other featured processes, this one does not improve the project. In the context of the WikiCup, it offers an excessive bonus for no additional work. Resolute 14:57, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
3. Per Resolute. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Topic discussion

Anything else?

Is there anything else you feel needs to be changed for next year's competition? J Milburn (talk) 20:58, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to get rid of the points for featured and good topics. My understanding is that they're meant to reward improving an entire topic area, which makes sense. But the current setup ends up rewarding improving articles in topics someone else (not necessarily a WikiCup participant) already worked on. In fact, it ends might end up discouraging working on neglected parts of the encyclopedia. -- Ypnypn (talk) 02:07, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Where do you get that "it ends up discouraging working on neglected parts of the encyclopedia"? I'm not sure that assertion is supported. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I was a bit too strong, but my point is that by rewarding working on areas that are already high-quality, it in effect penalizes improving articles in other areas. -- Ypnypn (talk) 02:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a fair suggestion- I have seen others raise concerns here, as well. I've added a section above. J Milburn (talk) 09:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I still think that Featured pictures need some form of bonus points, either from number of articles, importance of articles, or any other method. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:05, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

There's a section for this above. J Milburn (talk) 09:42, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Decathlon

I don't know where to put this but I don't think the current format of the cup is particularly ideal. Here are some comparrisons:

• In athletics for example, if one asks who is the best athlete in the world Usain would not win that title, simply because he does only a small segment of the athletics disciplines. On the other hand, I've heard people nominating the decathlon winners as the best athletes.
• For swimming, Phelps is accepted as the best in part also because he was able to win across multiple disciplines/styles of swimming.
• In skiing, the title is won by who has the most points across all disciplines, BUT there is a finite number a points that one can mathematically win in a single discipline.

In the current format, one can win by having a million GAs, or a billion DYKs, or a trillion FPs. In fact I think each of the winners in the past have won by greatly limiting themselves to a single discipline. In decathlon you are not even ranked if you fail one event, but something like that would be too drastic here. I think there should be a bonus of points for the first x entries in a single category (say first 3 FAs/GAs/FPs) then there might be some incentive to not flood the site with DYKs/GAs/FPs. Nergaal (talk) 11:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I think what you're talking about is already going on in another competition. See Wikipedia:Triple Crown/Steeplechase 2013. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

The one that no one's signed up for?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:57, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Believe me, that did not go unnoticed by me either. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

This actually serves to focus more towards articles, particularly if the bonus is multiplied. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

This all seems a bit complex to be instituting. I'd want to see much more discussion and ironing out before this could be considered. J Milburn (talk) 09:39, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

It works out in a highly questionable way, so far as I can tell: Articles generally get credit three times - DYK, GA, and FA - and each of those would get these bonus points. Let's presume triple points for each content type for a moment. A person making articles would be eligible for (5*3 + 30*3 + 100*3) = 405 bonus points, and a person focusing on images... 105. This only serves to vastly increase the disparity, with no benefit. The situation would get far worse if bonus points were included in the multiplication - article work might get thousands of bonus points, while every other type of content would still be stuck at 100-200. This does not encourage branching out, it encourages rigid adherence to getting FAs, and FAs alone. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:31, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

The cutoff date issue

While the cutoff dates for each round are clearly posted, they go against intuition. People (myself included) just assume that the cutoff date is at the end of the month, because that seems logical, rather than two days before the end of the month. That led to some trouble this past year (erm... sorry), and it would be nice if we could avoid that. I know that it will create a serious inconvenience for J Milburn and The ed17, but I would advocate that we end each round on the last day of the month it's set to end in, rather than two days before the last day of the month. If that means that people have to wait until the second or third day in each round to begin posting that round's points, that's a fair tradeoff, as that will be less disruptive on the competition than confusion over who qualified for the next round. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Ok, here's a response. We've always had the cut-off point before the end of the month. This, of course, doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things, but (considering we've not had problems/complaints in the past) it does call into question your assumption that this is a big problem. Now, you're right that we've had a couple of problems this year, but this was caused by the fact that the judges simply didn't have enough time between the rounds (at the start of September, I'd just moved house and was without Internet, Ed, if I recall, was working three jobs). We've already made changes to avoid this happening again in welcoming Miyagawa to the judging team, as I said in the final newsletter this year. I appreciate the suggestion that we kick off on the third (or whatever) of the month, rather than expecting the judges do everything that needs to be done in the space of an hour or something, but I think there's a certain elegance in the definite start time and definite end time, even if you do feel that it's counterintuitive. J Milburn (talk) 20:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

