Wikipedia talk:WikiCup/Scoring/Archive 2

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Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Featured articles

For next year, FAs should be worth more than 100 points. There is no way that the work put into an FA is equivalent to only 10 DYKs.--William S. Saturn (talk) 17:06, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Some FAs are worth more than 10 DYKs and some are not, IMO.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 19:07, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm curious to know what basis you are making that statement on. That said, I agree completely with William. I'd like to see a slight increase to GA points as well - maybe 50 for a GA and 150 or 200 for a FA. And I remain unconvinced on the value of GT/FT. Reso lute 19:15, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I dunno. Anything I can get a DYK for, I'm generally going to take to GA, at least eventually. So that's 50 points total, half of a FA. Now that I think about it I think that GAs are worth too much because they can be so easy to do. I can get a GA for a 5000 character article that will likely never go past that. Or I can do 50,000 characters and write something that's FA-quality, although it could take several months to wind its way through the whole process. I've consistently won the MilHist and Aviation writing contests because I can bury people in B and GA-class articles. But I'm not sure which is really better for Wiki and should be rewarded by this contest. Is it better to have more good, but not great quality articles vs. fewer but better articles? My inclination is to say both, but finding a balance is tricky. Another issue to consider is the time required to get reviews and limits. I think my longest GAR was 9 weeks while my FARs average 3 weeks or so. With only one article (plus a co-nom) allowed to be in the FAR process that's a real handicap vs the unlimited number in GAR. (I think Tony had 17 in the queue the last time I looked!) Plus GARs can be dealt with by a GA backlog campaign like they did in April, (which upset my carefully planned timings for that round, I might add).

So it's pretty obvious to me that FA points are never going to be the decisive factor in winning, but merely a nice supplement as currently rewarded. So figure 3 FARs, plus 3 co-noms in a single round vs. the possibility of 30-odd GARs if there's a GAR backlog elimination drive one month. So 600 points for FARs vs. 1200 from GARs, plus DYKs for half of the GARs worth another 150. Babysitting those FARs through the process requires, at least for me, less work than does writing new GA-quality articles because a lot of that work has already been done in the initial stages. For me, the writing of a FA-class article is probably three days of concentrated work, maybe 15 hours, but a GA-class article of limited scope is about 3 hours, maybe less depending how much I can copy-paste from other articles. So I'd support a 5:1 ratio between FA and GA class articles. And keep the GT and FT points as well.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:01, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry guys. We'll talk about this once the current cup ends, just like last year.--White Shadows ^{Nobody said it was easy} 21:47, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

No reason not to at least think about it out loud now. I think Sturm has the key point that FA points will never decide this contest given the length of the process and limitations on nominations. The key thing is to up the points to a fair level so you get a serious reward for that serious process, but not so high as to almost insult all other work people do in saying that a single article overwhelms lots of other good work (500 points for an FA, for example). Staxringold _talk^contribs 00:28, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I understand but I'm only letting you guys know that we're almost certainly going to talk about this when this cup ends, so you don't have to worry about points. I too think that FAs should be worth more than 100 points (Heck, I cannot even get one!) But as should GAs in terms or increasing the amount. The standard for both has risen in the past year in my opinion so we'd better compensate for that increase....--White Shadows ^{Nobody said it was easy} 00:59, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

At the same time you have to remember that every time you up FAs and GAs you are (partially by design) lowering the comparative value of FLs and FPs. Obviously I'm biased as a big FL guy, but we shouldn't forget that those are significant work that provide significant content for the encyclopedia. Staxringold _talk^contribs 01:13, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
- I totally understand and I myself have a FLC that I consider my proudest work on this whole site. I think that FLs should be much closer to FAs next competition. It has taken me much more work to try to promote my FL than it has one of my 20+ GAs. With that said, I'm thinking that if FAs are going to be 100-150 points next year, then FLs should be at least 60-70 points.--White Shadows ^{Nobody said it was easy} 01:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
  - I don't think that an FL is quite as much work as is a FA, but it certainly ought to be worth more than a GA. And probably the same is true for a FP although I really don't have any idea how much work is really involved.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
    - I consider my FLs on average to have been easier to produce than my GAs. However, the easiest GAs to produce for a contest like this are probably slightly easier to produce than easiest FLs. However, for every relatively easy GAC (like say J. T. White, which is one of my current ones), there are GACs that take inordinate amounts of time to do correctly (like my current GACs Juwan Howard and 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team). I would not compare an FL to an FA with the word half. I think making an FL half an FA would be wrong.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
      - But that gets back to the size issue as Juwan Howard is over 100,000 characters and is really an embryo FAC while J.T. White is less than 10,000 and will likely never progress past GA. I really, really don't want to get into size counts as that will just lead to verbose wordage and crappier articles, but the points awarded should work so that people will be encouraged to do long articles like Juwan Howard as well as short, snappy articles like J.T. White.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:55, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
        We can't begin separating out difficulty levels for different FAs. IMO, the reason why FAs should be higher point value is because the entire process is typically much more time consuming. Also, a higher value for FAs would encourage more editing in that direction. GAs and DYKs are lower hanging fruit. And an FL I would argue is comparable to a GA and should not be raised in value. Reso lute 03:36, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
        I still disagree. FLs are Featured for a reason. They are not called Good Lists (though that's an idea to incorporate in the distant future for this site) I've spent more time on my FLC than I have on any or my GA's. I have a system for my U-boats and If I follow it, they will be an easy GA in about 1-3 weeks from when I first begin editing it. The articles are not crappy or anything but I've just figured out a "blueprint" for them. Every FL is unique and there is no set way to do it (though I modeled mine after Parsec's List of battleships of Germany) as every list is about an independent topic. When comparing that to U-boats, well, there are over 500 U-boats but only one "List of battleships of Austria-Hungary". Do you know what I mean? Of course, FLs are still not as big as FAs so they should not be worth as much but I'd like to see them worth more than GAs at least....--White Shadows ^{Nobody said it was easy} 15:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
        The reason FL's are featured is that there is no such thing as a good list, and no point to them. A list is simply a table and typically a few paragraphs of prose. For larger lists they are time consuming, yes, but typically hardly outstanding, even at the FL level. I would personally always rank a good GA as being more valuable to the project than a good FL. Reso lute 13:38, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I personally value FA as 300-350 points. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 18:34, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Here's how I see it: FAs should be about 200 points, per the reasoning above by Sturmvogel 66. I personally think 10 points is too much for a DYK, I'll admit that it didn't take much effort to write something like The Victoria Advocate. I'd favor reducing the value of DYKs to 5 points. 50 would be good for GAs, but FLs should probably remain at 40. The encyclopedic value of GAs are arguably above those of FLs, and generally they sit for weeks while the FLC process is quicker. I would also support the splitting of points for any articles that are co-nominated.--William S. Saturn (talk) 23:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I think we should step back and compare like versus like. Somebody should put up a table showing a couple of examples of the easiest DYKs GAs and FAs, average DYKs, GAs and FAs and the most difficult DYKs GAs and FAs. We should not be comparing the easiest GAs with the hardest FAs and saying FAs are 8 or 10 times harder to do. Yes the most difficult FAs take a ton of time and some GAs are easy to get through the system. However, the easiest FAs are not that really that much more worthy than 100 points on the current scale. For the final round, I will not be doing a ton of Juwan Howard article type GAs. I will be trying to rack up points on cakey GAs. I imagine people who want to rack up FA points will be trying to get the easier FAs through in the final round. Most of the easier FAs are less work than my Juwan Howard article. I don't think any of the 11 or 12 FAs in the current round are as long or have as many refs as his article. Even my 1997 Michigan Wolverines football team GAC is longer than probably all FAs completed this round. Doing an FA caliber Juwan Howard article would be nearly as difficult as doing an FA caliber LeBron James. People trying to win this thing will be doing FAs that are easier than my harder GAs. If we are using a 10-point scale, I will be trying to push a lot of 3 and 4 point difficulty GAs through in the final round. However, I don't expect people to be spending time on 8 point FAs. Look at the submission pages of people in the contest and consider the relative difficulty. Looking at the shortest FA in the current round, Russian battleship Slava, it is not that much harder than my current GAC for Howard and the 1997 Michigan football team. The scoring could be tweaked but nothing drastic is really necessary, IMO.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:04, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Mainspace

I propose we bring back Mainspace edits next year. It drooped our scoring down quite a bit. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 14:24, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Seconded. 174.52.141.138 (talk) 14:25, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Who's that?

I disagree, far too easy to manipulate by saving every single change as you make them rather than one series of changes.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:31, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I would also disagree. A high edit count does not necessarily mean one is improving the project.--William S. Saturn (talk) 15:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

One possibility is to award 100 points for every 1000 "quality" mainspace edits to a maximum of 100 points per round with the editor certifying that he or she believes the edits to be of high quality. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 18:33, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Too much IMHO. If that happens, then 1 FA will put you through rounds 1 or 2!--White Shadows ^{Nobody said it was easy} 18:36, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Last year, you could advance out of round 1 with just one GA. The main reason for mainsapce it to increase scoring. and then an FA could be worth another 5 points just for mainspace. It should be 1 point for every 25 mainspace edits. How about that? Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 18:53, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

No scoring inflation is necessary. This only results in the advancement of editors who frankly do not deserve to be advanced.--William S. Saturn (talk) 22:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok we should problay give what we did in 2009, giving 0.1 edits. If we make fA 200 points you would need 2000 mainspace edits to equal an A which is unlikely during a two month round. It would even give more points to an FA. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 14:12, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Why do we need increased scoring in the first place? Edit scores always struck me as the odd man out in a field where everything else is evaluated content. Staxringold _talk^contribs 18:50, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

IMO, maimspace makes every thing little more fun. It is like the three-point shot in basketball. It can also reduce the chance of ties. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 23:59, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I honestly think that it's a way for people who do not deserve to move on to...well move on. All of the other categories are promoting something so it seems unfair to have one category where all you have to do is edit...anything.--White Shadows ^{Nobody said it was easy} 00:10, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Your missing the piont. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 02:12, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

What is the point, then? J Milburn (talk) 21:18, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Increase scoring and makes everything a little more fun. The is proposal is 1 point per 25 mainsapce edits. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 00:01, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

As someone who's way out there on amount of stuff done per edit, I would find this a bit sad. It's frankly encouraging editcountitis. How about instead giving points based on how many articles one edits? Yngvadottir (talk) 14:48, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

That's better than the original idea, but I still think it diverges from the idea of this contest, which is content production, not wikignoming. Not that there's anything wrong with wikignoming. I just feel like that's a different contest. Guettarda (talk) 14:55, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

You have a point, but I can also see the argument for rewarding sheer productivity, I just don't think it's fair to measure it by raw edit numbers. So how about a couple of points per new article created regardless of DYK? Actually I would rather not see the number of points for a DYK reduced; that's directly related to production of new content and insofar as I understand GA and FA at all, it seems to me getting an article past those threshholds is wikignoming. But on that the argument seems to be going against me . . . However, not all articles are suited to DYK (some take too long to write, some contain list material, others are just too short without undue weight). 3 points per new article and 10 points per DYK? Or 3 points per new article, some reduced pointage per DYK, and some teensy fraction of a point per discrete edit to an article? Yngvadottir (talk) 16:11, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

