The contest department of the Military history WikiProject aims to motivate increased quality in military history articles by offering a form of friendly competition for project members making improvements to them. The primary contest available is a simple rolling competition that awards points for improving articles, as originally developed by the LGBT studies WikiProject.
The contest is simple in structure and administered by the project coordinators. The following instructions apply:
The contest runs from the first to last day of each month. At the start of the month, editors may pre-emptively nominate the articles they intend on improving (and then have until the end of the month to make the improvements), or they may simply list the articles that they have worked on at the end of the month.
Points are awarded based on an article progressing up the assessment scale. To be eligible, articles should be re-assessed within the scoring period.
The claiming editor must have made a meaningful change to an aspect of the article that leads directly to an increase in its assessment rating. Such improvements can be focused on one or more aspects of the B-class criteria. For instance, adding references, improving structure or grammar, adding images, or expanding content; these changes should be significant and incidental changes should not be claimed. The claiming editor will be the main contributor (or co-contributor) to the article for the month.
As articles are improved throughout the month, contestants should list their articles at WP:MHA for independent re-assessment, although it is acceptable to self-assess up to C-class.
Once an article has been re-assessed, contestants are expected to update the entries subpage with the improved assessment class and the claimed points, based on the points table (see below).
At the end of the month, no new entries should be added to the entries subpage until it has been reset by a project coordinator as part of the closing process (detailed separately in the instructions to coordinators).
Instructions for coordinators
Detailed instructions for coordinators can be found here.
Prizes
Each month, the participant with the highest number of points will be awarded the WikiChevrons, while the second place-getter will be awarded the Writer's Barnstar.
The editor who has the highest accumulated total of points over the course of the entire year of contests (January to December inclusive) will be awarded the Military History Writers' Contest Cup.
Please note that this section is a separate, transcluded sub-page, which you might like to watchlist separately. Thanks!
The beginning class of the article is the classification at the beginning of the month. Please add entries in alphabetical order by user name in the following form:
| [[User:Username|]] || [[Talk:Article name]] || Entry class || End class || Points || Checked
|-
Nominees should track their own entries, updating the table with the new classes and points claimed/earned as articles are reclassified (to avoid month-end congestion). This is self-scoring (but not self-assessing) so requests for assessments should be made through the normal channels (i.e. at WP:MHAR up to and including B-Class), although nominees may self-assess articles up to C-class at discretion. Experienced members may check entries for the significance of a nominees contribution and the points they have claimed; if they are satisfied they should sign the "checked" box. Entries may be progressively checked through the scoring period. If a "checked" nomination is upgraded, the nominator must remove a notation that the nomination has been checked. At month end, the closing coordinator will check the total points claimed and update the yearly scoreboard.
Cumulative scoreboard: Military History Writers' Contest Cup 2024[edit]
Note: Entrants should not update this during the contest scoring periods. The co-ordinator who closes the contest will update the scoreboard at the end of each month once entries have been verified.
Older logs (April 2007–August 2009) may be viewed here. Other logs, featuring the new scoring system (September 2009 to 2016), are located here and here. The latest archive (2023–onwards) is here.
