Wikipedia talk:WikiCup/Scoring

2014/2015 brainstorming

It's that time again! Every year, WikiCup rules are tweaked and adjusted, so: what works? What doesn't work? What do you want to see? What do you want to to stop seeing? Do points need to be adjusted? Do we need new rules/methods for running the competition? This initial thread is for throwing around some ideas, after which time I will create some straw polls with possible changes to gauge feelings. The polls can then be closed by the judges. Feel free to start subsections as appropriate, but they are not essential. J Milburn (talk) 17:37, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

• The spirit of the competition was broken in the past when one user would flood DYK with noms and I think he either won or was close to winning. This is happening again with FPs, and is reminiscent of what happened with Durova many years ago (although she seemed to have more variety). As a beginning, I think sets should be devalued. Nergaal (talk) 21:01, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

• Nergaal, I'm not clear why you feel that any user is causing a problem at the FPC project, which is what happened at the DYK project. This competition's FP specialists are very well-thought-of at FPC. There's something very, very perverse about the idea that someone who is producing a lot of high quality content must be a "spam"er or in some other way problematic. J Milburn (talk) 08:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I think we should have points for PRs as was discussed earlier in the year because it is the one area of Wikipedia that seems to be left behind from all the others and often gets neglected. Adding it to the Wikicup should not only help the project, but also people who create PRs only having to wait for months before it gets a review. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:18, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

You know what, Nergaal? Shut the fuck up. Because, currently, the logic is: "Someoone who specializes in FPs might win! But FPs suck! We must stomp this possibility down! Seriously, you have literally no other argument, and Godot might not even win: in no round has he even come close to what Cwmhiraeth tends to get from DYK in the last rounds of Wikicup competitions, for instance. If this competition devalues featured pictures - particularly in the absence of anyone winning with featured pictures - then please rename this the article cup, and stop pretending to value all content. This competition has turned from a friendly competition to an ugly one, where people who don't work in fields of content spend half their time attacking other fields.

If the judges wish to devalue FPs, I would petition them to instead stop all pretense and remove them from the competition completely. It would be far more intellectually honest than pretending all content is valued, but devaluing any non-article content that ever threatens to do well in the competition. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:58, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

A reminder for civility czar ♔ 00:25, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

On a different topic, I wonder about benefit to project vs work involved - i.e. is it worth upping GA reviews to 6 or even 8 as there is such a backlog? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I would support that, however I feel that points for GARs must not exceed the points for base DYKs. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I also assume that for DYKs, the 5 year bonus will continue to roll over to be pre-2009 for next year? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:57, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Strong support with the caveat that reviews must be thorough - the 1500 character review (or whatever it is) should be adhered to, AND if met, equal points should be given for a pass OR a fail, lest reviewers be tempted to pass poor articles that don't improve even with a lot of time and effort put into a review. I had at least one GAN review where I think I wound up working harder than the creator did! (A lot of "why not say it this way?" - they'd copy and paste my suggestion verbatim - "How about putting this paragraph" there? -copy and paste- and so on). I have also seen GAN reviews abandoned. Montanabw^(talk) 19:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Vital rebrand

• Saving any editorializing and in the spirit of openness, my honest suggestion would be to consider rebranding the Cup around vital articles (I know the scope is contested, but I also know it was good enough to matter in previous cups), say level three or above. This could still include the point ratios as they stand (and hopefully include peer and featured content reviews of a certain length), but it would do well to keep our benefit to the project clear. I don't plan to participate next year as is, mostly because I feel that my own content quality and article ambitions have decreased with the Cup's deadlines. I'm also discouraged by the air of antagonism and feel that working on BIG articles encourages (nay, almost requires) collaboration, perhaps even between Cup participants? czar ♔ 00:25, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

We discussed this a few years ago - problem is that there is always an issue of subjectivity with vital articles, and over time I am intrigued by the idea that we just go on numbers of how many language wikipedias the article appears in, so we do this after a fashion - make the multiplier bigger then? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the interwiki idea may even have been your idea in the first place, Cas. Czar, I understand your desire (and I agree with your thought about collaboration- that's not a bad thing!) but I wonder whether we are failing at this current time, in your view? Cwmhiraeth has won for the last two years mostly because she has played the bonus point game, and, in the process, has improved some very important articles. J Milburn (talk) 08:08, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I worry that bonus points in their entirety become a metagame of optimization. Also I see how interwiki is used as an alternative to the Vital list, but it appears to have not sufficiently incentivized work on Vital-like articles. (For example, The arts, a vit-1 article of generally agreed importance, has a low interwiki count.) At least for one year, I would be more interested in the Cup actually prioritizing the articles that form the basic breadth of the encyclopedia. I can appreciate how, with the inclusion of individual works, the Vital list gets murky after level vit-3, but all the same, a work is not necessarily of greater priority because someone has labored to stub interwikis (or has had a bot do so). Perhaps this is less the Cup than the WP, but I'd like to see the content that reaches people most and the content most expected of an encyclopedia to be incentivized and completed before we discuss how many apples are equal to an orange, especially when both the apples and oranges are getting less than 50 hits a day (mostly bots, at that). czar ♔ 14:05, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I have my reservations about the vital lists; even at level three it seems pretty arbitrary. Are Ibn Khaldun and Mary Wollstonecraft really more significant than Max Weber and Michel Foucault? I doubt it. Is Moses more important than Adam? Hard to say. Dog and horse are included, but invertebrates (other than insects) are entirely excluded? Seems a little odd. Nonetheless, I am interested in what you're suggesting- how do you feel we could incentivise work on these articles? J Milburn (talk) 16:35, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