3 piont per article might be an ok deal. but I still liked my propsal. How about 1 point per 200 mainspace edits. It can make the competition a little mroe fun and you would need a ton of mainspace points to equal an FA. it worked in 2009, dont see why it could not work now. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 16:32, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

One problem is that it increases the burden on judges. The competition has grown a lot since 2009, and we'd probably need extra judges, especially during the first round, if we expect them to check edit count claims. We'd also have to rely on competitors to mark all minor edits and automated edits as minor, because there's no way the judges can check even a small proportion of the edits. Apart from that, 0.005 points per edit barely seems to be worth the trouble. It's not going to get a person across to the next round. It doesn't seem fair to ask the judges to do a large amount of extra work for something that's unlikely to change the outcome. Guettarda (talk) 17:00, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Would it be possible to program a bot to detect a good mainspace if the overall character count in the article changed by say at least 15-20 characters (for example). A simple one character difference would probably not be worth counting, but a 15-20 character difference (once again, just grabbing that number out of thin air). Wouldn't be perfect, but would be a decent compromise between no award, and award for little bit.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 21:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The challenge, as I saw it, would be the check the number of mainspace edits...no matter how carefully you word things, some people will count non-mainspace edits by mistake, or will miscount, or count minor edits...that kind of thing. Having a bot verify people's claims might help avoid that problem. As long as people made sure they marked minor edits as minor (or gave them the ability to add a "deduct" column to their claim, for any unmarked minor edits) it would probably work. After all, we aren't looking to weed out cheating here, but rather, errors. (Cheating would actually be fairly easy to detect. Anyone who racked up massive edit counts would almost certainly get their edits checked by another person in the competition, and this being Wikipedia, it's easy to audit other people's edits.)

Obviously I'm no coder, so I'm just guessing at what tasks would be 'simple' for a bot to perform. Guettarda (talk) 22:08, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I think Bedford's idea is great. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone

Guettarda: The bot will be able to count the edits for us. In 2009, it counted the mainspace edits, splitting them into minor and non-minor, and ignored anything done by a bot (with AWB, Huggle, Twinkle or whatever linked in the edit summary). It wouldn't require the amount of work you are talking about. There was an awful lot of controversy about mass editing- Sasata got a lot of (highly unjustified, in my eyes) bad press for mass stub creation on taxonomic ranks. J Milburn (talk) 12:21, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

We can do non-minor edits that change more than 50 to 100 characters. Then, that solves the problem, if a bot can do the task. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 14:02, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Replace FA and GA points

I believe FA and GA points should be replaced with this: 1 point for every 2 nonvandalism mainspace edits to start and stub articles, 1 for every nonvandalism C-class edit, 2 for every nonvandalism B-class edit, 5 for every nonvandalism GA or A-class edit, and 10 for every nonvandalism FA edit. When quality is conflicted between WikiProjects, use the highest quality rating. I also believe every nonvandalism contribution to a Featured Topic article should be worth 1, and every Good Topic nonvandalism edit should be worth 2 for 1 point. I think that those should replace Featured and Good topic points. Us441 (talk) 19:27, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

You want to count which edits are non-vandalism and which class the articles are in? Didn't think so.. Too complex, sorry. f o x 19:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a way to bring back mainspace edit points without awarding points for vandalism, and a way to keep the increased FA and GA points without having to worry about the "significantly contributed" line and where it is. Us441 (talk) 12:18, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Carryover points from the previous round

It was discussed somewhere that if points are carried over, this is good and bad. Good because it rewards those who write and bad if it causes one to be lazy in later rounds. Some Europeans go on holiday in August and that could eliminate their chances to win.

One possible compromise is that the top 2 people with the most total points for all rounds automatically get promoted to the next round with exception of the last round. This may be too complicated but I am not that stupid! Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 21:14, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

This is certainly doable, I reckon.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 04:32, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Reviews

Will doing reviews be worth points next year? I think it needs to be added in somehow, seeing as how every review process was stretched to its end over the past year (DYK has been over critical mass for months). Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 00:31, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. This would be beneficial to the project.--William S. Saturn (talk) 20:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. It needn't be much (bit like kicking a conversion in various codes of football) - one or two points would be fine. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to take this seriously this year, but we have the age old problems. How do we judge a review fairly? How do we ensure that substandard GA promotions don't end up being traced back to a WikiCup decision to award points? One way might be to limit it to featured processes, where fellow participants are more likely to spot a pattern, but that would probably have an impact on GAN. --W F C-- 21:25, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The WWI contest in MilHist last year counted reviews, though I forget the scale used, as well as basic assessments at 1/10 of a point each. It was helpful in reducing the GAN and unassessed article backlogs. I think we can all recognize a quality review at GAN; the real problem is that the judges will have to validate every review, which would be a huge burden on them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:34, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

(As a judge, I'm trying to remain neutral in these discussions, but...) Remember that there have also been GA elimination drives which have encouraged a large number of reviews. A problem with poor reviews exists anyway- I'd be inclined to say that offering a more "token" point rewards (as Cas recommends) would not encourage "mass" reviewing of the kind we would strongly discourage, and I think judges exist purely for the reason of stopping points being awarded for this anyway. I have already been doing all I can to encourage reviews, I'd be inclined to say that this would be a good thing. I've talked about the "feeling" of the competition, and I get the distinct impression that the "feeling" of the competition is shifting towards awarding points for reviews. (I have already been using participation in review processes as a tiebreaker.) J Milburn (talk) 22:28, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

FYI, the WWI contest awarded 2 points per substantial review in RP, GAN, ACR or FAC. Nobody went overboard; the most I saw was 12 reviews in 6 weeks, although since the points were restricted to WWI content there weren't that many articles to review.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:38, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

We are going to have to incorporate GA reviews somehow - the pressure on them is fit to burst even without a hundred people throwing article at them - so this seems logical. Judging quality shouldn't be too hard. f o x 18:59, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll throw something into the ring, although I accept this will throw up challenges. How about we require people to claim GA review points before making the final decision? It's a way of ensuring that if there are any substandard reviews, they are not the responsibility of WikiCup. --W F C-- 22:41, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think WP:CUP contestants should be reviewing. I just got two of my shoddiest reviews I have ever gotten from a cup contestant. As the competition heats up, it will cause contestants trying to produce encyclopedic content to do shoddy reviews because good reviews take too much time. I think there should be a separate reviewers cup. This content should be about contributing encyclopedic content.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 04:45, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it is beholden on contestants to be reviewing. Not everyone is involved with this particular contest, but many other people's nominations are being swamped within contest nominations. I review and write, but its frustrating to wait for a review on an article one has worked hard on, because someone is caught up in winning a contest rather than improving Wikipedia as a whole. Canada Hky (talk) 17:27, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Points should be based on benefit to the project, rather than effort required

The aim of Wikicup is to be as beneficial to the project as possible. From what I've seen this year, we caused significant problems at DYK, to the extent that there was serious discussion of reforming the entire system to cope. If that happens next year, the people that are disproportionately hit will be people who rarely submit new articles, and were really looking forward to seeing an article that interests them on the main page for a few hours. The GA backlog is more of a permanent problem, but given that it is at saturation point without Wikicup, I question whether it should be incentivised as generously as it is. Sure, FA, FL, FP and FT have participation problems, but it's a net benefit to the project if the quantity of audited content goes down, and the quality goes up. Incentivising featured content more heavily would result in an overall reduction in the amount of reviewing required for the wikicup. --W F C-- 20:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

It terms of effort, I found DYK an easier way to pick up points than GA/FA - I'd guess that 5 for a DYK was a more accurate proportion compared with FA or GA scoring. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:07, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a discussion that I'd rather we had in a relevant thread. I want to see if there's consensus for the view that if WikiCup incentivisation is causing problems in one or two particular areas over all others, we should be lowering the incentive in that area accordingly. --W F C-- 21:19, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The backlogs early in DYK made it obvious that we were crushing the system at times, so I would agree with that view. To the rest of the processes, there is already a movement to add a point value to reviewing, and we could help alleviate the pressures on those areas by mandating that to score points on a GA, FA, etc, the contributor must also review another article in the same queue. In that case, this game would benefit the project both in terms of adding quality content and in ensuring that we help alleviate the pressures we create within these processes. Reso lute 22:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I think forcing people to do reviews like that really could encourage hasty reviews. There's a line between strongly encouraging/providing incentives and forcing. J Milburn (talk) 22:29, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I've thought about it a bit over the last couple of days. I think for any sort of review competition to be workable, there would have to be serious involvement from people heavily associated with peer review, GA reviews and FA/FL reviews. Unless a review system was run by those sorts of people and the points then fed into Wikicup, I don't think it can ever be workable. --W F C-- 05:21, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

If we are talking of benefit to the project, though, reviews are sorely needed in all areas. I agree about the difficulty in reviewing reviews as it were. Hence why I thought just a point or so was a good score for one - A GA review would need two links - one to the GA review page (which will show the depth of the discussion), and one to the page history showing the number of edits by the reviewer in picking up straightforward errors. If you limit a GA review to one point, and grant ~~one~~ the reward of one point for "some effort towards improving the article to GA status" I think that is a net benefit. Can do the same for FAC too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:29, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I like splitting the points like that- it sounds very bureaucratic. J Milburn (talk) 12:15, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad explaining. I didn't mean split points, I just meant a low point total and an easy couple of links for wikicup reviewers to see how the contestant reviewed. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:29, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

If anything, giving fewer points reduces the likelihood for scrutiny, in turn increasing the risk of near-useless reviews (which do no harm at featured processes, but are a big deal at GA and DYK). If we are going to go down the points for review route, the system would need to be robust. --W F C-- 22:34, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how making it more points will make it easier to be scrutinised, a review takes as long as it does regardless of points scored. I was just trying to keep it in line with effort expended and also the emphasis on article creation. Presuming current point awards are more or less the same, what would you consider a point reward for a GA review (and/or FA review)? Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:45, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, you could lose the points if (during the course of that round) the GA promotion was overturned. As for DYKs - if you approve an article and it turns out to have problems, you'll get more than an earful from the community. Guettarda (talk) 00:10, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the effort for reviewing a DYK candidate is worth points, and the idea of having to document it for the bot to count is a little ridiculous. GA, FA and PR reviews are in a different league to DYK, FPC, VPC or FSC reviews. (Where the others fall is, I guess, open to debate.) J Milburn (talk) 16:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think reviewing DYK should be worth points either FWIW. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't disagree. I just thought that was part of what was being discussed. Guettarda (talk) 04:42, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Just a thought, but would it be worthwhile capping the number of DYK's you can claim in the first round? This would reduce the load on the DYK project significantly - and then from the second round onwards, the cap can be removed once the number of participants has been reduced. Miyagawa (talk) 22:07, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Knocking down DYKs to 2 points or so will go a long way towards minimizing the numbers that overloaded that system this year. The effort required to get a DYK-eligible article isn't one-twentieth of that required for a GA. It's more like a fifth or sixth, IMO and if you make it inefficient, then people won't try to game the Cup that way. They'll still try, but in a different way. When this is all said and done it will be interesting to see how knocking down DYKs to that level would have had on people's scores. Just getting a relationship between FAs, GAs, etc. will be useful to evaluate changes for next year.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:53, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