There were problems with this, resulting in a stuff up about listing who went into the final round. What is being done to prevent this recurring? Hawkeye7 (talk) 17:51, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

As I say, Real Life got in the way for both Ed and I, resulting in not enough time being given to working out what was going on. Now we have Miyagawa on the judging team, this should be much less likely to occur. J Milburn (talk) 20:17, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Awards

I would have liked to have gotten a Silver Wiki award for coming second. The guys on the Deutsch Wikipedia get a tee shirt for being a finalist. Hawkeye7 (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

How about a "disco ball of knowledge"? Sven Manguard Wha? 21:26, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I seem to recall in an earlier discussion there was talk of there being t-shirts given to everyone who made it to the 3rd round. I do question why are the Germans giving out tangible rewards when the English Wiki isn't giving anything else? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:34, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Who is paying for the rewards? Sven Manguard Wha? 03:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

WM-DE of course. It would be very simple for the WikiCup organisers to approach WMF for a grant, given the large amount of article improvement that goes on. I am surprised that that they have not done so. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

The WMF is very much aware of the Cup. We do intend to look into these things for next year. Whether it will be t-shirts or vouchers or something else remains to be seen. J Milburn (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Points for peer reviews

I've been thinking about this for a while. Why not have points for doing peer reviews? Obviously it's points would have to be on a par with GARs (maybe less due to the difference in requirements) but I think it would be a good idea because it will assist them with their backlogs. what are other's thoughts? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

My worry is that a "peer review" can be anything from a quick comment about the length of the lead to many hours' work analysing the literature. It's not quite as quantifiable as the other things for which we award points. J Milburn (talk) 22:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

True, but don't we require a certain length of GA review before it qualifies? A PR could be done in similar fashion. Resolute 23:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

My major concern with this idea is that in order to provide a useful peer review, the reviewer must be intimately familiar with the expectations of the FAC process. People with little or no FAC experience are going to look at this as easy points, and give well meaning advice to the best of their ability, but still fall short because they're just not trained to look for the right things and point out all the issues that an FAC veteran would. (I keep bringing up FAC because most peer reviews that I have seen are "I want to take this to FAC soon, what do I need to improve before I do?" type deals). This is, by the way, an issue I also have with good article reviews, however that process is so in need of warm bodies that I've never moved for having it not be a source of Wikicup points. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:24, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

No more questionable than GA reviews, really. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:34, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Not really; when you complete a GA review, unless you do it badly, you need to check everything- prose, sourcing, images and so forth. By contrast, there's nothing wrong with a peer review that focuses on one area, or one section. One can reasonably count the number of GA reviews they've done, but it's not so easy to count the number of peer reviews they've done. J Milburn (talk) 09:18, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it is as easy to count PRs as they have the same individual pages for each review like GARs. For example, Wikipedia:Peer review/Nevill Ground/archive2 can be measured the same way as if it were a GAR. Obviously if we did do this, it would have to be similar to GARs with a full review required for points. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:23, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I like this idea. IMO, PR is the area with the largest reviewer deficit. As long as we laid out some clear requirements for Wikicup participants (review length etc.), I think this would be a good way to bring attention to a process that normally gets little attention. But I'd be curious to ask Brianboulton his thoughts on this, as I think he's the editor most involved with PR at the moment. Ruby 2010/2013 17:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