You know, I'm going to have to question the level one vital articles. Is Culture actually the best top-level overview? Life has multiple meanings. The arts is, at least in English, a vague term I wouldn't imagine people would search for that often - and, indeed, they don't. Vital articles often seems like a vague attempt to make trees, then after coming to the top of the tree, declaring THIS ARTICLE IS MOST IMPORTANT! Is it? Honestly, I'd say level 2 was far more vital than level 1 in the main. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Personally I take the same view I take with DYK hooks "What may be uninteresting to some, could be very interesting to others" and I think this is the same where there is no definitive answer to what is vital unanimously. And since there is no definitive and non-arbitrary way to work out the vital articles, I would have to say that I do not believe that it should be used as a criteria for bonus points. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:06, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

My point is chiefly that if the Cup is meant to incentivize content creation, I think the encyclopedia would be better served if that scope is narrowed to the articles agreed to be of core importance to the project, whatever they may be (not necessarily the current VItal list, as there are other metrics). I don't think there would be much of a need for bonus points in such a scenario. czar ♔ 18:24, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

How about a second scorecard just for vital articles, and another Cup awarded for winning? If the Cup is to incentivize content creation; that's great, but I think there will be a large loss of contributors if its scope is restricted. Part of the allure of Wikipedia is that people get to write what they like to write; most of my articles this year were about Sega because that's the project I wanted to complete, and sure enough I kept hammering away at it until I was eliminated in Round 3. That being said, vital articles are neat and important, so why not just do a separate scorecard for Vital articles that awards its own award at the end of the year? Red Phoenix ^{let's talk...} 18:29, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I felt that the scope restriction would reduce the unhealthy, metagaming aspects of the Cup. From the responses so far, it seems like it's too far from what everyone else wants to continue next year. I don't have a particular interest in making it another institution so I'll let it languish here czar ♔ 18:59, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Personallly, I think the bonus multiplier helps accomplish the same goal, albeit indirectly; I am considering working on broader articles next year because of the multiplier. That said, I also think the formula needs to be tweaked a bit so that points accumulate faster at the low end and less fast at the high end. Montanabw^(talk) 19:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a very good suggestion. I don't think people have much of a problem with a 1.6x multiplier; its when it becomes possible to 500+ points for one article because of a very high multipler and the ability to count the same article up to 3x (DYK,GA,FA) that it gets out of hand. Is a 4x multipler article really twice as important/hard as a 2x multipler article? No! --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:40, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I thought the multipliers have been a good objective way of encouraging broad articles. Pushing vital content was one of the reasons I resurrected the Core Contest to try and give us coverage of all different aspects of content improvement....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:28, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

New way(s) of surviving to the next round

I would like to see a reworking of the advancement process to allow more people to survive longer into the competition. I feel that if more editors were in the Cup for longer people (both competitors and observers) have fun with the Cup. Some ideas:

1. The first round cutoff could be just getting any points at all. Looking back at the last couple of years, a large proportion (40%?) of people sign up, and then get zero points. Part of the trouble is they are intimidated by the big point scores of the early leaders and just give up. Also, if people know that they can advance by just getting any points, they might make the commitment to participate. Once they do, they might see it less daunting.
2. The next round(s) could have some method of weighting by content type. So, instead of getting 5 points for a DYK, 30 points for a GA and so forth, people could get some portion of a DYK "pie", a GA pie, and so one. What could be done is to count up how many DYKs were submitted in this year's second round, figure out how many points that amounted to, and assign something close to but less than that number to next year's "pie". So, if 1285 DYK points were received in round 2 this year, then a "pie" of 1000 DYK points would be allotted next year. Then points would be handed out proportionally. Thus, if 250 DYKs were submitted in round 2, people would get 4 points for each of them (1000/250). Conversely, if a "pie" is under-submitted, more points would be received for each submission. This would discourage people from flooding with one type of submission, and encourage diversity of submission types by each competitor, and generally even out the Cup.
3. By making the scores more difficult to figure out, true, it will increase the work for the judges, but it will also make it very difficult for people to game the system. It will also make it more difficult for people to consider themselves eliminated, and thus keep people competing in the Cup to the end of the round. Abductive (reasoning) 01:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I like these ideas - just as someone can game the system by waiting to submit until the last minute, isn't the aim to submit material and not rest on one's laurels in the first place? Therefore I am intrigued by pie-slicing. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:44, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

But if it's pie-slicing, doesn't that mean that the size of the pie could screw people over, or make it so one single contribution was amazingly high? For example, take featured portals. Few work on them. So either working on them suddenly becomes ridiculously disproportionately valuable, or there's never any point to doing more than one or two. Likewise, why is variety of contributions a good thing and what does that mean? Articles come in three different "pies" (four if you count lists) and all other contributions get one pie each; would this really serve to encourage variety? Similarly, pie size matters, and I suspect that it's far less fair to have arbitrary pie sizes to limit how much contributions one can get. If someone makes masses of featured articles, or pictures, or lists, that's a good thing, not something to devalue. Thirdly, this actually discourages variety: If people have already gotten, say, 100 GAs, it's not really that worth getting a GA at that point. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:35, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

From what I have seen in the past few years—and even directly above this discussion—there is a lot of concern about people swamping the Cup with lots of one type of submission. As I see my pie system, limiting the total number of points that can be claimed for each submission type will not profoundly change the fairness of the scoring of the Cup, but it will "take the edge off" of the impact of these sort of mass submissions. So, if an editor submits 100s of DYKs, say 55% of all DYKs, s/he will still get 55% of the points of all DYKs submitted (or a bit more, if there are interwiki multipliers). What my pie system will do is reduce personal hard feelings against people who submit lots of one type of submission.

As for why a variety of contributions is good, it is good for the competitors, guiding them to consider making types of articles or portals or whatever that they might never have tried before. I for one have never worked on taking an article to GA status nor FA status. In fact, I've never done anything besides ITN and DYK. Abductive (reasoning) 05:14, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

If you want to encourage variety of content, give say, a bonus equal to the base points for that type of content for the first piece of content of a type submitted by the user in that round. As for the FP bashing, I consider it meritless. We don't attack (and shouldn't attack) Casliber for having over a hundred featured articles. We don't attack (and shouldn't attack) Cwmhiraeth for his massive amounts of work on vital article DYKs and GAs. We do however attack (but shouldn't attack) featured picture contributors. There is, however, no merit in these attacks.