In truth, having done the most GAs on WP (I believe) and hundreds of DYKS I think that relative to a 40 point GA a DYK is much closer in value to about 12-15 on the majority of subjects, but for some topics where a 40KB article may be appropriate, they might only be worth 5 points or so. I don't think 10 point is too far off from their proper value relative to FA and GA. I don't see myself doing 300 DYKs because I have too much RL stuff going on, but I think a 300-DYK performance would be worthy of a first place finish.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:32, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the issue is not just the value of each achievement relative to others, but the system's ability to deal with these articles. We flooded the hell out of DYK this year, and as a project we need to ensure we are being good wiki-citizens. Knocking the points down is proposed for the benefit of Wikipedia itself, not because the point scores are necessarily out of line. Reso lute 01:05, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

300 DYKs would only garner 3000 pts under the current system and would require a fair number of other stuff to supplement those points. Considering that the top three people all had about that many points at the end of last round, without really trying, and the fact that all three of us are likely to end up with around 2000 points for this round, I'm dubious that that would be a viable strategy. The bigger issue, IMO, is the burden that that sort of thing puts on the DYK review system, much like what you and I are doing to the GA review system right now, only more so. So I feel it's appropriate to lessen the value of DYKs.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Creation

I believe points should be awarded for article creation next year. Us441(talk) (contribs) 17:53, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

We already give for DYKs, and new articles that don't cut it for DYK are generally stubs - we'd rather not encourage those. f o x 18:57, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

If anything, we should give more points for a DYK that's not a new article since (a) a 5-fold expansion usually takes more effort, and (b) all else being equal, an existing stub is likely to be more 'vital' a topic than a non-existent article. Mind you, I'm not saying that we should split DYKs into 'new' and 'expansions', because I think that would add too much complexity to the system. But we should be encouraging article expansion more than article creation. Guettarda (talk) 16:36, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Agree. Consolidation is preferable. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:45, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I think expansions should be worth double creations, but I also think that DYK points need to be reduced, due to the unreasonable strain we are putting on that system. This from someone with the books at my disposal to create a couple of hundred Watford DYKs. --W F C-- 22:37, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually, that isn't a bad idea, though I'm not sure double is fair - maybe 4 points for a new DYK, and 6 for an expansion (presuming other values for GA/FA/etc. remain the same). Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:42, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Given that the DYK nom specifies whether it's a new article or an expansion, I suppose it should be possible. Guettarda (talk) 00:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree that expansion DYKs should be worth more than creation DYKs. Forgive me, but it's myopic to presume that most of the worthwhile topics have already had articles created - given the recentist and geographical biases that tend to operate, this is highly unlikely to be so. Plus GoogleBooks now lets me ref up stuff that wouldn't have stood a chance of surviving 4 or 5 years ago because I couldn't have cited sources (like most volunteers here, I'm not based at a ginormous academic library). Plus some articles just can't - or shouldn't - be expanded fivefold, though fourfold may make all the difference :-) Similarly, as I said above, not all articles can or should meet the minimum length for DYK. (I just had a huge struggle with Hotspur (comic); somebody very kindly stepped in and prosified a summary list section so it could squeak by.) Also, DYK's supposed to be for topics for which an interesting hook can be made. So to reduce the stress at DYK and maintain the emphasis on creation, I suggested above that every non-redirect new article get a few points - I think I said 3. I don't think this would encourage the creation of stubs on unworthy topics any more than we already do - any article that either is on an apparently non-notable topic or doesn't make a clear enough claim to notability is already challengeable. And it's extremely easy to verify how many articles someone creates so no added stress for the judges. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:45, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I would just like to remind everyone that a lot of the angst concerning points for edits last year was caused because of someone mass-creating articles. I'm not sure you quite appreciate the nature of mass-article creation- three points per article created would make it easily the easiest way to farm points. J Milburn (talk) 16:17, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying that all the important articles have been created, just that there are more important articles languishing in stub form than there are important articles being created (or so I believe). When you couple that with the fact that a 5-fold expansion is often a lot more work than is simply creating a new article that just barely makes it to DYK standard, it seems to me that it might make sense to reward expansions more than new articles. Guettarda (talk) 04:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't have said it better myself...Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:02, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

In some respects a creation is much more valuable to the project than an expansion. The reader who finds no article or a redlink is infinitely more disappointed than a reader who finds an underdeveloped article. However, expansions are often a lot more work because things that have articles tend to be deeper topics than things that don't.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 05:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Okay, but I find that creating new articles is something folks like to do without any prompting - it is natural and hence doesn't need to be rewarded or encouraged anymore than happens already. I guess I am trying to take a big-picture apporach on where the 'pedia needs most improving and what carrots we can employ to get there. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:54, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I have read the posts, and we should do 2 points for a non-DYK article and keep 10 points for a DYK article. Us441(talk) (contribs) 23:47, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

That would be the easiest way to farm points- the point is that article creation is not in any way moderated, the other points are. There are people who can write well sourced stubs en masse, and I'm talking hundreds of new articles in an evening. That was what caused upset last year when we were awarding 0.1 points per edit- still people thought it was completely unfair. J Milburn (talk) 23:56, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, I see the point, but if there were no articles, there would be no Wikipedia. If there were 10 million unreferenced stubs that hadn't been edited since creation, we would have a Wikipedia. So, creating articles is very important. Us441(talk) (contribs) 23:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

We should be encouraging both article creation and article expansion. It is not necessarily more work to 5x expand an article. For example, the new article Slava Zaitsev was much more difficult to do than the 5x expansion of Flag of Bhutan was, whilst it was about as hard as the 5x expansion of Fucking, Austria. DYKs should be left as is, because every article is different and can present their own unique challenges for the editors who are working on them. --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 18:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe we should not award points for unpatrolled pages due to the previous problems at DYK. Us441(talk)(contribs) 19:10, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

(belatedly) The thing is, to look at what is underdone and needs a boost. is creating articles a Good Thing? Absolutely! But I find it is one thing editors love to do, to be the first to "stake out" a claim/new article. Hence no differential reward is needed to encourage this. In the same way, several of us editors have been churning out Featured Articles on individual species - these are also valued, but no extra encouragement is needed for anyone to write those articles, and there is a preponderance of them, compared with some other categories. OTOH there are precious few articles on groups of organisms, and there are some key ones it'd be good to get right. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:44, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Mainspace

So, to be clear, mainspace counts for zero again next year. Is that correct? 67.136.117.132^{Also 174.52.141.138}13:54, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

No, that is not official. See the discussion above. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 13:59, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It is under discussion at this time. Depending on the conclusion the discussion brings, we will probably vote on it towards the end of this year. I won't be opening any final votes until after the end of this year's competition at least. J Milburn (talk) 14:33, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Award more points for vital articles

Hi guys. I worked at Wikipedia:Vital articles a few months ago, but since then I appear to have become the only active ("active") participant. Although the list of the 1000 most important articles only has 988, these are broad topics, which means that receive a lot attention (relatively speaking) but are harder to work on. Hence, the quality is mixed. The Cup has been so great at improving articles that I thought it could really help improve the vital articles. I propose we select a diff of vital articles (to prevent people gaming the system) and then provide a modest incentive to work on the articles; the amount is up to you. I'm not very involved in the Cup, so feel free to say no, but I think it could spice things up while making the Cup's improvements more noticeable - or at least offsetting the fact that general articles are more difficult to improve. Cheers, HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 01:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with some sort of modifier or bonus with Vital or Core Articles and have proposed something before. I think this is something worth raising again after this years' competition is finished and we're sorting out scoring for next year. Can't find where we talked about it now.....Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:31, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I would support a modifier, since it wouldn't stop your working on obscure articles of your choice / in your niche, but still incentivise editing certain articles in a way that pagecount or some other system may not. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 08:14, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, my idea was for something like a 1.5x modifier maybe for GA/FAs or something like that, for whatever we deem to be core topics/vital articles etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:27, 24 August 2010 (UTC).

The obvious problem is determining what does count as core. We've all had fun getting annoyed about those ridiculous lists. J Milburn (talk) 11:30, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

What about using something like page views to determine which articles receive a bonus? That would incent people to work on articles that are important to the readers.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 13:48, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that selecting which articles to incentivize is the most difficult and subjective part of the process. For what it's worth, the vital articles were selected in complete isolation from the Cup, meaning minimal conflict of interest. If you're going by page views, you'd have to sort through the transient pop culture entries (and the not-so-transient sex topics) to find what people are actually looking at, over months or years. HereToHelp ^{(talk to me)} 13:52, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah- there are inherent problems with using page views, in particular the fact that page views are an imprecise science. Just because there is a hit on the page, doesn't mean anyone has read it. J Milburn (talk) 14:15, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Well that, and the fact that a 'vital' article that doesn't exist has zero page views. Guettarda (talk) 14:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, that's not true, as I found when I started looking at our coverage of British comics and their characters. The page views tool records a hit when someone searches for the term that is later created as an article. But I just looked at Vital Articles and found only one redlink and corrected the spelling error that was causing it :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 15:41, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

For reference, here is one discussion --> Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup/Scoring/Archive_1#Another_idea_-_bonus_points_for_vital_articles. However, there was another where I suggested to J Milburn some unarguable categories (which I can't find now) My thinking was along the lines of:

Any sovereign country
Any leader of a sovereign country
Any chemical element
Any nobel prize winner
Any World Heritage listed Site
Any capital city
Any food staple (a type of food rather than a brand etc.)
Any language

All of the above are core topics which surely cannot be gamed - I'd be thinking of something like a 1.2-1.5 modifier of an article fulfils one of the above. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:34, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

PS: I am also thinking of what is underrrepresented at GA/FA - was tempted to add any mathematics, linguistics, Law, or language-related article. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:37, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm surprised at how much I like the above idea, given how opposed I am to including vital articles. For diversity, it would probably need to extend to featured pictures, lists*, portals* and DYKs for the above. --W F C-- 03:34, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

* Where applicable, otherwise we will end up with List of pig-based products and Portal:Bacon)

Sounds delicious, does that include gammon? I can't see how it'd easily apply to lists and portals so much, they generally don't need the extra work that an article (i.e. sort-of-core article to esoteric article) does. DYK is possible I guess but I can't imagine any being able to be 5x expanded in 5 days (might be wrong). The main thing is that categories suggested are not gameable. I also thought of:

Any biology article of rank Order or higher (species are generally much easier than families, orders, classes and above, and this is reflected in the biology articles we have currently - many larger taxons need alot of work). Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
- I much much prefer this idea to the vital/core idea. The problem is, firstly, what groups to include (the food group sounds odd to me; that would currently cover bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, no? Why should that be worth more than J. S. Mill?), and secondly, judging what falls under it (would Cumbrian dialect fall under languages? What about dead languages? What about languages spoken by a few Amazonians that have been covered in all of three books, one from the thirties?). The third, smaller problem is working out how the bot will count it, but I'm sure we can manage that. If we are to take this seriously, I think we need a list of perhaps ten broad categories which are clearly of significance. J Milburn (talk) 10:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
  - I am just brainstorming - agree languages might be tricky and gamed (exclude dialects? Has to be an Official Language of at least one sovereign nation?). some other categories might be easier:

Any colour.
Any ocean.
Any continent.
Any musical instrument.
Any unit of time (anything from second, minute hour to geological periods (Cretaceous/Mesozoic etc.)

