After ten months of near-constant content creation, the 2009 WikiCup drew to a close on October 31, with Durova claiming the ultimate prize. Throughout the competition she alone managed the remarkable total of 3,705 points, made up of several different categories of featured content.
Durova fought past 59 other users in total in the contest, which began as a group stage in January 2009. Around 1,500 pieces of featured, good, or Did you know? content were created by contestants over the course of the competition as a whole, including nearly 40 featured articles, over 200 featured pictures and over 300 good articles.
The competition, the format of which was originally based on an association football contest, began humbly in 2007 with 12 competitors and was based primarily on edit counts and unique page edits. This was won by Dreamafter after a win against Sunderland06 in the final. The 2008 contest had a slightly more healthy competitor count at 24, and the format was still heavily edit count based. This was won by jj137, again beating Sunderland06 in the final round.
However, the format of this year's competition was changed significantly before and, often controversially, during the contest. The focus was shifted from edit counts to content creation, offering substantially fewer points for mainspace edits than for audited content. As well as the familiar featured articles, lists and pictures, along with good articles, In the News and Did You Know?, points were awarded for lesser known areas of Wikipedia's audited content; featured and good topics, featured sounds and featured portals. This change drew the contest away from merely an edit count and encouraged higher quality contributions. Edits outside of the article (and, later, portal) space counted for nothing, and edits made with automatic tools such as Twinkle, Huggle and AutoWikiBrowser were ignored.
The WikiCup will be held again next year, and editors may sign up now by adding their username and a choice of flag (which must represent a real location) of their choice to the sign-up list. The contest's format is to remain similar to this year's, with a strong possibility of minor changes preceding the start. Due to heavy interest, the initial round is planned to include one large pool, before the winning editors are split into more conventional pools in round two.
I can't even imagine a more deserving winner. Durova, you are the epitomy of what Wikipedians should strive to be as editors. You've got it all and more. My sincere congratulations and hopes that you will one day return as the mighty admin you once were. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Congrats to Durova - an impressive achievement! For next year, I suggest removing DYKs from the contest. Including it encourages people to start articles that are not really needed, instead of working on important stubs and start articles that need improvement. Also, I am not sure how the points work, but I hope that people get a whole lot more points for an FA than for work on pictures, sounds and other items that are not nearly as time-consuming? -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
With respect to the DYK comment, I'm not sure what starting "articles that are not really needed" means. Who gets to decide which new articles are "really needed" or not. And expanding stubs (and many start-class articles too) can easily get you DYK credit, so I am not sure why that would be an issue either. Rlendog (talk) 02:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
True, but FAs take weeks and often months. I'd give it 100 points or more. Even a GA should be more points than FP or FS, as getting an article up to GA is a major undertaking. I have nothing against FPs or FSs, I'm just saying that the points ought to reflect better the average (median?) amount of time and effort necessary to achieve each of the scored content. Also, I'm not sure about portals and topics: - aren't these basically copies of articles and other content reorganized for convenient viewing? Should copying articles to portals and topics really be scored? Or am I misunderstanding what is meant by including topics and portals? IMatthew and Juliancolton, I'm copying this to the contest talk page. Best regards! -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most of this thread has been moved to Cup talk but it's worth mentioning the incredible output of the finalists: during the final three months Ottava Rima had 7 featured articles and 27 good articles; Sasata contributed 3 featured articles and 12 good articles; and Theleftorium contributed a featured article, a 23 part good topic, 24 good articles. That's just the final round; they each did a lot more to get to that far. Many thanks to the judges for a great idea that inspires this much quality content. Durova35521:39, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to comment that I've never heard of this contest before today. First, are there other competitions, and second, is there going to be more effort to make people aware? Out of 70,000 Wikipedians there were 24 contestants? Seems a bit, lopsided, I'd say. Hires an editor (talk) 00:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There aren't other competitions that I'm aware of. We're trying to get as many people as possible for the next Cup. There was actually 60 editors in it this year, and already 120+ editors signed up for next year. iMatthewtalkat00:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually not as easy to "advertise" as you might think. There have been other attempts at competitions (for instance, I believe there is a featured list orientated competition, and a good article reviewing competition) but, so far as I know, the WikiCup has been the most successful "general" competition. J Milburn (talk) 13:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Lovely idea
This helped guide a wikipedia editing contest being proposed on the swahili wikipedia; thanks for setting a great example. I agree with the idea of tweaking points to better reflect time involved and impact on readers. It may be worth adding a few others categories as well, including adding new non-featured media to commons that end up being used in at least one article (something that can be scriptably checked, especially with the new usage feature). +sj+07:25, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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