It's certainly something that could be instituted if that's what the community wants. We definitely need to be clear about how it would be instituted, though. (Let me say this, for a start: As with GAC, I'd be watching very closely, and be very ready to remove claims...). J Milburn (talk) 17:27, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Of course the points would have to reflect the work required. I think that 2 points would suffice because it requires less work than GARs. I think that the guidelines for it should be similar to the ones that apply for GAR with a requirement that a review must focus on commenting how to improve the whole article, not just the area that was asked for. We would certainly expect nothing less than the judges removing substandard claims. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:32, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

My name was mentioned earlier in the discussion. I should point out that I am at present much less engaged with the peer review process than I used to be. At one time I was doing between 15 and 20 reviews a month. Now, its two or three, mainly in response to specific requests from editors. Peer reviewing is probably the most thankless of all reviewing tasks – certainly, you rarely get thanks, your recommendations are often ignored and are frequently unacknowledged. It is small wonder that so few editors are prepared to commit themselves to PR, and for this reason I would support any inducement that would bring in more bodies, but I foresee great dificulties in the implementation of a points scheme. I disagree with the view expressed above that a peer review necessarily "requires less work" than a GAR. It depends on how conscientious the reviewer is; I have seen GARs which are little more than wave-throughs, a few minutes' work at most, and some PRs that are the result of hours of conscientious work. Of course, many other PRs are superficial, and scarcely worthy of the name. In a points scheme, probably some form of rough justice based on length of review is the most practical way forward, with perhaps a sliding scale of, say, 0 to 3 points, though I think you will need an effective disputes resolution mechanism! Brianboulton (talk) 19:03, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Quality of content?

I remember seeing a comment associated with an offline publication that called into question the scientific accuracy of content generated by some WikiCup contributors (even after the content had gone through processes that should check for WP:Text-source integrity, if I remember correctly). Does anyone remember which publication this was? Thoughts? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:07, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

There's a certain rather indignant blogger to whom I'd rather not link, but I'm not aware of anything in traditional newspapers. The WikiCup has to use Wikipedia's auditing processes; there's not really any alternative. These processes are imperfect, and have all faced plenty of criticism independent of the WikiCup. I'm not completely clear what 1) The problem is perceived to be, 2) Why this problem is the responsibility of the WikiCup and 3) What can be done about this. I am, of course, open to suggestions. J Milburn (talk) 10:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The issue of scientific accuracy is frankly a non-issue in most submissions given most are not on scientific topics. I know my submissions in the last cup almost definitely didn't have much scientific accuracy because I focused mainly on sports articles. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 10:42, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I did. I tried my best to get everything correct, and if there are still errors in the articles, well WP:SOFIXIT. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:17, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The nasty blog in question is largely targeted at me and my contributions. It makes out that my work is incorrect on occasions and that in my desire to score points, I have compromised on quality. I don't believe this to be the case and would invite others to look at my submissions in the final round of the 2013 WikiCup to judge for themselves. No doubt there are some errors in the large numbers of articles I have written but I believe the blogger creates mountains out of molehills. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:30, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The blog is called en.wiki bad science and is written by AfadsBad, who says no, it's not targeted at you, Cwmhiraeth. — Scott • talk 20:38, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

In my independent opinion as I have never read that blog before, it does appear to me that the author does appear to have some sort of grudge against Cwmhiraeth given he just went through most of Cwmhiraeth's contributions to the WikiCup unnecessarily in his post. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:43, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

The system, like Wikipedia itself, is obviously open to gaming, no matter how diligently the judges monitor - and they do a great job as it is. But aside from one notable example, I can't think of any serious participant in this contest who has tried to shortcut the system. I have heard complaints from certain people, but those complaints inevitably lacked specific examples. In the end, however, scoring points in this competition requires the independent review of other editors who are overwhelmingly unaffiliated with the contest. If there is a fault with the scientific accuracy of articles, it is not a Cup problem, but rather a Wikipedia problem. Resolute 14:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Closing the polls; changes for 2014

Ok, with only a few days to go until the start of 2014, I'm closing the polls and making the appropriate changes.