There have to be some others too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Any religion or school of religious/philosophical thought? J Milburn (talk) 11:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

These two did cross my mind - religions might need a qualifier, for instance, a scan of Category:Religious faiths, traditions, and movements yields some interesting ones...Happy Science?? Similarly Category:Philosophical schools and traditions as well. I will throw a question to the wider wikiediting community and see what else comes up. My idea is that we brainstorm a stack of examples and then maybe the judges have a think and figure out down the track how many are to be used.

The criteria are:

(a) reasonably broad (say > 50 articles, preferably >100)
(b) An underrepresented part of the 'pedia in terms of audited content
(c) Must be concrete qualifying criteria
(d) attempt to cover some "core" encyclopedic content and broad articles. not in-universe
(e) not contain numbers of esoteric/minor articles

Thus sovereign countries, capital cities, Nobel Prize winners, continents, oceans, elements are all good examples.

Colours is not (some funny ones - Puce, Bondi blue, not really in the spirit of this), and not many broad ones.
languages, religions, philosophy are all tricky (but we may be able to figure out some inclusion/exclusion criteria which can't be gamed)

Anyway, I have some ideas. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:02, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Following the "Order or above" idea, we could go with language families or above (restricting it to "recognised" families and orders...need to split a few hairs over what 'recognised' ones are, of course). Guettarda (talk) 13:22, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

(Cas- one of my tutors would hate to see you talking about new age religions with such contempt, but anyways...) Any religion recognised as the official religion of a sovereign nation? It would exclude most minor religions, while including world religions and major churches. Still not perfect- Zoroastrianism is not official in any (current) state. Major demoninations of many religions will not be recognised, while comparatively minor ones will... J Milburn (talk) 13:36, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Heh, how about those religions or sects/denominations with > 1,000,000 adherents? Tricky....I know little about languages but maybe...Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:45, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

What about defining underrepresented as articles that fall in the WP:TFAR underrepresented category. This will shift a bit from year to year, but in general always be articles that are considered more "needed".--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:30, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, Tony, i was trying to think along those lines, but try to cover broader aspects, as well as ones that can't be games. I mean, chemical compounds would be good, but I am not thrilled on bonus points for a tiny article on some obscure compound with no commercial or scientific use. So hence my idea for some other descriptors. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I had a think about this on the train, and here's a thought- why not have things that appear on the vital or core or whatever list and things that fall under our own categories? This way, we could include all sovereign states, all chemical elements etc, while still including topics like World War II, Arthur Schopenhauer and poker- things that are clearly important, but wouldn't fall under any of our categories. This would help to offset the subjectivity of the list, while also partially helping to offset the patchy coverage offered by our categories. J Milburn (talk) 22:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not clear to me what type of union you are proposing.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Say we're awarding 1.5 times the number of points to an article that falls into one of Cas's categories- equally, we award 1.5 points to anything that falls under the vital articles' list. I'm suggesting it could be possible to award more points both ways, hopefully offsetting the disadvantages of both somewhat. J Milburn (talk) 23:23, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, I've been thinking about this a bit. I was warming to the idea of differential ranking. To whit - Tony has a point of underrepresented articles (which I can guarantee will be underrepresented for years yet) - so I'd think 1.5x for any mathematics, physics, chemistry, law, food, psychology, or economics article. Now, for some really "core" articles which could be hefty, such as continent, ocean, capital city, World Heritage listed area, leader of a country, or sovereign country, maybe 2x multiplier. This way a more modest modifier is okay for, say, a more esoteric but still underrepresented article (?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:34, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

PS: To J Milburn, so you're thinking that, for instance, Pacific Ocean or Africa would both be 2.25 multipliers as they'd be 1.5 for vital and 1.5 for Ocean or Continent category...yeah, that works for me. That would also be good for some "core" underrepresented articles like some food staples and core maths topics etc. yeah.... :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I didn't imagine them stacking, but I guess that's a possibility. J Milburn (talk) 23:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I like it. Getting an article like psychology for example to FA, would get a hefty bonus as being both a core article, and for being an underrepresented category in FA. Taking the article to GA would get only the first hefty bonus, not the FA bonus. Final multiplier should be about 3x, considering the complexity of the task. Sasata (talk) 00:25, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

So does it work the other way too? Is there a negative modifier for articles about Banksias, fungi, rice rats, hurricanes...? :) Guettarda (talk) 04:09, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

In all seriousness, it's unsurprising that our best writers (in terms of churning out recognised content) often work on the most overrepresented areas- they're overrepresented, often, because they have those people working on them. J Milburn (talk) 10:05, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Guettarda's being cheeky, but yeah, there are whole swathes of articles that folks are interested in. It is fascinating what strands and areas are represented on WP:FA and WP:GA. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Add one criteria to the list

Any retired tropcial cyclone or should have been (those examples are obvious). Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone 13:29, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Sorry? J Milburn (talk) 00:04, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I argued extensively for this last year. However, there must be a very broad, well-defined list of important articles that should give bonus points, such as Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded, Wikipedia:Core topics - 1,000, and meta:List of articles every Wikipedia should have. And even these are too narrow, leaving out many important topics read by the most of our readers. I would be vehemently opposed to having just a few generic topics. Few World Heritage sites are that important, and too much is left out: many other famous places, scientific topics, states, major cities, historical people, well-known animals, and tons of other topics. As we already have above, what counts as language and what doesn't? Should seas be added to oceans? Is a certain food generic enough? Any musical instrument - clarinet or cetara?

I still support a simple average of 500 or 1000 views per day, which, contrary to what was has been said, is very easy to determine, plenty scientific, and is completely fair, encompassing a vast majority of all of these topics. Take a look at some of the Most popular pages by Wikiproject, and there are tons of fair-game articles we'd all agree on, but aren't listed as top-100. For example, every article on Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Popular pages over 1000 hits/day especially deserves a quality article, because that's what Wikipedia viewers want the most. This isn't about what we think is important, but what our readers think is important. Reywas92^Talk 00:30, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, because High School Musical clearly deserves more points than John Stuart Mill. The use of page views is an imprecise science, as not every view is a different person (or even a person) and not everybody who clicks reads. It skews the encyclopedia away from genuine scholarly material towards pop culture or topics of current interest, which stinks of recentism, something we should not be encouraging. (Not to mention the fact page views can be skewed- if the page gets linked from an external site for some reason, if the page itself is the subject of controversy, if it appears on the main page, if it gets put one of the noticeboards, if it's at a review process, if it's linked from a prominent page in the Wikipedia or user space...) If we're gonna be awarding more points for some things, it should be for difficult and highly notable topics, not for something that gets clicked a lot. J Milburn (talk) 10:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I am not thrilled with pageviews. I will set up a table with all multipliers thus far when I get a spare few minutes. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Count me as firmly against page views as a criteria as well. Mike Comrie, for instance, was the most viewed ice hockey article last month. And he was #1 only because he married Hilary Duff. There is no way you can convince me that a scrub who got lucky by marrying a hot wife is a more important to the hockey project than any single Hockey Hall of Famer, NHL team or top level league. Beyond that, Comrie will be quickly forgotten next month - so where is the accuracy in using page views to determine score? Reso lute 13:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

And count me as opposed to using the Vital Articles/Expanded (level 4) list determine bonus points. In the Athletes and Entertainers sections especially, there is a ridiculous bias towards Americans. 16 politicians listed under the Americas - 13 US, 0 Canada, 0 Mexico, 2 for all of South America. 40 journalists (over-represented to begin with), and guess where the overwhelming majority are from? 20 magicians - seriously? The Level 3 list does a much better job of representing the world, mainly because there are very few biographies. Reso lute 14:06, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Well then screw it all, because Wikipedia:Vital articles doesn't have J Milburn's John Stuart Hall, who, by the way, DOES have over a thousand views per day, earning its writer more points. There might only be two South American politicians on that page, but Venezuela isn't even on the shorter list. If an article "gets linked from an external site for some reason, if the page itself is the subject of controversy", then wouldn't you think that we should especially make sure that this article is high quality?? And we would look at the average or median hits, which cancels out main page spikes, and I doubt being at review, noticeboard, or a WP page will seriously affect the views of an article that is already of high importance or popularity. And even if the silly High School Musical is not an "scholarly" topic, this is not solely an "scholarly" encyclopedia! Why the hell can't we reward someone for improving an article with 4000 hits/day that people actually look at?? Looking at the mediocre quality of the article, it's no easy task, making it "difficult and highly notable". And as I demonstrated, thousands of scholarly topics and most of the vital articles do indeed get plenty of page views. Reywas92^Talk 16:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Award points based on kb of prose multiplier

Well the main thing with FACs/GANs is that usually/often only the author knows about the topic and if they decide to take shortcuts on comprehensiveness, then nobody can really challenge them effectively without knowing lots of examples, plus it also encourages people to write short articles on dead end topics etc. So there should just be a scaling by how much FA/GA-prose they create....as the research and meat is where the labour loading is anyway. Supposing PericlesofAthens entered, which I don't think he does, well, he would get pummelled with his 70kb prose articles compared to lots of others with an average <= 15. Same for DYKs as well. Of course this happens everywhere; once at Wikipedia Review they decided to judge arbitrator workload on raw number of counts, and even though a lot of arbs claimed they were "above" WR's "nonsense" a lot of them then decided to vote on each motion one by one so that they would get 40-odd credits for 40 blind votes, instead of 1 credit....I'm afraid WP is very cynical these days, and incentive systems are king, so making the metrics relevant is rather important, unless ones prerogative is to simply inflate the counts [eg, a wikiproject leader has an incentive for their minions to write 5 10k FAs instead of one 50k FA because the casual observer only looks at the raw counts and the leader [politician's] prestige is then five times higher] YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 01:16, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

A good point. A multiplier could easily be based on Dr PDAs prose tool and factored in too. Divide into "short", "medium" and "long" FAs - this also helps address discussion elsewhere on amount of work an FA requires WRT GAs etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:20, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd support YM's proposal and the one about vital articles. Aaroncrick ^TALK 07:06, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

No, most of WP:TROP have short FA's so they would have disadvetages. Every wikiproject is different, have different types of articles on many subjects. Y E ^Tropical ^Cyclone

I looked at your GAs on your page. You can't be serious and honest that an article with about 3k prose is the same as a 50k YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 05:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and the idea is that shorter FAs are that bit easier to write, and so should be awarded fewer points. It could be argued that, rather than this system putting cyclone articles at a disadvantage, it is the current system that gives them an unfair advantage. For a very simplistic, extreme example, does Missingno really deserve the same number of points as intelligent design? J Milburn (talk) 13:41, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Short FAs usually don't take much work (I've written some 10k and 60k FAs), and although people can say it is harder to dig, things with much content are usually also the subject of academic dispute and source conflict (eg politicians who were in lots of power struggles), and it's certainly not all FAs/GAs are equal. As for numbers, well most people (excluding tokenists) know that roads, hurricanes and some other projects have an average FA length of about 10 and some GAs are even < 5kb long while some other guys write 60k-long non-templated articles. No I'm not competing YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 01:53, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I still find double checking a stack of sources time consuming, which is pretty well required for all biological articles. Also, people are (justifiably) pickier about prose at FAC, so there is often quite a bit of juggling and balancing of accessability and succinctness, with accuracy and reconciling (or ensuring non-deviation with) source. I thought 100 points for FA was fair (in relation to other points), but if we have two or three 1.5x multipliers, is it still fair? My gut feeling is "yes", as mammoth FAs for me required months of to'ing and fro'ing. I will try some numbers below: Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:23, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