Further, if the point is to encourage a variety of content, attempting to make sure featured pictures is unviable is not the way. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:20, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I think you are completely not getting my idea at all. Abductive (reasoning) 07:36, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Abductive, I like your idea of having more people survive the first round, but I note that current numbers allow for a neat pooling system. I suspect if more survive the first round, we'd just have to have a bigger elimination in the second round so that we had a number which was 2-to-the-power-of-x going into the third round. How do you feel about that? Or is there a better way of working it? J Milburn (talk) 08:32, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Thinking aloud- maybe we could call round 1 "qualification", and any points sufficed, but, so that people were still encouraged to do something in the first couple of months, people could carry 10% or so of their points over into round 2, giving them a head start against the bigger eliminations which were to come? This would mean that just about everyone would be able to have four months of WikiCup, but those first four months would also be fairly competitive, even for the higher scorers. J Milburn (talk) 08:35, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Now, this has advantages and disadvantages, of course, but... You know, you don't have to halve each round. If you want to leave people in longer, you could have a big cull at, say, end of Round 3, which would also make round 3 more competitive, as a smaller portion would pass (although numerically the same).

Why do the pools exist? I was told that they exist to help people make it to the next round when otherwise they might not have, right? Abductive (reasoning) 15:39, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

It's just the way we've always done it- I'm open to alternatives! J Milburn (talk) 16:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Underlying my thoughts is always, "how can more people keep competing longer"? Abductive (reasoning) 16:32, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea of calling round 1 qualification where a set # of points is all that is required to continue and carrying some % of the points to the next round. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:13, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

• Comment I had no problem getting to the second round in my very first attempt at the wikicup, and I even slid into the second round on the strength of a FAC that I (successfully) begged to be approved prior to the deadline. I'm OK with the way that part works, but here are my thoughts:

1. Maybe allow some points from one round to carry over to the next. If X amount of points is the cutoff, perhaps 50% of the points above that cutoff could carry over. This would also encourage people to put in FACs, which can take more than a month to get approved.
2. Perhaps do more bonuses for participants who contribute more than one category of work (or cap the points that count in each category of work) Kid of like the "pie" idea above, but with the stated goal of having people contribute different kinds of work - I did my very first ITN because of the wikicup, and I am inspired to think about whether to try to do a featured image next time.
3. I also favor more points for GAN reviews, so long as adequate quality controls are in place (see above) Montanabw^(talk) 19:08, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The FP debate

The featured pictures debate is an attack on content that I have spent eight years developing skill in. My subfield, restoration, is a highly specialized skillset only a handful of Wikipedians possess, whereas I think most people, with a bit of mentoring and a lot of work, are at least theoretically capable of creating a good article, especially on a limited subject.

Featured pictures includes four broad categories of work:

1. Photography - Probably goes without saying
2. Restoration - The act of taking a damaged work, and removing the damage, while staying true to the original
3. Map and diagram making - (For example. Wikipedia:Featured_pictures/Diagrams,_drawings,_and_maps/Diagrams. These, of course, vary in complexity)
4. Researched content/released content [For example, Godot13 works with the Smithsonian Institute to prepare and release their holdings; Other users work to get screenshots from video games released under a free license, and so on]
5. "Found" works [e.g., "Isn't this image I found [on the internet/on commons] awesome?")

For obvious reasons, we don't allow #5 to claim Wikicup points.

Now, there may be some reasonable debate over the first four categories, and whether point values should be tweaked. But that's not what's happening. What's actually happening is vicious, often personal, attacks on the idea that featured pictures are at all valuable.

This goes directly against the spirit of the Wikicup, which is meant to celebrate all content on Wikipedia, not just articles. If you wish a purely article-based contest, there are such contests, such as WP:The Core Contest. Or you could start your own contest, keeping out those nasty picture and portal people. But the Wikicup is meant to be a friendly, inclusive contest.

I have seen very little friendliness, and quite a few attacks on inclusiveness.

And, just to be clear: Maybe Godot will win this year. However, there is every chance he will not, and if he doesn't, what does that say? That everyone's willing to blow up the featured pictures point system because there was a chance someone working with FPs might win? Frankly, to describe my views on what I would think should Godot13 lose and FP still be devalued would probably require far more cursing than I'd prefer. Also, I would lose all respect for the Wikicup organizers for devaluing something that already had little to no chance of being used to win. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:51, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm split on this. Obviously things such as photos are easy to take if you have a quality camera and don't really require an awful lot of work however older images require serious restoration work in order to make the FP criteria. I think some sort of subcategories for FPs might be beneficial to try and stop allegations of easy points being claimed. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:00, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

"Obviously things such as photos are easy to take if you have a quality camera and don't really require an awful lot of work"- I think you are seriously underestimating the amount of legwork, artistic flair and technical ability required to take professional-quality photographs. J Milburn (talk) 08:39, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

If you think taking a high quality photo is merely a function of camera quality, then you "obviously" have no actual experience with high-level photography. --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:17, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Adam, thanks for these helpful categories. There are at least a few more- Scanners fall somewhere between photographers and releasers, editors are a kind of restorer-light, and writers find suitable article placement or even write articles. I agree that differentiating between different kinds of FPs may be profitable, in a kind of "extra base points" way. Maybe it could be three-tiered system: photographers and drawers are offered x+5 or x+10 points, restorers, scanners, significant editors and releasers are offered x points, while finders, writers and non-significant editors are offered 0 points. Researchers are hard to place- probably 0 points. How does that sound to you? J Milburn (talk) 09:04, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I do think you underestimate just how much work can go into a restoration, but that's rather the point of this discussion, isn't it? To actually discuss what's happening. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:55, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