• Concerning featured pictures, there is no consensus on what should be done. They shall remain as they are.
• Concerning featured portals, there is a weak consensus that they should be worth more points. Featured portals will now be worth 45, rather than 35, points apiece.
• There is a clear consensus that collaborations should not be worth more points than any other content. Co-collaborators will continue to receive equal full points for the content they work on.
• There is a consensus that did you know bonus points are fine as they are. No change will be made to the current DYK scoring system.
• There is a consensus that longer featured articles should be awarded no more points than shorter featured articles.
• There is a consensus that only articles eligible for DYK through being newly created or newly expanded fivefold (not newly promoted to GA status) are eligible for WikiCup DYK points.
• There is a consensus that the vital article list is adding little. A vital article will now be worth no more bonus points than it would be allowed under the normal interwiki rule.
• There is a consensus that articles over 5 years old at the start of the competition should be worth more than just 2 bonus points if taken to DYK. DYKs of articles more than 5 years old at the start of the competition will now be worth an additional 5 bonus points.
• There is no strong consensus on whether this should scale with age. A flat five points will be offered.
• There is a weak consensus that topics should remain a part of the competition.
• There is some consensus that peer reviews should be eligible for WikiCup points, but in the absence of a workable way to do this, we are going to have to leave them out of this year's competition.
• Regardless of discussion, I would like to note that the judges are taking steps to prevent inter-round mix-ups, and we are looking into the possibility of prizes for WikiCup participants.
• There seems to be no consensus for change, or ideas are too undeveloped, in other areas mentioned.

As such, there will be two changes of (small) consequence, one change of little consequence, and one clarification related to changes outside of the WikiCup. I hope that I have been fair in these closures. Comments are welcome. J Milburn (talk) 19:29, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Don't be a dick

I don't know who wrote the lead paragraph for the scoring page, and I'm not going to go and look, but I'm not sure if its appropriate to have the phrase "don't be a dick" up there. I'm well aware Wikipedia is not censored and all that, and I agree with the DBAD essay but on a prominent page of a content based competition isn't a good place for it. It's fine on all the drama pages, noticeboards etc but not here. In fact, my automated welcome message to the cup mentioned younger editors implying there might be some, and I sure don't want the young 'uns to be thinking that language like that is commonly used on Wikipedia. Well, it is when there is an encyclopedic need or a discussion gets heated, but not here. So, please read my argument and take it down. Even just change the word "dick". Rcsprinter (warn) @ 17:48, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. I think you have to be looking for it in order for it to mean the area that you're suggesting it does. In context from a straightforward look at it, to me it means jerk. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:56, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd also like to use milder language. Unfortunately, some people seem to think that "Wikipedia is not censored" means "Wikipedia may not exercise restraint". -- Ypnypn (talk) 19:24, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I wrote it, as I'm sure you all know- please don't tiptoe around me like that, it's very patronising. I used "don't be a dick" because it's a page so regularly referenced and a rule so often demanded. I'll quite happily change it if someone can suggest alternative wording which isn't unpleasantly American. J Milburn (talk) 20:42, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

"Jerk" work? Gloss • talk 20:50, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

That's not a word you ever really hear in the UK. I've adjusted it- not as snappy, but without the less cordial language. J Milburn (talk) 20:51, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

No worries, I have zero familiarity with UK terms so that was a shot in the dark. I see Rcsprinter123's point, only since it seems we have a decent amount of young kids participating this year. Your edit resolves this issue just fine. Mooooooving on! Gloss • talk 20:58, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Good article reviews question