An example might be a food staple - let's say th get potato to FA (which has the potential to be a massive article) - then we have 100 x 1.5 (underrepresented cat at FA, i.e. food), x 1.5 (vital article), possibly x 1.5 (long article) - gives us 337.5 points. (off the top of my head if we had 1= short, 1.25=medium, and 1.5 = long article) I did tinker with both potato and coffee and I'd reckon they'd need at least triple the effort of some of the small FAs I've done. All food articles need nutritional info and production figures etc. which can be annoyingly hard to track down. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:33, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Would multipliers count toward GAs, FLs, ITNs and DYKs?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure about ITNs. By definition, any currently relevant article that meets these criteria is going to be newsworthy from time to time. Pretty sure it would apply to GAs and in theory DYK, and FLs too (although you'd have to convince reviewers there beyond doubt that it wasn't a content fork). --W F C-- 07:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm only in favour of including Vital articles at level 1 and 2, because that list is stable and uncontroversial. Indeed, I'm in favour of rewarding those extremely generously, as getting a few of those to GA or FA would reflect extremely well on the WikiCup. Anti-WikiCup types would look pretty stubborn and anti-improvement if they decided to review every non-wikicup FAC, and articles like Science and Mathematics were wikicup noms.
I'm against level 3 and 4 though. Once you get to level 3 they're inconsistent, western-centric, or both. Republic of Ireland yet not Vietnam or Ethiopia? Israel but not Saudi Arabia? Elizabeth I but not Victoria or Churchill? No Mumbai, Shanghai or indeed, while difficult to categorise, clearly of Western interest and already featured, Washington? If we're going to do this, the final proposal should replace levels 3 and 4 of WP:VITAL, not work alongside them. --W F C-- 07:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

~~I was only thinking about level one vitals myself. I'll have a look at level two list.~~ Gah! I realised the original list I was looking at is now level 3....it's all rearranged. Oh well, we can all vote on it later or have judges decide... Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

PS: Re splitting FAs on size, I'd suggest anything up to 15 kb prose size (with PDA tool) =smaller, 16-30 kb = medium, and > 31 kb large. That's just my ballpark from articles I've worked on. Maybe same for GAs??? or 80% of FA size? cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:30, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. Oh, and don't grant GAs an exception, it's probably unnecessary complication in my experience. (This position is to my personal disadvantage, since I only write GAs, but I think it's fair nonetheless.) - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 08:54, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

No, I was just pondering on the prose size, but given there'd be a different baseline score I think the prosesize cats are fine as a standard across both FA and GA, upon thinking about it. Casliber (talk · contribs)

Vandalism

I know most WikiCup contestants would not do this, but I propose penalizing 3 points for each act of vandalism. Us441(talk) (contribs) 23:59, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

This really isn't something we should be getting into, for a great number of reasons. Who's gonna check every edit? Who's to judge what counts as vandalism? It's not the Cup's place to start doling out "punishments". If people are genuinely being disruptive, they will be blocked anyways, and removed from the competition. J Milburn (talk) 00:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I can't imagine any wikicup competitors vandalising. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:19, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Makes me wonder... if you take vandalism to GA status, do you get +40 points or -3? ;o) Reso lute 00:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you get 37. Useight (talk) 01:17, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Lol, why would you bother vandalising and write articles? Aaroncrick ^TALK 02:46, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

We need the judges to check contribs pages. That is why they're there. Besides, some vandals, like 218.214.78.112 vandalize Wikipedia, and sadly, get away with it for a long time. Us441(talk) (contribs) 11:27, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not my job to individually check every contribution of every editor, then lay down the law with a "yes, that is vandalism", then "punish" them by deducting points. What do you think I am, a primary school teacher? J Milburn (talk) 11:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

We need more judges, then. Us441(talk) (contribs) 11:40, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

No matter how many judges there are, it's going to be impractical and bordering on the ludicrous to check every edit individually. We have our own lives and on-Wikipedia commitments too! Do you not realise how many edits people actually make? Again, it's not the judge's job to be judge, jury and executioner as regards to what is and isn't vandalism- as soon as the judges start "lording" it in any way, shape or form, there's going to be uproar, and rightly so. It's certainly not the role of the WikiCup to start "punishing" people- if they are being disruptive, they will be blocked, and removed from the Cup anyways. J Milburn (talk) 12:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Discussion over. Us441(talk) (contribs) 22:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

ITN & DYK

Currently, equal points are awarded for DYK and ITN. I think this is unfair for ITNers since there are at least 24 DYK hooks daily (6 hooks changed 4 times daily), whereas at ITN you're lucky to get two items up in a given day. Thoughts?— Preceding unsigned comment added by DC (talk • contribs) 07:29, 2 September 2010

I think the issue is that, for ITN, you don't necessarily have to make much of an update to an article. J Milburn (talk) 10:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

A-Class articles

I propose adding A-class articles for 75 points. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 17:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd say no, myself. I don't think anyone outside MILHIST really uses A-class, and outside of MILHIST, there appears to be no established means of reviewing articles to determine if they meet that criteria. Reso lute 18:01, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

There should be an established place to do that (like WP:GAN). I'll post at the village pump. WikiCopter^Radio_Checklist^{Formerly AirplanePro} 18:18, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, issue is it's not a level playing field - some wikiprojects have them and some don't. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

A-class points would give the MILHIST guys an advantage.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

A place like GAN would make it redundant to GAN. I think for most of Wikipedia, GA has long since supplanted A as the rank immediately below FA. Reso lute 22:10, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I strongly disagree Resolute. My best piece of work is an FL (old ACR) List of battleships of Austria-Hungary. I sent more time on that than 10 of my best/hardest GA's combined. I don't really think that A-class articles should be counted as the MILHIS guys (me) will have an advantage.--White Shadows ^{Your guess is as good as mine} 22:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I said, you Milhist guys certainly use the rank, and have your own system for it. But I do believe my characterization is accurate for the majority of Wikipedia. It is off-topic here, but I personally don't believe Wikipedia as a whole needs three separate processes for reviewing articles - GA and FA are enough. A centralized review process for a middle class would end up as chronically understaffed as GAN is, while possibly exacerbating the problems at GAN. Reso lute 00:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Scoring for collaborative works

Scenario, editors A and B collaborate on content which goes to DYK, GA, FL, FA, whatever. Both editors are also in Wikicup. Is scoring the same on an individual basis even though work on articles may be a collaborative effort? --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 19:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Currently, yes, providing both have done the "significant work" necessary. J Milburn (talk) 21:37, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe that there is a proposal to split it currently but I'm personally opposed to it. doing "half of the work" on an FAC is not worth only 50 points IMHO.--White Shadows ^{Your guess is as good as mine} 22:01, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Barnstars

I think there should be 5 points per barnstar. Us441(talk)(contribs) 00:09, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

There are two problems with this. First, the awarding of barnstars is highly inconsistent across the project. It is possible to perform useful high-quality work for years and never receive a barnstar. On the other hand, a short visit to certain chat groups is usually all it takes to "earn" an award. There are even cases where individuals have awarded themselves multiple barnstars. Secondly, this proposal is vulnerable to potential collusion. It took 20 points this year to advance from the first to second rounds. Consider a group of 8 to 10 friends all agreeing to award each other one barn star each. Such a situation would advance the members of this group, with a fair sized safety buffer, while producing no content improvements as is the stated goal of this contest. --Allen3 ^talk 09:32, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no consistent definition of what warrants a barnstar (one of the strenths of a barnstar- a person can award it for whatever they feel deserves it), not to mention the fact that barnstars are often awarded for things nothing to do with this competition- the userpage barnstars, for instance. There are some userawards which would be more suited to points awards (the Triple Crown or the Four Award, for instance, at least one of which has been previously discussed) because the criteria for their award is clear and related to our goal, but barnstars would not fall under that group. J Milburn (talk) 09:49, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

(belatedly) nice idea but I have to agree with J Milburn and Allen3 here. sorry. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. --Another Believer _(Talk) 16:29, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Mainspace update

Is there an update on whether mainspace will count for anything? Please don't take this as some kind of threat, but I don't intend to compete unless mainspace counts for something, even 0.01 or less per edit. I just want to know so I can pull my name from the sign up list if need be, so if someone could keep me posted, that would be appreciated. Useight (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the discussion has stagnated a little, but I suspect there will be further discussion yet. I will probably open a vote or something to gauge opinion if no clearer consensus is reached. J Milburn (talk) 14:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Comment. Perhaps points for mainspace edits can be assigned only to those edits that aren't on the contestant's Cup submissions. Abductive (reasoning) 06:35, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

relegation play

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup#relegation_play since it involves more than the scoring system. ~DC _{Let's Vent} 17:40, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Timeframe of cup-eligible work

With regards to: "Content must have been worked on and nominated during the competition".

I would appreciate your input on whether articles in a situation as described are eligible for the Cup: (Situation 1) editor A has significantly contributed to article X in a period before before the current CUP (so, for 2010, in 2009 or even earlier). In the Cup period, he makes some additional edits, and nominates the article for DYK/GA/FA/etc.; the article is reviewed and passes. Is this work Cup-eligible? How much of that some needs to be new for an article to be scored? To be more specific, I for example have some defetured/delisted FAs/GAs that I think I can update to modern standards and get refeatured/relisted; would they be eligible? What if (Situation 2) I start a work on an article before 2010, but I finish it in 2010 and it is DYKed/GAed/FAed then? Would it be eligible only if over 50% of text was written in 2010, or is there some other rule for that? Also, (Situation 3) what about DYKs that would be written and nominated in the late December, and displayed on the front page in early January? Are they CUP eligible? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:31, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The term used (I think I may have been the first to use it, but I may be wrong) is "significant work". Someone can claim points if (s)he has done "significant work" on the article within the competition. What defines significant work is debatable, and can be determined on a case-by-case basis if necessary- it's certainly something more than copyediting. Another factor is the "don't be a dick" rule, which kind of speaks for itself. So, to answer your questions: (1) That depends whether they have done "significant work"- if they've expanded the article some, found some new sources, rewritten sections etc (and especially if they do some work during the review process, and especially especially if they're not being a dick) then yes. (2) Yes, certainly. (3) No, and we have a strong precedent for that from this year (though not the year before). J Milburn (talk) 21:53, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

wp:Valued pictures

Next year VPs should get exactly as many points as FPs. Even if they are possibly less important, considering that that project does pretty poorly compared to the FP one it would help incentivizing users to go for it (plus unlike articles, pictures can't get double counting as a VP will not get to be a FP ever). Nergaal (talk) 21:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The bar for valued pictures is far, far lower than the bar for featured pictures. Also, there are cases where valued pictures have later become featured pictures- File:Trichosurus vulpecula 1.jpg, for instance. There is also the issue that the valued picture project is not nearly as widely respected as any of the other projects for which we award points. J Milburn (talk) 21:56, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Reviews