And I think that's really the problem with the featured picture debate - the actual work involved for the various types is easy to underestimate. For photographs, remember that not every subject is featureable. One might think one could photograph common objects, but common objects are held to vastly higher standards, to the point that simply planning, setting up lighting for, and getting a good background for the shot add huge amounts of work. And if you aren't photographing common objects, then what subject are you doing? Monuments? You're going to run out of ones near you soon, and need to start travelling. Perhaps this might be a small distance at first, but it's going to spread. And if the lighting isn't quite good, people will oppose. Buildings? Only a limited number are independently notable, and you still have all the lighting issues. Fine then, interiors? That limits you to buildings that, firstly, have interesting interiors that you can access. So, maybe major hotels, churches, museums, and theatres, say. Okay. Those are spread out too, and access for some of them will cost - and that's ignoring problems such as the fact a lot of the bigger English churches block photography without a lot of permission-gathering. There's a reason we don't have Westminster Cathedral featured pictures despite it being stuffed full of monuments to notable people, for instance. Okay, so how about objects in a museum? Well, presuming it allows photography in the first place, you still have to deal with crowds of people blocking the view, and glass cases, which can put really awful reflections - and that's presuming there's not greasy fingerprints.

Another problem is that, within any subject, there's easier and harder work to do. With restoration, if the image isn't all that damaged in the first place, it's pretty easy; if it has small little spots of damage, but they're literally everywhere, settle in for a few weeks of work. [There's a reason the Mahan images I've been working on are taking so long, for example]. Even with things you'd think might be similar, say, two Mathew Brady American Civil War photos from the same era? They range from something I could do in 8 hours work, to things I've been working on, off and on, for months and am still not anywhere close to finishing.

This is, of course, true of all content. I'm pretty sure a GA on a subject with only three or four major sources is pretty easy. I should know. But there we have a bonus system that can compensate. However, Featured Pictures do not have this quality: For example, most of the images in User:Adam_Cuerden#Civil_War_Images_that_are_awful_.28in_queue.2C_not_started.29 - are tiny thumbnail versions of images available on the Library of Congress at high-resolution, but which will need some unknown amount of restoration to complete. [ACW images are particularly variable in how damaged they are]. Most of them are used in dozens, if not hundreds of Wikipedias. I will not get a single point more for restoring them, though.

Now, if you're not aware, I do not claim images I don't think I've done enough work on. For example File:Magdalene College Dining Hall, Cambridge, UK - Diliff.jpg has actually had a about.. I don't know, probably about two to four hours put into it by me to remove lens flares that went over a painting. I talked it over with the ed17, and decided it wasn't quite enough work to claim. And trivial amounts of work I don't even consider.

But let's look at another case. For those that don't know, I'm considered disabled. Getting better, but still disabled and thus unemployed. Last September, I was spending all the spare time I had on featured pictures, which is quite a lot if you're unemployed. The results of this was a single set of 20 images, the Puck of Pook's Hill set.

It exhausted me. Soon after that, I left Wikipedia for a three months, burned out. It was a huge amount of work, done in far too little time. That's 700 points. Let's just put that into comparison with a few of the things other people did in that last round

• In the same round, Hawkeye7 got 620 points each for his featured articles of Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr.
• Cwmhiraeth got 820 points for his featured article Sea

The score to beat that round was over 3000. I managed 23 featured pictures, and came in 6th place. I literally physically could not have done more work than I did, let alone the four times over that work I would have needed. FP is not actually a viable way to win the Wikicup, as far as I can tell. Indeed, even Godot13, so far as I can tell, probably won't win with the scores he's been getting. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:55, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Adam, there seems to be little progress in understanding each-other's point of view, so I propose a solution: please, pick any single article you want from the almost 5 mil around here, or start a new one, and make it a GA and/or an FA. Once you do that, please come back and tell us how do yo see the amount of work for a GA/FA compared to one of your regular FPs. Nergaal (talk) 10:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Do me a favour and search for Adam Cuerden on Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_featured_article_nominations. Or maybe just look at my history in previous rounds and note Urania's Mirror (GA, moving towards FA)? I thought Urania's Mirror was pretty easy, actually. Particularly given I should be able to claim it three times [DYK, GA, FA]. I think last year I had two, Fatinitza and something else - Fatinitza mainly didn't make FA because I can't read German, and suspected there were sources in German I should consult. It certainly does vary - W. S. Gilbert took a hell of a lot more work than Urania's Mirror - but then, the ones that are most difficult are also likely the ones that have large bonuses, and if that isn't the case, we should adjust the rules to fix that. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 12:01, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

And of all those articles, how does the "easiest" one compare to sets of 10+ FPs? And how do the points for the two cases compare to the amount of work? Nergaal (talk) 13:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Oh, Urania's Mirror was ridiculously easy compared to the images in it (with one or two exceptions: Cancer was exceptionally clean, for instance). It was most of the way there after a day [Seriously: I checked, there's half a paragraph of new material added, and some formatting fixes after that.], and it never required the intensive, unending focus FPs do. The Urania's Mirror images tended towards the easier side as FP restorations go, but even given that, each one was probably harder work. Admittedly, I am good at research, and this helps; and the subject is a very limited one. But I believe that was my point: The GAs likely to be difficult should be the ones eligible for more points. This was not one of the difficult ones. There's a limited number of sources. I actually discovered some new information in the research for it (and told the author of one of the sources, who updated the source, which is always gratifying. =) ) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 13:32, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Should probably finish raising it to FA, actually. It doesn't need much if the Peer Review is accurate. I want to get a photograph at the local museum, where they have one of the cards with a light behind it; and I need to create an article on Richard Rouse Bloxam, to cover some additional material in the sources that is a little too off-topic for here. And, of course, I'll probably get at least a DYK off of that article, probably GA.