I am doing several good article reviews. I understand that really short or rubber stamped ones will not pass muster here, but I do put a considerable amount of time into thoughtfully reviewing each one and while Talk:Bobby_Fischer/GA1 is likely to be a long one, I've been wondering about some of the shorter articles where there are fewer issues. Talk:Dunces and Dragons/GA1 is one of a bit of commentary and back and forth. And Talk:Shane Morris/GA1 was a bit more...complex... resulting in a call for discussion at WT:AMF, I do think that these reviews would be acceptable for points. Should I be worried about the length of the review in general for the points? Some of the bigger ones like Talk:Abby Wambach/GA1 are longer than most articles and I do check for accuracy - I'd just hate to lose out on an hour or more's worth of work because I couldn't find many issues from some of our more experienced content writers. And I don't want to pad or force FA-level compliance. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 18:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

They look fine to me- we're really talking about very short reviews, whereby everything's in order right away (as is occasionally seen), or there is some glaring omission which makes a full review pointless (like no cited sources) or the review is closed for some procedural reason (like the article having been deleted). You do seem to be a pretty thorough reviewer, so I can't imagine you'll have a problem unless you're conscious yourself that it's not a "full" review for some reason, or it's already a very strong article. We have 1000b of text as a line in the sand, but I wouldn't worry about that too much. If you do submit something a little too short, a judge will remove it, but we won't be out to get you afterwards or anything! J Milburn (talk) 21:43, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I've been on the fence about quick failing Talk:David Gould (basketball)/GA1 because one source that dominates the body (ref 7) is one that comes from a talent/management agency and it is a "Sporting Resume", representing a questionable source and possibly self-published by Gould. I need some eyes on that, but that's another matter, since the subject meets notability and that reliable sources for the claims are likely to be found elsewhere than a personal resume. I'll keep that in mind, I haven't had anything too short, but some of the submissions I have seen are basically FA level and there is simply no picking them apart! Thanks for the quick reply. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 22:40, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Scoring problem?

The bot has failed to award me any bonus points for my DYK of Scorpaenopsis diabolus which is listed on 10 different language Wikipedias. (I'm not worried about the missing two points but more about the reliability of the bot.) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:06, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I have had the same problem with the bot on my Luke Baldwin DYK nomination. Maybe mention it on the technical noticeboard? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:30, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jarry1250:, could you please take a look at this? J Milburn (talk) 11:18, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I see that both of these had no article on the English Wikipedia at the start of the year- I believe that this is a known problem, Harry? (Cwmhiraeth, I have added a 1.2 multiplier- 9 interwikis as of the start of the year; C of E, we've discussed that article elsewhere.) J Milburn (talk) 11:32, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually there were two bugs. Firstly, wikidata.org requires use of www., something I've hit up against before, but hadn't noticed affecting this particular code 'path'. Fixed. Then it was going to give Cwmhiraeth a 1.4x multiplier because wikidata includes interwikis to Commons (and potentially other sites in future). Also fixed. All bug reports gratefully received :) Best, - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 00:11, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

There is also a problem with my DYK score for Cyrtopodion kotschyi, another newly created article with multiple interwikis. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:15, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

17 articles as of the end of last year for a 1.6 multiplier. That may just be a record for an article which didn't exist on the English Wikipedia! @Jarry1250:, is there perhaps something that can be done about this? Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 15:22, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I fixed it yesterday at around midnight UTC, shouldn't happen again but the bot won't overwrite existing multipliers so there may be lingering cases. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 16:26, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 17:14, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, just wondering why I didn't get the 5 pt size bonus for Georgiana Spencer, Countess Spencer. Thanks, Ruby 2010/2013 20:29, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