Would I get points for promoting articles following instructions in reviews? Us441(talk)(contribs) 00:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The topic of awarding points for reviews at good article candidates/featured article candidates (and possibly other processes) has been discussed somewhat- I think the general consensus at the moment is that there would be a small number of points offered (only one or two) to keep people motivated to take part, but perhaps that there would be some kind of process whereby the points would be stripped if there was anything close to abuse (such as offering poor reviews at good article candidates). However, I suspect there will be further discussion after the end of this competion. Does that answer your question? J Milburn (talk) 00:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

No. I nominate articles for GA and Peer Review, then take action based on the reviews, some of which I have put off for the start of 2011 as strategy. Us441(talk)(contribs) 00:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You cannot claim points for working with an article you have nominated for peer review, you can claim points if you nominate an article of your own for good article status. You cannot claim points if you just find a nice article, nominate it, then it gets promoted- that's a "drive-by nomination", which is not allowed in the WikiCup. There are issues about doing that anyway. Also, please don't feel you should be putting things off "as strategy"; that's really not in the spirit of the competition. J Milburn (talk) 16:10, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

That answers part of it, but what if I drive-by nominate a GA review, it fails, detailed instructions are left behind, and I follow them to bring it up to GA? Us441(talk)(contribs) 00:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, the term we use is "significant work". If you have done "significant work" on the article, you can claim it. What constitutes significant work is not fully defined- something more than copyediting and cleaning, at least. Research and writing would most certainly be required. J Milburn (talk) 00:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick comment - when/if a discussion starts in earnest on giving points for reviews, could you please drop a note at WT:FAC? I'd like to be involved, and I suspect some of our other regular nominators and reviewers would as well. This could be very easy to game. Karanacs (talk) 18:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. f o x 10:33, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

De-emphasize DYKs

When compiling the list of submissions, three things became obvious about the state of DYK entries: 1. we're crushing the system, 2. We're flooding the system with repetitive entries and 3. DYK really is the red-headed step child of the competition since every other category relates to quality of prose as opposed to quantity.

It has been noted at both DYK and GAN that the WikiCup has placed added pressure on those functions. We can help alleviate the issues at GAN by scoring points for reviews, but there is no such solution at DYK since the problem there is a limit on the number of daily updates. Between this, and the discussions on multipliers for certain types of article submissions, it seems that quality of submissions is already gaining emphasis for next year's competition. With that in mind, I think we should reduce the value of DYK points to five, or even two. Ideally, this would lead to fewer DYK submissions, and a greater focus on GAs and Fx's. Reso lute 15:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

This seems very reasonable. I think the question then has to be whether this will affect ITN points. J Milburn (talk) 16:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of that too, but it was noted above that ITN has only one or two updates a day, vs. 20+ for DYK. The system itself makes it much harder to claim an ITN. Reso lute 19:13, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes (note I have no real opinion on this, I'm just rehashing old arguments) but note that it's not necessarily that difficult to get a ITN credit. J Milburn (talk) 19:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Well that depends. I think we should give extra credit if someone creates a new article for ITN. Take the top two headlines on ITN right now. Kosmoceratops is a new article, but Institute for Works or Religion is just an updated section (though it would be enough for its article if it met the notability criteria. ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 19:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

DYKs tend to be of far lower general importance than articles that make it to ITN. An incentive should be provided for doing work on a broader interest article. Also, DYKs get only one review, while ITNs tend to be fairly well scrutinized, and especially lately, at least a separate section tends to be required before posting. Nergaal (talk) 20:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Per my comments at the DYK talk page, I'd strongly support lowering the point amounts for DYK submissions. We've been inundated with WikiCup submissions at various times and it's been brought up on the DYK talk page on numerous occasions (i.e. [1], and more recently [2] and [3]). I feel lowering the point totals would go a long way towards alleviating our overloading of hooks that happen at the beginning of each round, and I'd strongly support Resolute's proposal to cut the points down to 5 points or lower. Nomader ^(Talk) 00:00, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I am leaning towards this as well in my thinking, FWIW. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I would favor removing DYK from the Cup scoring entirely. Even if they were worth just one point, the same over-zealousness (to put it kindly and mildly) which fueled the recent unpleasantness at WT:DYK could easily drive someone to attempt to crank out ten times as many boring, repetitive hooks for inferior, marginal articles which barely meet the minimum DYK requirements. Isn't the Cup supposed to encourage and recognize the creation of quality content? Including DYKs allows contestants to waste their time creating many pointless little articles rather than concentrating on the improvement and creation of truly worthy ones. The Cup has evolved considerably from when contestants received a point for merely making a mainspace edit; cutting out DYK is a natural extension of that trend. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 02:06, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree to Mandarax as DYKs do not really add quality content. Nergaal (talk) 02:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Mmmm - "genuine" DYKs often do, particularly on expansion, it's just some of the recent bulk DYKing that has become an issue. Perhaps only give points for the first 2-3 articles on a topic/genus/team? OK, that would require a bit more work on the Cup end, but not huge - and you could perhaps define it as "articles within the same category"? Le Deluge (talk) 02:23, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

But there are 3.5 million articles already, and chances that quality content can be added by starting a new article is not really that good. Most of this content could easily be added in a parent article and instead of a new article, a redirect would point to the location where was added. Nergaal (talk) 02:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

How about DYK points for just expansions then? An expanded article in the end could be a C or B class and ultimately improved. If it is just expanded, it promotes the evolution of stubs as well. I hate to suggest curtailing the DYK rules for the WC but as noted above, DYK is restricted by numbers on the main page. Also, and just as important, approval of DYK nominations sometimes come down to consensus which often is tedious.--NortyNort (Holla) 03:51, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Been thinking about the same thing - offer a few points for a 5-fold expansion and none for a regular DYK. Of course, we could give points for creating an article and expanding it to at least X bytes of readable prose. Granted, that would allow people to create crap articles, but we could also penalise people for doing that if they're caught. unlikely to be a problem beyond the first round. Guettarda (talk) 04:11, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't really like the idea of cutting DYK entirely, as properly done, it can serve as a gateway to encourage a newer editor to really concentrate on prose quality. I am hopeful that taking an axe to the point totals will help alleviate the issue for DYK regulars, but if it is felt that is insufficient, or if it proves insufficient early in next year's competition, we might also consider a cap on DYK nominations. i.e.: only three per week would qualify. At two months per round, that is still 24 submissions, but they would be spread out much more evenly. Also, biased though I am, I would like to think that my DYK submissions in the fourth round both added quality content, and were mainly interesting hooks. Reso lute 04:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we should keep DYK and cut the points to 2-5. I also think the prose character minimum for CUP submissions could be raised to 2500 or 3000. ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 06:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually Nergaal you'd be surprised, out in "regular" DYKland there's lots of articles being created that are highly encyclopaedic - the recent series of British Museum ones is a great example (see WP:GLAM/BM). The issue is that the Cup is distorting that process towards bulk DYKs that are less encyclopaedic. As I say, you could just restrict the points to no more than 2-3 on a topic, alternatively you could just rule certain types of DYK as not counting towards the Cup (species, sports season articles). Perhaps the least interventionist option would be to say that no more than 20% of your points can come from DYKs, or you can only count 3 DYKs for every GA you create or something. It's just about setting a balance, and I'm not sure that a simple reduction in points value is enough to prevent gaming. Le Deluge (talk) 13:25, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it's a bad idea to say certain topics shouldn't count. I would support a cap on the number of submissions per topic, as long as it applied equally to all topics (say no more than 5 per week per topic). ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 17:44, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I would also support a cap and a point reduction. A quick look at the first round and the latest round shows and editor was credited 49 DYK's in round one and another editor (not t he same one) was crdited with 40. The sheer number does swamp the DYK area, my initial though was to limit it to 20 or so but I think Resolute's proposal is far better limiting weekly submissions. I would hate to see the DYK's completely removed since it is benefiting the overall improvement of Wikipedia. After an editor expands an article in hopes of making it a FA or GA, it provides for a way of gaining points if an article will not meet the necessary standards, or while an editor waits for it to go through the review process. Unfortunately some have found it a way to gain quick points, which goes against the spirit of the competition - IMO. I think the reduction in points would help since currently it takes only 4 DYK's to equal one GA, which is very backlogged right now, resulting in more DYK's submissions to get the points (again IMO). --Mo Rock...Monstrous (talk) 22:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Delete the WikiCup

Actually, I think we should just delete the WikiCup. It doesn't actually encourage article participation, as the participants do that all the time anyway, ie it didn't reform any career hat collectors, IRC chatterboxes, political posers. Instead it has only created endless floods of micro-DYKs, DYK fine slicing, GA stub flooding etc etc. That leaves FA, but then only a guy who writes popular topics and has a circle of interested/friends/wikiproject can win, as their FAs will get passed each week, and people with unpopular topics and no bandwagon will only pass one month YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 02:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Chillax YM. GT/FT is in decent shape mostly due to the Cup. You are still the only one that has passed Emswoth record and are still grumpy about FAs? Nergaal (talk) 02:18, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, well I'm not interested in WBFAN records, else I would make sure that my average articles are 15k long, and secondly I would not fix up old FAs by other people, as it takes away time from WBFAN climbing, and thirdly I would not expand my own incumbent FAs myself without prodding (I came across more information later, but as nobody else about content in others' articles knows I could have just saved time by not making the article better as I could get away with it and boost my count that way). No I am not Sachin Tendulkar, obssessed with silly stats. YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 02:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

If you think there is a policy reason why this should not exist, MFD it. Otherwise, if you don't like it, hit the Random Article link and expand something. Personally, I found participating this year to be extremely useful as I discovered just how bad most of our articles on old Hockey Hall of Famers was. If you think this is a bad idea, check out these articles and tell me there's no value. I wouldn't have touched one of these articles if I wasn't involved in this game. Another hockey editor is thinking of joining next year and he's created an informal project to bring all Hall of Famers to GA status or better. WikiCup is not perfect, but I think it has served a good purpose. Reso lute 02:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

(And I created a section title for your comments since it has nothing to do with the DYK points issue - please feel free to re-title the section if you so choose.) Reso lute 02:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I understand that sometimes the competition gets the better of people, and well that sucks. However I would have to agree with Resolute about it being beneficial. It all comes down to the editor but if approached properly it does benefit the overall project. As some one planning on participating in next years Wiki Cup I've recently been looking through more of the life science articles and plan to improve some of those in addition to the sport ones I would normally do anyway. And no I'm not sitting on them until the next competition starts. I would like to improve a few articles in the next couple of months, just to get a feel for how they need to be structured so as to not submit sub-par articles for review when the competition comes up. Maybe were in the minority, but it is helping regardless.--Mo Rock...Monstrous (talk) 22:16, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I am really interested in seeing whether some tweaks to make working on core articles more attractive lead to a whole different set of articles being imporved next year. If that is the case, I think it will have been invaluable. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hotcat

We have a big backlog at categorisation, adding a category is a content contribution, albeit a rather small one. It is also for the most part a fairly comparable thing if done with wp:Hotcat, and I suspect easily measured by Bot. I would like to propose that hotcat edits be awarded points - perhaps at a rate of 1 point for every 100 edits. Ϣere SpielChequers 22:38, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, this would be an idea - except counting all these edits might be a struggle. f o x 11:22, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