See, you work on articles on big subjects. Noble gas, Ceres (dwarf planet) and the like are all really major topics, with literally thousands, if not millions of sources. Urania's Mirror is not that sort of subject. It's a limited topic with a few key sources. That's a lot simpler; you can pretty much write the article by planning out the structure, then going through with each source in turn. I think it's also generally easier to get a good article out of something you can write from scratch - bad pre-existing structures tend to be much more difficult to work around or fix. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 13:46, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: I was not thinking of major articles, since those get many bonuses. I am thinking of simpler articles like ununoctium: even though that would get interwiki bonuses, it is a relatively simple article, which when I did I had to access all the 20-or-so articles published on it. 20 sources is not much, but believe me it didn't take just a day (excluding the nomination). I am willing to agree that taking 3 random FPs would probably need about a similar amount of work. However, you can't tell me that 3 pics in the same set take more than a day to take/cleanup/etc to FP-level. Maybe even that does, but I am really not willing to accept that a 10-set FPs takes more than 3 days worth of work. Nergaal (talk) 11:36, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

@Nergaal: You seem to be under the impression that restoration is easier in sets. It's not. This is one of those cases where we probably need to break down cases: For a release, the number of images you get could vary for the same amount of work, and, if you're lucky to get a large release, you might save time. For things like @Godot13: does, ask him. For photographs, I suppose large sets could represent some savings - the location scouting and travel and so on would compact. But for restorations, the amount of effort to do one image in the set is multiplied by the number of images. There really is no savings. If the set is made up of relatively easy nominations, you might be able to plough through it somewhat quickly, but, when, for example, I finish the USS Mahan set (4 images), I'll have likely put about 60 hours work into it. They're proving fiendishly difficult so far. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:04, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

[unindent] Perhaps an abstraction will help. Imagine you need to turn all "0"a [the letter] in this table to "0"s [the number], manually, without using search and replace.

7	6	2	2	O	5	2	7	1	1
5	3	1	6	4	1	4	1	7	7
O	7	8	8	6	1	1	9	5	O
O	9	4	8	1	4	3	3	O	6
8	8	5	2	6	5	7	4	8	5
8	8	9	7	6	9	4	0	4	5
8	6	4	9	9	8	4	8	3	5
2	9	9	6	7	5	1	3	9	5
2	5	9	8	4	6	8	9	8	7
6	6	7	O	5	4	4	7	5	3

Would having done that substantially save you time when you then had to do it again on this table, which also has an "I" that needs replaced with a "1" (since different images often have different types of damage, even in a set)?

5	O	7	6	2	8	1	4	9	9
3	6	6	9	7	8	1	2	7	6
5	9	6	9	9	8	3	7	5	2
1	5	I	4	3	9	9	3	8	9
2	3	O	9	5	6	O	1	9	8
8	3	5	1	4	7	8	3	5	3
8	O	4	4	5	7	7	5	6	O
2	7	3	O	3	2	5	8	1	9
5	6	8	1	5	O	7	4	1	8
8	O	9	5	5	8	5	9	2	8

And that's presume you're not dealing with really weird damage, but I think I'll actually deal with that below.

Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 02:05, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Suggestion - Here's a thought on how to handle FP's. It can take a lot of work to make one, that's for sure. I know I certainly don't have any for that reason, and because I'm not terribly into photography. I'm not sure the issue is so much that FP's shouldn't count, but that FP's shouldn't be spammed in lieu of written content creation, which is the core part of this project. So here's a thought: why not do a staggered point system for FP's? The first three to five can still earn the full 40-45 or however many it is points, then the next 5-10 can earn up to 20 apiece, then any further earn 5. In essence, FP's can still earn points that way and there's credit given for being featured, but not to the point to where it can be excessive. Thoughts? Red Phoenix ^{let's talk...} 18:16, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I have 72 FPs so far this year. I'm not going to work on article content if I'm not working on images; I use the Wikicup as a spur to keep myself constantly productive. If later images are devalued, literally the only result is you'll probably get fewer restorations from me next year, as I won't have the motivation to pace myself, as I won't be doing the Wikicup. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

You know, under my "pie" system, later contributions could be worth more than earlier ones. It could be done by making the pie bigger, or just by the loss of competitors in later rounds. Abductive (reasoning) 19:40, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

That's only true if there's competition for the slot. Once you have, say, 90& of the pie, it's probably not worth doing ten times the work you've just done over again to get 99%. [Sample math: If you have 90x, and others have 10x. to get to 99% you need to get to 990x.]</snakk> The pie system has rapidly diminishing returns. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:52, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