That's odd. I've modified your submission page, but I'm really not sure why the bot didn't spot that. If the bot tries to override me or doesn't update the main page, let me know. Thanks for the note. J Milburn (talk) 21:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks J! I'm not familiar with how the calculation config is setup, but I wonder if it had anything to do with its recent page move? The DYK nom was for Margaret Georgiana Poyntz, Countess Spencer but during the nomination the page was moved to its present title, Georgiana Spencer, Countess Spencer. Ruby 2010/2013 21:51, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi again, the bot failed to calculate another one of my submissions correctly -- [1] (DYK for The Memoirs of Cleopatra, which should have given me 15 points if I'm not mistaken). Thanks, Ruby 2010/2013 03:57, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the report, I've fixed this. This is likely teething problems due to the various changes Jarry has made recently. J Milburn (talk) 11:05, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand it. It worked perfectly fine last year. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 11:08, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, it worked fine at the end of last year. This year's problems are caused by four things: migrating the bot to Wikimedia Labs; migrating the bot to use a newer version of the Peachy PHP Bot framework; some general code cleanup I did while I was there (I basically tweaked every line in the script); and the need to update a lot of the code to keep up with the development and spread of Wikidata. Then you get (unfortunately) some knock-on problems where fixes for 1-4 have consequences elsewhere in the code. Every year I've been running the bot (all projects on Labs are multi-maintainer by the way, plus there's a Github repo, so volunteers are very welcome) I've needed to spend a couple of dozen hours in January updating and fixing things. I think we're there now though, at least for 2014. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 11:55, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Articles previously written on other language versions

I was considering writing a biography about a person for which I previously (pre-2014) have written an entry on Norwegian Wikipedia. Would an English entry then count as "my own work" in 2014? Would it matter if I more or less directly translate the Norwegian version or whether I gather sources anew and write the article independently of the Norwegian article (allthough core content would of course be very similar). Regards, Iselilja (talk) 06:42, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

The content would not be on English Wikipedia if not for your translating. The translating, and thus the addition of the content, is happening in 2014. There are a limited number of people that would 1) be able to, and 2) be willing to, do such a translation. For those reasons, I am of the opinion that translations from other projects should count, as if they were standard articles written from scratch. That being said, it's worth noting that almost every sister project has much more lenient inline citation and sourcing requirements, which is often a stumbling block for translations. As long as you can meet English Wikipedia's sourcing requirements (and there's nothing in them that demands they be English language sources, as far as I know), I don't see any issues. Note that I am not a judge. I am a competitor though. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:33, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree with Sven. If content goes through the proper auditing processes on the English Wikipedia, it doesn't make a difference for me whether you're writing it from scratch or translating. This has come up before, and that was my stance then (though some people thought it unfair for reasons I couldn't quite grasp). The only thing I will say (and, of course, this doesn't apply to you!) is that it is the nominator's responsibility to double-check the sources, the source Wikipedia must be appropriately credited for copyright reasons, and machine translations are not suitable for Wikipedia. J Milburn (talk) 11:45, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

(in)Substantial contributions?

Question for the judges: Have I made too many "substantial contributions" to this article to do a Good Article Review for the person who has made more edits and is now taking it to GAN? Montanabw^(talk) 13:26, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

This isn't really a WikiCup issue- if you are sufficiently uninvolved (which is a question for the GA project; my view, speaking as a GAN regular, is that you are sufficiently uninvolved) then you may claim points as usual. Of course, you can't claim points for the GA itself, just the review! J Milburn (talk) 17:02, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, for this particular article it's moot because there is another reviewer, but I guess I'm looking for a good definition of "substantial contribution" for the purpose of being OK to do a GAN review and claim the 4 points -- Dana boomer puts up a lot of articles, I work with her a lot and we both know the horse stuff, so I'd like to review some of her material but I've hesitated to because I've "touched" damn near all of the 3000+ articles tagged for wikiproject equine -- I'm not sure if I'd get in trouble for gaming the system if I reviewed any of her GANs (I have reviewed a few of hers, where I had very few edits, maybe one or two a year at most) The Heck Horse one was a good example because I took a pretty good whack at it a couple years ago but haven't done much since and did nothing toward the GAN. A more typical example might be Exmoor pony - again, I wasn't the lead editor, but I was involved in the editing process from time to time. Just curious. Seems these days we are under the gun not to do GANs for subjects we don't know much about, yet are also under the gun if we do a GAN on an article we've worked on. Trying to resolve the Catch-22. Thoughts? Montanabw^(talk) 22:06, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