If a bot is willing to do it then I don't see it as being more complex than bot counting of mainspace edits used to be, thought you might have to simply say Hotcat edits. But I agree that if you can't persuade a bot to do it it would not be worth doing. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

"If a bot is willing"? They're sentient now. Useight (talk) 16:20, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Good humor. I am not a bot expert but if edits with the "HotCat" in their summary can be counted, I would support the idea.--NortyNort (Holla) 21:53, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Soxred gives a subtotal for hotcat edits, so it can be done see my >13.5k. I should declare a slight COI on this suggestion as it would probably give me more than a point a week if I was participating, though I will probably skip it again next year. Ϣere SpielChequers 20:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not really seeing why these edits should be considered (more valuable? More difficult?) while other edits should not. J Milburn (talk) 20:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

In terms of value, we have a backlog of over 13,400 uncategorised articles, and categorisation is often a key step to getting project attention. as for why these and not other mainspace edits, well many other mainspace edits are either going to be related to non-content building such as vandalism reversion, or they will be edits to articles being prepared for DYK, GA or other points based submissions; Whilst Hotcat edits add categories. Yes participants might pickup a point in a month for categorising their FAs etc, but this would be an incentive to spend some time categorising other articles. If you accept the principle that this would be relevant then maybe you could also consider deorphaning and various other template removal activities. But I thought I'd start with Hotcat as easily measured and needing help. Ϣere SpielChequers 21:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm actually for this idea - it'll help clear a huge backlog (which this competition was really designed to do). Although does HotCat not need JS? Not everyone has that (I assume 99.9% do, but still...) f o x 10:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but there are so many backlogs that are worthy of our attention. The unsourced BLP backlog is the obvious one. J Milburn (talk) 11:41, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Well Hotcat is just an example, I think that the competition would benefit from including a wider range of content contribution. I'm sure some of the criticism from other editors involved in DYK, FA etc is because the contest concentrates a lot of extra activity in those areas, so broadening it to any other content activity that can be conveniently measured would be a good thing. I specifically mentioned Hotcat because of the backlog and the measurability, but I'd be delighted if we could inveigle cup contestants to help with the unreferenced BLP backlog. Perhaps an extra point for any DYK, GA or FA that started with a uBLP created by anyone other than the contestant? As for the point about Hotcat and js, I'd suggest you ask if any candidate is unable to use Hotcat for that reason, and then either drop the idea or ignore Hotcat edits for the specific pool they are in (you could even include Hotcat as a trial for stage 1 and let contestants decide whether they want to be in Hotcat or coldcat pools). Ϣere SpielChequers 15:05, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Make the WikiCup more like a game show

What if the WikiCup was more like a game show, where the topics of submissions were assigned by a host (or hosts)? A topic would be announced each week. For example, at the end of the 3rd week, it is announced that in the 5th week of the contest, only submissions on persons or events from the 19th century would gain points. At the end of the 4th week, it is announced that in the 6th week, only submitting an article on a genus or higher taxonomic group would gain points. At the end of the 5th week, the host announces that the topic for week 7 is "anything to do with light, optics or vision", and so forth. The host can make adjustments as the Cup proceeds; for example, if the DYK queue is getting backed up, the next announced theme can exclude DYK submissions from getting points. Abductive (reasoning) 07:10, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

A topic would have to be rather vague so DYK hooks can still have a good variety when posted. Also, to remove skepticism over why it was picked. If it is specific, it would create or exacerbate the backlog as time must pass before each hook is place in a queue. Something like, "persons or events from the 19th century" as you stated can offer such variety. Excluding DYK every other week may help as well.--NortyNort (Holla) 07:17, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

This wouldn't work at all, we can't tell people what they should be working on. This would be such a massive change to the competition that it would be almost unworkable. It sounds too much like Amazing Race Wikipedia, which crashed and burned. J Milburn (talk) 11:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It's a good idea in theory - if all users were editing everything. It's like getting a British schoolchild to write a report on American history - They're going to struggle compared to an American. f o x 11:22, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I dread this idea- we should have more freedom to work on our own interests. Us441(talk)(contribs) 13:02, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Like I said before, I dread this idea. Taxon genus and higher would give Sasata an extreme advantage, so that makes that category especially bad. Us441(talk)(contribs) 13:05, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

True, but if week two is Hockey Hall of Famers, week three was military conflicts, and week four was the Simpsons season 14, it would even out, hypothetically. However, as interesting as that idea is on its own, pre-assigned categories forces people to work on things they may not want to, turning the competition into work rather than fun. Reso lute 23:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe have bonus points for doing a specific category that's changed every so often? Derild 49 21 ☼ 20:01, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

This all seems to be a solution in search of a problem. J Milburn (talk) 20:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking this more of a suggestion than a solution. Derild 49 21 ☼ 20:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a real "start from scratch" suggestion, rather than the kind of "tweaking with the current formula" discussions that are currently ongoing. As I say, something more like this was tried (Amazing Race Wikipedia), and it crashed and burned. J Milburn (talk) 21:24, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking to keep everything the same except every week or so changing the topic that gives extra point (10-40) if an editor improves an article of that topic. Derild 49 21 ☼ 00:50, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Multipliers for core articles

I mentioned this a few days ago but I did not get to expand too much. I proposed having big multipliers for Core Level-3 articles (20x) and large bonuses for other important articles, such as those that are covered in at least 20 other wikipedias (10x). The reason I think these bonuses are deserved is that for example Lithium at GA requires 10x more work than B. J. Prager, or Oxygen at FA required 20x more work than Tropical Storm Marco (1990) (no critique of any king intended to either of these as I am only tying to make a point). I am sure that a lot of editors won't agree, yet I am sure that most of you would prefer having the lithium and oxygen articles in fine shape, over 10 lacrosse payers, respectively 20 baseball ones. It will not prevent users to work on the latter, but it would greatly incentivize users to put that energy in articles of the former category. Nergaal (talk) 06:24, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I was initially thinknig the multiplier was too high, but I am warming to it when I sit down and really think about it. I like the idea of a multiplier according to how many other langauge wikipedias its on. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:52, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Support It's a great idea, although the multipliers are a little too much on the high side. WikiCopter

^{Formerly AirplanePro} 23:14, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Support if the idea of a small multiplier for other language Wikipedias is included. Except species. Abductive (reasoning) 21:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Erm, what? "I support multiplying points for articles if they meet arbitrary criterion y, as long as they aren't in category z, which I don't like." Really not feeling this. J Milburn (talk) 21:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, the idea behind the multipliers is to encourage certain types of articles. Articles on species are super-easy for me to write up and always get a free pass on notability, so I figure that they don't need multipliers. Also, there are more unwritten articles on species than on any other topic, except perhaps biographies (which don't get a free pass on notability), so having a multiplier for species would benefit people like me unfairly. Abductive (reasoning) 21:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Support, though I think x10 and x5, respectively, might be better. The idea is to encourage important articles- species may get a "free pass" on notability, but if 20 wikipedias have an article on it I think it's still worthwhile to encourage someone to write, no matter how easy it is for you personally. I would rather expect any unwritten article on a species to not have 20 other articles out there in different languages. (I expect to have zero of my articles count for the multiplier next year.) --Pres N 21:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

As an incidental note, to help give some idea of the "pool" of eligible articles here - as of July, we had ~54,000 (1.6%) articles with 20 or more interwikis; 25,000 (0.75%) with 30 or more; 14,000 (0.4%) with 40 or more. I believe "core" articles represent around a thousand selected articles? The interwiki approach would certainly allow people a lot more room to manoeuvre without feeling there wasn't anything eligible they were comfortable writing about. Shimgray | talk | 22:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
- Might I ask: ^{[citation needed]} for these numbers (I am kind of curious where does the threshold stand). Nergaal (talk) 01:28, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
  - Sure. commons:file:Enwp-interwiki-201006.svg is a graph, and links to the raw data; it's a database report from approximately June. (I'm not sure why I said July earlier! It quotes a baseline figure of 3.34 million articles, which should probably pin the date down more exactly if you need it.) If you're interested, the ten thousand article threshold is 47 or more interwikis; twenty thousand is 33. Five thousand is 65 or more. Shimgray | talk | 14:57, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Oppose I think the multiplier is too high. I don't think any multiplier much more than 3 or so will result in the best outcome. Although I work on a ton of low importance articles, I am already at a disadvantage in that the standard of sports team articles prohibit expedient GA production. Thus although my competitors are not doing that much harder work on their articles to get GAs, they are getting 5 points for every one I get on my creations. It is almost impossible to offset a 5x1 point ratio by working harder. I think a system like this might give scientists an unfair leg up. Why don't we use the usual approach where we say we are going to use a multiplier and vote on a range of different levels. This would follow precedent similar to that used to determine point awards for contribution type.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:23, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

That is rather the point - Adding value to the project in not just quality of the article, but importance of the topic. As another sports editor, I would support larger multipliers, though maybe a bit smaller 10x/5-7x instead of 20x/10x perhaps. Reso lute 00:35, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Summary until now there has been unanimous decision of having multipliers next year for articles widely represented in other wikipedia and for the 1000 core-level-3 articles, with a multiplier set at perhaps 10x/5x. It might be interesting to consider core level-2 (the 100 articles) with a multiplier of 20x. Nergaal (talk) 01:28, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
- That's simply not an accurate summary. Sorry. J Milburn (talk) 01:55, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
  - Ha? Did you read all of my summary? Nergaal (talk) 02:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
    - I did, and I do not think it was wise. Note that there have been previous and in-depth discussions (as opposed to this support/oppose discussion) on this topic; I think it would be worth taking them into account as well. Basically, yes, it would seem that the consensus is that there should be multipliers for certain articles; the real controversy is determining what they are. The five main ideas seem to be, firstly, dependant on page views, secondly, dependant on the coverage on other Wikipedias, thirdly, dependant on the appearance on one of the "core" lists, fourthly, WikiProject importance ratings or, fifthly, fitting into one of several predetermined categories (or a mix of all those ideas). Therefore, the two things we need to discuss are, firstly, which articles will be affected, and secondly, how much that effect will be. J Milburn (talk) 03:07, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
      - Yeah, I know it was not wise. It was just too annoying to have essentially everybody say "I would probably be disadvantaged by this system but I still prefer it because it appears desirable for wikipedia" and have only one user say "I am going to prove that I am the best here including trying to eternally bend the rules to my best interest, regardless of what others have reasoned". Pageviews: sure, but there might be a way to abuse this; other wikis: hard to imagine that a regular editor could possibly create stubs in more than a few languages to abuse this; project ratings: very inconsistent and incredibly easy to abuse. Nergaal (talk) 03:52, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I think all teh discussion is good, but I do think that maybe the best thing is to really wait until this years' cup is over, and the overall scoring is looked at, with all proposals of multipliers, review points, etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Needed to win

You know, I used to think that 40 GAs would take home the cup pretty easily, but now I'm not sure if 50 will do it at all.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:30, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Funny, I also used to think the same thing. Sasata (talk) 01:40, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I was projecting 2500-3000 points all along. I won't make that total given my RL conflicts. Hats off to you two guys. Keep up the good work. Bronze me though.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:51, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks like I'm going to be coming in the honorable 5th spot. Still amazing for me considering that I was a shoe in to get no points in round one.....my have things changed....--White Shadows ^{Your guess is as good as mine} 01:58, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