If the pie system is adopted it does not need to be for all the rounds. My hope is to keep a lot more people in the Cup in the first few rounds. The last few rounds will have to eliminate competitors all the more mercilessly, so it would not be feasible to have the pie system in place in those rounds. Abductive (reasoning) 21:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I started off as a Wikipedian many moons ago, and until this year I have been barely involved in Commons. My interest was and still is articles about places, which probably make up two thirds of the articles I have ever edited. If you'd asked me about photos and image restoration last year I wouldn't have given you the time of day because I felt sourced text was more important than pictures. However, this year I have made an effort to do more editing on Commons, took a few photos (not very good ones), uploaded some Flickr photos and even tried my hand at things like airbrushing out watermarks (not very successfully). I now see myself as a WikiMedian rather than a WikiPedian and I would highly recommend all Wikipedians to expand their contributions beyond sourced text to include images. This dispute about articles versus pictures is frankly a banal distraction because we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is an online encyclopedia and most of us voluntarily edit here. Adam shouldn't really have to tell us his personal circumstances because we should judge his contribution by what he actually does here rather than belittling his efforts. I think an ideal solution would be to modify the scoring system so that the four major content items below featured articles should get the same scores, i.e. good articles, featured lists, featured portals AND featured pictures should all get 40 points. In line with this, good topics should go up to 4 points per article and good article reviews should go up to 5 points per review. Featured articles and DYKs should stay the same but I think ITN should be dropped to 5 points because the criteria are so much lower than anything else on the main page - a five-sentence update (with at minimum three references). I don't think that that criteria matches up to strictures like DYKs needing at least 1500 characters or five fold expansion for existing articles. Giving ITN 10 points puts it on a par with a 10 point DYK, which may have need more effort involving 5KB of prose. Another way of making things more interesting is if we could have bonus points for the effort involved in getting articles to GA status e.g. bonuses for writing a good article from scratch or for taking an article from stub to GA within the time period of the round. Anyway, chill out everybody, stop sniping at each other, eat more vegetables and enjoy the WikiCup and that is my tuppence worth of Tyke opinion. Green Giant (talk) 22:18, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Re: ITN - while a minimal update may qualify for ITN at times (usually not), it doesn't qualify for the WikiCup under the "significant contribution" criteria. There used to be a line in the rules saying judges would scrutinize such submissions extra closely specifically to prevent such submissions. Additionally, ITN has time constraints and the significant risk of your work updating an article receiving 0 points because it was decided the story was insufficiently significant or was too outdated by the time the content work was done. If that happens, there is nothing one can do about it - unlike other areas where one can fix it up and resubmit. As someone who does a lot of ITN work and a lot of DYK work, I must say the criteria certainly are not "so much lower than anything else on the main page". Indeed, most ITN regulars believe our criteria are stricter than DYK. And there are no multipliers either. If my goal wa sto maximize points, I would focus on expanding stubs with heavy multipliers to 5k DYK articles. That is a far easier way to rack up quick points than ITN (or FP or just about anything else). --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:39, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Apologies if it seemed as though I was insulting ITN, it was just that that particular criteria seems quite low compared to 5KB for DYK which also gets 10 points. Perhaps if we had a similar split to DYK so that larger ITN items would get 10 points and smaller ones get 5 points?

• The multi-tier point system for FPs is a good idea. It would also allow the opportunity to give a few points for "merely" finding and uploading high quality images (which is not actually zero work). I would propose something like:

Photography, Restoration, and other creative efforts (e.g. drawing) - 35 pts

Scanning, Securing relicensing/permission - 10 pts

Finding already properly licensed photo (online) & uploading - 3 pts

--ThaddeusB (talk) 14:46, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

• Frankly, this whole kerfuffle is overblown; impressive as the FP editors have been thus far, people have been holding back and not unleashing the true Cup-winning strategy of a flood of DYKs with large bonuses. It's won the last two cups in a rout and none of the rule changes made in the last two years have done much to address the issue. So I hate to tell y'all that this has all been, to quote Shakespeare, "a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing".--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:32, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

• This is correct - high multipler stubs remain by far the most efficient ("easiest") way to earn points. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:20, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

• I think we either need to lower the FP points or make it so someone can't run the table with them. FPs are good, but way overrated. I'm only getting 36 points for an article like this one. Why should an FP be almost the same amount? Don't forget, you can't have multiple GANs or FACs in a single nomination. Honestly, I have no problem with those articles that get ridiculous amounts of bonus points. No offense, but those are way more work than an FP.--12george1 (talk) 15:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

• Actually, a typical species article or city article (both which generally get good multipliers) is not "way more work than an FP". Indeed they are probably less work on average. If the points are supposed to indicate greater importance of such articles, that's one thing, but to claim they are more work on average is flat out wrong. By far the most efficient way to earn points is to bring an old stub with a high multipler to DYK and then possibly GA. Any claim that any type of content gets too many points based on work required can not be taken seriously by me if it claimed that 2x,3x,etc., and old stub DYKs are substantially harder than new article DYKs and thus points reflect work required.

The perception of work required to make a FP does not meet with the reality - creating or restoring a high quality image involves a lot of effort and skill. For people who are not photographers, it may seem like "push a button and you are done" but taking a high quality image is not at all like causual photography. Similiarly, a quality restoration is not like pushing a few button in Photoshop - it is a like of time consuming work. I say all this as someone who does a ton of article work and very little image work. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:20, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

While I agree, I do think that the bonus system for articles could be improved a bit, to accurately reflect the work and importance put in. I still think we should lower the base GA points, but have bonus base points available for length that could raise the base above what it is now. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

What sort of numbers were you imagining? J Milburn (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd need to check lengths to get it right, but maybe set up to work out to between 20 and 50 base points? Of course, one probably should list int in the score table as 20 to 50; listing the lower number alone would put people off. The thing is, if an incredibly difficult, 40,000 word GA is worth the same as a simple GA of a few thousand, it's not really surprising that people who work exclusively in the former should complain, is it? But surely the response is not to attack FPs, but to deal with the things being undervalued. We should probably discuss DYK bonus multipliers again as well, since they're probably a bit high. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:52, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

• I just saw this page. Not planning to follow it right now (just a bit demoralizing). I'll make comments after the cup is over. Thanks--Godot13 (talk) 05:03, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• I tire greatly of this constant bickering, yet am thankful for the reminder to never enter the Wikicup. Speaking as an editor active in pretty much every area covered by the Cup (I have credits in DYK, GA, FA, FP, FL, FT, and FPo), I am shocked that people without much experience in one or more areas seem to automatically consider said areas to be less valuable then what they do themselves. DYK has long been claimed to be mere hat collecting, GAs have been said to be less strenuous than FA (and even, sometimes, easier than DYK)... I've heard FL called "just compiling data" and seen users try to sabotage FL nominations because they included a lead (really now...). FPo? "Copying and pasting articles by others and then making it look pretty." And... the countless bytes killed in this pointless discussion of FP.

The value of an image... we can all agree, I think, that TLDR applies to both posts (like this one) and articles. If I have to read a 40k article like Departures without even a single image, I might just give up. Images break up the flow of the text, attracting the eyes, and letting one measure the progress down the page. They also help expand on ideas discussed through the text, or lend a face to a subject, which in turn expands readers' understanding of the article. Writing articles without any images is like cooking without any spices: sure, you can do it, but is the result really the best you can do? And the better the image, the more useful it is for the reader (and we, the article writers). Even paper encyclopedias have images.