FAC review credit

I'd like us to consider adding credit for FAC reviews (similar to the criteria we use for GA reviews). I spend way more time on a FAC review than a GA review, but it doesn't have weight in the WikiCup, as is. (Also it may help with the slow review process in FAC as of late.) I'm fine with lumping in peer reviews too, for what it's worth. czar ♔ 14:43, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, we won't be changing the rules mid-competition, but we will be discussing possible changes towards the end of the year. Secondly, there's been some pretty vocal opposition to this possibility from at least one FAC regular in the past, with the worry that it will lead to poor quality reviews. I personally have worries about quantifiability- if you take on a GA review, you do the whole thing, as opposed to a FA review, where you do as much or as little as you want to. J Milburn (talk) 15:21, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Right, I meant for the future. I thought concerns about gaming the system would be regulated by "spirit of the rules", but I defer to you on that. My proposal would be finished FAC reviews (as in completely resolved), perhaps of a certain byte count (similar to GAN restrictions), and including source/image checks (a full review). czar ♔ 15:55, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm open to it- I suspect we'll be able to work out something for PRs for next year. Of course, I wouldn't want to upset the FAC directors. J Milburn (talk) 16:32, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

ITN question

OK, so I'm lead editor for the GA California Chrome, it was linked at ITN within the last day or so because he won the Kentucky Derby. Can I claim any wikicup points for it being linked at ITN? The ITN nominators were working on 2014 Kentucky Derby so no worries as to their work on that article, and FWIW, I did a few edits on that one as well (though they did more). As always, I don't want to claim any points I'm not eligible to claim,but don't want to leave anything on the table, either. Please advise? Montanabw^(talk) 17:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm assuming you wrote the updates in the California Chrome article? I'm not particularly familiar with ITN- can two articles be "bolded" in the entry? If so, this seems to be a good candidate for it, but then if you or I were to bold it, it wouldn't have gone through a nomination. I'm a little conflicted... @The ed17:? @Miyagawa:? J Milburn (talk) 18:25, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I would say no because it wasn't bolded. Sorry :/ Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Yup, I did. But if no points for me this time OK, no worries. So next time, do I ask the guys working on the ITN (probably will be the same ones) to just bold the other article name and it's golden, or do I need to somehow be a co-nominator at ITN, or...? And where IS the ITN nom page, anyway? I can't seem to find where all this happens... Montanabw^(talk) 18:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

WP:ITN/C is for new "in the news" nominations. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Didn't get my multi-project multiplier points

Patrick Allen (Governor-General)‎ appears on 19 projects (enWiki + 18), meaning that I should be getting a 60% multiplier for the DYK that I just claimed points for. The bot gave me the +5 for the size, but not the points (I believe it would be an additional six points) for it being on 19 projects. It could be because the article was named Patrick Allen (Jamaica) at the start of the competition. Can I get this rectified please? Sven Manguard Wha? 05:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Another incident of Unicode control characters :( I don't really understand. But I'm going to try to make sure the bot doesn't get fooled again. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 09:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Jarry1250 It's now showing up at my submissions page, but not on the main page where the scores are actually tallied. This is also Sven Manguard 19:47, 9 Sven Manguard Wha? 22:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)May 2014 (UTC)

It's showing up now. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Query: Could this be fixed by simply telling the bot to first edit the page and remove all unicode control characters? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:51, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Basically, yes, although at the moment I'm favouring not editing the page, but fixing the way the bot "reads" the page -- removing LTR marks would certainly make for a confusing diff. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 10:42, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps you could do it as minor edit prior to checking for multipliers, with the summary "Formatting to be bot-readable"- that would mean that people checking the edit history could just ignore that one. Whatever works for you- naturally enough, I defer to your superior knowledge/ability. J Milburn (talk) 10:52, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that may be possible when I have the time (mid June earliest). Although equally, I'm not sure if the English Wikipedia really needs widespread use of LTR marks in the first place... so perhaps a MediaWiki bug report would be instructive. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 08:44, 11 May 2014 (UTC)