50 GAs?! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:26, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey you two. I am getting lonely at the WP:GOLDENW. Would one of you please make up your mind to join me.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:30, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

P.S. it looks like you guys are going to overshoot even my high end.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:32, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

The DYK burden is a hoax

I have done a little researching and realised that the increase in DYK production of the cup may be keeping DYK from falling apart from lack of product. When the year began the older nomination backlog included 53 hooks. When today began the older nomination backlog was 9 hooks. Thus, DYK was more than 5 times more backed up when the year began than it is now with all the DYK production from the cup. How has this happened even though we have produced a whole lot more DYKs this year? Easily since this year DYK began routine updates 4x times a day instead of ad hoc updates about 3x per day. I.E., starting this year DYK needs us to produce about 33% more DYKs just to keep from falling apart for lack of new articles to put on the main page. Data merely showing that we are producing more DYKs does not show a burden on DYK but us meeting demand.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:19, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

They went from 3X to 4X specifically because after the cup started the backlog jumped to ~1.5/2 weeks from nomination to posting. --Pres N 00:25, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Not True. They have been trying to do strict 6 hour runs since the beginning of the year and it has nothing to do with the CUP.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:30, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer to have for DYK at 1X instaed of 4X, and 100 FAs per month instead of the current rate of 30 FAs. The ultimate goal of wikipedia is to have 100k FAs, not 100mil DYKs. If all those DYK reviewers would do FAs and FLs instead, it would be a net gain. Nergaal (talk) 00:38, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Basically, you are saying you would rather have 25% as many new articles being created, which would not truly be good for WP.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:30, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with him that it would be, though, if it resulted in an increase of FAs. --Pres N 01:58, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, your comparison is nonsense. By January 15 the "older nominations" section was up to 182 nomination- that's an increase of about 130 in two weeks. 2 weeks later on January 31 is was up to 210.

There are only 8 people in the cup right now. Comparing the beginning of the year to the "increased output" of 8 people is not a fair comparison. The cup basically quadrupled the (already high) backlog of DYK in one month. I'm not going to count any more but I'd bet that that increase stayed for a while- about half of the first round didn't really write much, so the second and third rounds would be only slightly smaller in terms of DYK output than the first.

And don't forget- it's called a backlog for a reason. The idea is not for DYK to have a full "older nomination" section at all. They want to pull their nominations from the regular stacks, so that they don't' sit around too long after being nominated. The goal is to keep it at 0- so if the cup was just 8 people, then yes I could buy your argument that it's supplying to meet the demand. But for 3/4 of the cup it's bigger than that. --Pres N 01:58, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

All those January numbers are after the fact. They had begun attempting 6 hour updates long before January 15. The 8 finalist are probably producing as many DYKs as all the first round competitors.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:44, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

You are correct about the 6-hour thing- that started Jan 1, which was before the cup started moving. I was wrong about that. But you're wrong about everything else. At the start of today, going by your link above, there were 11 DYK noms by Cup participants. Out of 6 normal days and 2 "older days", that's 11/8 noms per day. Given that there were 6+8 days open on Jan 31, If those 8 people were equivalent to the entire cup, one would expect, given the same rate of production by those 8, for there to have been 11/8 * 14 = 19.25 extra noms sitting there on Jan 31. Call it 20. That's a far cry from the 157-strong boost that DYK actually saw from the beginning of the month. Comparing the output of 8 people, even the 8 strongest participants, to the inundation that the original 146 produced isn't logical. The fact is that DYK had a reasonably-large backlog going into the cup, to the point that, as you say, they shortened the amount of time a DYK got on the main page in order to manage it. Within a month, that backlog had quadrupled in size. Trying to use numbers from 9 months later when 94.5% of the participants were out of the running to show that no such effect happened isn't reasonable. --Pres N 03:41, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

In the whole first round there where 386 DYKs by all competitors combined. Adjusting for multi-hooks, lets say that there were about 300 hooks and that this was spread evenly over the two months for about 5 extra hooks per day. Lets also say that going from about 3 updates per day to 4 causes a need for 8 more new hooks per day. The cup did not cause a burden in this sense.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:38, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Your estimate that about a quarter of the submissions were multi hooks is unreasonable and you can't assume an even distribution of nominations - many competitors sprinted out of the gate before tailing off. The increase in the size of the backlog was definitely noticeable throughout much of the year, and it would be naive not to believe the Cup played a role in that. We weren't necessarily the only culprit, but we played a role. Reso lute 14:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Suppose the 386 DYKs were from 360 different hooks, then we only added 6 hooks a day. My numbers above don't change much.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, did you ever consider asking the regulars at DYK what their experiences have been before going off half-cocked? Reso lute 14:39, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Nope, and we should have them tell us whether they need more DYKs as a result of the 6hour update scheme. I think the CUP will cause the DYK to be a bit backed up for the first quarter of the year, but there is no real problem in waiting 2 or 3 weeks for a new creation to make the main page. Later in the year the CUP is producing just what is needed. I bet the DYK backlog will be quite sparse in Novemeber and December without CUP production. By January they will welcome a rain of new DYKs from CUP competitors.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I have to admit you've got a good point, just going by the stats. ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 16:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm honestly stunned that everyone here is discussing DYK matters without asking the people that run DYK. The DYK project shouldn't have to be notified of such discussions by IP editors. On the matter at hand: yes, the cup most definitely has been putting a strain on DYK. For the past few months DYK has been running at 9 hooks per set instead of the usual 8. Also, we generally prefer to have fewer updates per day and fewer hooks per set if we can afford it; this allows each hook more visibility on the Main Page. There was a major shift in how DYK got updated at the beginning of the year, but that was because of the switch from DYKadminBot to manual to DYKUpdateBot. The update cycle itself is changed judging by the backlog. It's called a backlog for a reason: we'd rather not have it. Shubinator (talk) 01:39, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Shubinator, Are you even familiar with the DYK process. You talk as if one day the update cycle is 4 hours and the next it is 8. The objective has always (at least since I have been involved in 2007) been to try to update it every 6 hours. Once upon a time this occasionally meant flagging down an admin from a list of volunteers when it went to far past 6 hours. Now that thing are automated it has almost invariably been every 6 hours. It sounds like you don't even know about the process when you talk about "we generally prefer to have fewer updates per day" and "the update cycle itself is changed judging by the backlog".--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:37, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Notice where User talk:DYKUpdateBot redirects to. Shubinator (talk) 02:39, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Your bot is great, but it is very seldom that the cycle is anything other than 6 hours. I have produced hundreds of DYKs and monitor their length of time on the main page. I know this for a fact.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:43, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

It was 8 hours for about a month in late April - early May. The update frequency is very easy to change; we just haven't had the opportunity to bump it down recently because of the flood of DYKs. Shubinator (talk) 02:47, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not questioning whether it is easy to change. I am just saying the default objective has been 6 hours. It could run any sort of cycle. In fact the cycle needn't be an even divisor of 24. Yes there does seem to be a three week period where the cycle was 8 hours this year. That is an extraordinary period. 20 days out of nearly 300 this year is not that significant.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 02:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Your claim that DYK strives for an update cycle of 6 hours is a hoax. Your whole argument rests on this claim: that because DYK updates every 6 hours, the project will need more articles in the coming months. This is blatantly false. The update cycle is flexible and will change to meet demands. The DYK project will not die from a lack of hooks.

(And 8-hour updates are more common than you'd think; for example in 2009, most of December and April, along with a few weeks here and there, ran on 8-hour updates.) Shubinator (talk) 03:07, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

You would be the expert on how often it varies, but I would guess that over 80% of the time we are working to fill 6 hour slots. Prior to this year we often lapsed into longer periods especially prior to automated updates. The issue here is regarding CUP point attribution and should we be attempting to quell DYK production. As one of the main decision makers at WP:FOUR I have probably spent more time thinking about the value of going from a redlink to an encyclopedic article more than anyone else on WP (see Wikipedia talk:Four Award/FAQ #5). The encyclopedic value of going from a redlink to a basic article and then to an article that is DYK worthy is a very very important part of WP as a whole and people are ignoring that. Creating an FA is a great accomplishment. I wish I were a better writer and able to do so more often. However, filling in ten redlinks and making them DYK worthy is not something that I think we should be discouraging. I don't know how many WP:CUP DYKs were new articles, but most of mine have been. I think most of the two leading scorers' DYKs have been as well, but I am just trying to make it clear that there are good reasons why DYK production should not be discouraged.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:28, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on the overall question of whether CUP DYK involvement should be discouraged or encouraged. I can see good reasons for both sides. I'm simply saying that DYK does feel the extra weight of the WikiCup, and we usually don't see it as a good thing. Shubinator (talk) 03:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

DYK is intended to represent "Wikipedia's newest" content -- new articles and articles that have recently been signifigantly expanded. The ideal backlog for such a project is 0. Update size and update frequency is adjusted fairly frequently toward the goal of having no backlog and simultaneously not running out of hooks. To put it another way, you (TonyTheTiger) have the dependent and independent variables reversed. There is no fixed number of hooks that DYK needs daily. (OK, let's say that 6 hooks per day is probably an absolute minimum.) But it would be easy to reduce as far as 6-hook 8-hour updates, which would take us from 54 to 24 hooks per day. So, DYK would be just fine with 900 fewer hooks a month. cmadler (talk) 18:41, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

FYI, just to follow up on this discussion, DYK is implementing a new requirement starting 12/1/10 requiring nominators to review at DYK, on a 1:1 basis. This should resolve, or at least help with, the reviewing overload at DYK; a WikiCup contestant who nominates 40 articles at DYK would have to match that with 40 reviews of DYK articles nominated by other editors. cmadler (talk) 17:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Penalties

GOCE has penalties for bad copyedits to deter people from gaming and/or causing more harm than good by forcing more regulation instead of self-improvement. Same should be introduced here so people can't try and take pot shots at GAN/FAC etc hoping to get a lucky review and smuggle through YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 05:01, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a very good idea. DYK saw a WikiCup contestant this year who repeatedly submitted sub-standard cookie cutter articles, several times in groups of a dozen or more. Having to perform the complete review process only to tell this user that DYK has a minimum standard of 1500 characters of readable text, often two or three times for each submitted article, is a significant contributor to WikiCup induced anger. While in principle I have no objections to WikiCup, I do however object to being forced to repeatedly perform remedial quality control for contestants who are too busy to ensure their work meets minimal standards. As for the level of penalty, a 10% penalty for the first failure, 50% penalty on the second, and a 200% penalty on the third (i.e. a 10 point DYK would be penalize 1 point if it failed the first review, 5 the second time, and 20 the third) seems reasonable. This would result in only a small penalty for the occasional error but make the practice of repeatedly submitting non-compliant nominations in the hope of reviewers fixing the problems counterproductive. --Allen3 ^talk 15:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Solution in search of a problem, imo. You are referring to a single user who is not participating next year. If other editors bring similar problems in the future, I would leave sanctions up to the judges' discretion. Reso lute 16:07, 13 October 2010 (UTC)