Taking a featured photograph is a pain in the ass, especially to start. You need thousands of dollars of equipment (unless you get lucky), access to objects / people which need a good quality image, and a familiarity with different aspects of optics to get the right effect. You also need to time your shoot to get good lighting (not very easy if you live far from what you're shooting), and time to do postprocessing work (lighting adjustments, warmth, etc.) It took me three trips to Taman Sari to get the shots I wanted for my FP set, each trip at least an hour and a half in length. As I was doing stitched panoramas, there was another 4 or 5 hours each shot of stitching and restitching, to fix errors caused by parallax or masking issues. Restorations are likewise time consuming, and require great patience and understanding of the different tools available (as well as a fair investment, for those who use Photoshop).

But what people seem to be complaining about most this round is scans. I've only started doing scans of banknotes (example), and even then with notes I had reasonably ready access to. How long do you think it takes to make a single scan like what I've linked to? If you guessed anything under an hour, you're way off. We need to take time to clean off the scanner (careful not to use something that will smear and make the scan blurry), clean the note, run the scanner (at high resolutions, with multiple passes, this can easily be half an hour on its own), and then through postprocessing make the note presentable (black background for attractiveness, digital removal of any gunk [hairs, for instance] which passed our cleaning), etc. Godot has the added challenge of actually getting access to to the notes: travelling to the Smithsonian, getting permission to access these (sometimes hundreds of years old) notes, and following the rules they set when giving him permission. This is not a simple venture, as anyone who's tried to negotiate the release of free media can attest. I'd be surprised if the average time for each note was under three hours (for comparison, some of my shorter FAs were written in less time).

Rather than complaining that a certain process is too easy, and thus the results of the Cup (whatever they may be) are unfair, why not try to learn about the process and what it involves, and once an understanding is reached, civilly discuss whether there should be a change to the points system? I mean, it guarantees we won't lose much needed contributions, broadens our own horizons, and builds a spirit of camaraderie that the Cup is supposed to promote. Hell, some may be interested in trying their hand at scanning notes - and that can only benefit the encyclopedia. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:44, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Samples of damage

Here are examples of some of the challenges restorationists might face:

Before	After	Notes
		Philippe Pétain portrait with odd "scribbly" damage in most darker areas of the picture. Note that there's more of it than just on the obvious dark bit - look a bit closer. Part shown: The chin and neck. Restoration incomplete, but forthcoming, probably this round.
		From File:Sébah & Joaillier - Sultan Mehmed VI.jpg, lower right corner. Bits of blue paper got stuck to the carte de visit.
More coming shortly

But, honestly, and I'm not going to link anything for reasons that will become clear - I recently did a Urania's Mirror series. It took quite some time, but the restorations were relatively easy as such things go, with a few notable exceptions. Now, the thing is, though... A lot of them had restorations attempted by other people. And by and large, they were... really bad. And a lot of people had tried things. Quite simply, for a lot of these things, it does appear that, if one of maybe four people don't do it, noone else can. Stains seem particularly hard for people to figure out what to do with (Though, to be fair, they can take hours.) The LoC is particularly bad with uneven tone to scans; Most of my savings on things I scan myself are down to not having to deal with as many tone issues. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 05:54, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I think 30 or 35 pts for an image is relatively fair. There are FPs that require far less effort than 30pts, but I am fine with that. What I am personally not OK with is having a set of 10+ somewhat similar images that get put into a set and then are worth 3 whole FAs. I am not ok with having those 10+ images being isnerted as a gallery in the bottom of a relatively limited-scope article, and then asking for 350+ pts for that. I genuinely believe that those 10+ pic require only the amount of research of a single image and I am pretty sure that the amount of overlap between the restoration is large at best. I wonder, how would the current edition of the wikicup look if every FP would keep the same amount of pts but the sets would only get 35+10(n-1) pts? (A 10-pic set would be worth 125pts not 350.) Could someone find out? If anyone wokring on FPs wants the 350pts at least they should word on 10 different pics that get spread across 10 articles instead of throughout a single section of an article. Nergaal (talk) 08:16, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Nergall, it's literally impossible to have work on one image apply to another. You seem to think there's some magic way that if I work on removing damage from one image, it will magically make damage go away from the next image in the set, or something else that I can't possibly figure out what you mean. Removing things like the damage shown is a whole ton of work, and there are no automated processes that can fix this sort of damage. I honestly cannot possibly figure out what your logic is here. If you're presuming that research is the rate-determining step of an image restoration; the need to do extensive actual research on images is rare (And it's generally things like finding the death date of the authors, etc). Finding something to work on is not something I will ever have problems with; admittedly, it does take a certain amount of time, but that's far dwarfed by the time spent actually restoring images.

Obviously, this depends on how you work. I have a wide range of subjects I'm willing to work on, as well as living in Edinburgh, where acquiring old books fairly cheaply is pretty easy. So there's that. As such, it seems like your argument is the same saying that I don't deserve credit for Creatures of Impulse as most of the sources are the same ones I used on W. S. Gilbert.

I'm honestly trying to understand your point, but I can't figure out how to make your argument make sense without presuming you're fundamentally misunderstanding something. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:06, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• A basic question should be asked: Are you working on these articles for your own reasons or to win or do well in the Wikicup? The Wikicup is pretty easy to game, a picture set that gets reviewed and done at once can be speedily done whereas my 50 Good Articles require months of waiting and need to be reviewed individually. Simply from a processing point, picture sets blow through the processes where other works are bottlenecked and delayed for longer periods than the entire round itself. You can make all sorts of criteria for defining points, but work is work and Wikipedia does not need a textbook for rules for something like the Wikicup. 30 images of rare bills in a gallery may be of lower "value" to general readers than 30 famous restored portraits of historical figures and articles on those figures themselves. Those out gunning for points to "win" and make a fuss rather than enjoying their Wikipedia work need to re-evaluate their motives. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 15:28, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Chris, I think you've hit the nail on the head with the reviewing point. For various reasons, the FP process is extremely efficient in the way that GAC, FAC and FLC aren't. This is likely a big part of what makes the FP points seem "unfair" to some people. Deciding how we as a group respond to that, or if we should respond at all, is difficult. J Milburn (talk) 16:26, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to see how you could justify responding to it without it being massively unfair. What are you going to do? I can't see anything you could possibly do that doesn't come down to telling productive members of the community to stop being so productive. It's probably impossible to win the Wikicup with FPs. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 08:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the point is this: We have previously talked mostly about balancing points in terms of difficulty of producing content of the requisite quality (FA is worth more points than FL, say) and value (bonus points, say). However, there's at least one other issue which is potentially pertinent- the efficiency of the system. Ideally, what we'd be able to do is balance the points so that they are fair all things considered, which will certainly mean that they are unfair when considering only one dimension (say, a highly important GA may be easier to write than an obscure but technical FA, but, all things considered, we may be justified in giving more points for the GA). J Milburn (talk) 16:25, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Last year, I promised to review any GA I was asked to review. Almost noone took me up on the offer, repeatedly made. I can't promise that this year, I'm much busier, but, in any case, for people who actually use the Reviews part of the Wikicup, things do seem to be dealt with fairly quickly. If people are complaining, but not actually using the resources offered to fix the issue, that's their problem, not FP's. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:50, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

• The issue with "balancing" FP points is that you'd have to treat set and individual nominations separately (if you did want to discourage set nominations in the first place, which I strongly disagree with: nominating as a set may take less time to review, but you still have to deal with 10, 20, 30 pictures and bring them up to snuff). Personally, I'd try and improve the efficiency of other processes: introduce points for Featured content reviews (FA, FL) as an incentive for Wikicup participants to review, not just allow but recommend that Cup participants request reviews from fellow Cup participants (beneficial for both parties, as both get points, assuming its all done neutrally and the article passes review). As an FL delegate it pains me to have to fail so many nominations because of a lack of reviews; if we have an incentive, and Cup participants work towards reviewing, a surge of reviewers will work to improve the Featured Content processes for everybody ... maybe even in a sustainable manner. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:48, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

An FP question

• For a FA you are limited by only being allowed one nomination + one joint nomination at a time. Content must have been worked on during the course of the WikiCup.
• For a GA you are limited by the willingness of a reviewer to take up the nomination. Content must have been worked on during the course of the WikiCup.
• For a DYK you are limited by certain date constraints, the willingness of a reviewer to review and the selection of the nomination once approved to join the queue. Content must have been worked on during the course of the WikiCup.
• What limits are there for a FP? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:54, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• Oversimplification on FA: with leave from an FA delegate, you can nominate more than one at the same time. This is usually as one nomination is wrapping up, however.

• Limits on FPC: a smaller reviewer base (check how many regular reviewers each process has), a greater number of supports required (five for FP vs. three for FA), the fact that for many images if you screw up you can't fix it (check out this nom for an example; at least with prose you can polish it further), and (I believe) content still has to have been worked on during the course of the Wikicup. Simultaneous noms are allowed (as at GA and DYK), and there is a firm deadline of 11 per nom (which may work for or against a nom). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:21, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• I think I have more successful FP noms than all other FCont together. I don't think I had to do any work any of those FPCs, while all my FLCs and FACs, plenty of which unsuccessful, took a very non-negligible amount of work. Nergaal (talk) 16:42, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• @Nergaal- For some reason you feel that it is necessary to demean the work of others. Is that what this forum is for?--Godot13 (talk) 23:36, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• Sorry if the impression you got was me trying to trivialize FPs. None of those FPs I had would have been eligible for points in the WC because I did not do any work to the pics. They were simple drive-by noms, which did not require any actual work from me. The only thing I wanted to point out about the "C" part (the nomination part) is that it is impossible to get drive-bys at FLC and FAC while at FPC that is not a limitation in any way. It does not imply that any WC-eligible FPs require a small amount of work; just that during/for the nomination part of 90% of FPCs the work is very limited. Nergaal (talk) 00:50, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

@Nergaal: This forum is discussing FPs in the context of the WikiCup, meaning that the issue of "drive-bys" (which quite rightfully do not receive any points) is completely irrelevant. Introducing this just serves to divert discussion from the actual issue. It doesn't even show that "during/for the nomination part of 90% of FPCs the work is very limited", as even if the images required adjustments, "drive-by" nominators would almost certainly be unable to adjust properly. Those that do require adjustments (such as my example above, or the recent image of Peter Carey) are sometimes irredeemable without starting from scratch, a situation rarely (if ever) faced by experienced editors at the other featured processes.

(On a further point: you are incorrect about it being "impossible" to get "drive-bys" at FLC, FAC, and/or GAC. Nominations of articles one hasn't written oneself can succeed, but it is considerably more difficult, such that in my experience it is almost never done. I only know of one that succeeded, an IP GAN nom for "Langit Makin Mendung", and even then I was there to deal with any issues) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:24, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Actinide also succeeded, if you want another example (this was from me in 2011, still kinda not getting the point that you should have actually done work on articles you nominated!). Double sharp (talk) 14:16, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

For that matter, I don't think I did nearly enough on Fanny Bullock Workman to claim it here, but it's just passed. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

By the way, if FP is supposedly so easy to get votes for, I'd just like to note that half my current FPs are failing for lack of sufficient votes, because I did what some here apparently want to insist on: Opened a lot of nominations at around the same time. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

So something that can have unlimited submissions, pass in only 10 days, and have the nominator be a supporter is way harder than an FAC? In other words, nominating 40 pics for FP simultaneously is fair? All I am seeing is you guys crying about having to score the same way everyone else does. Have fun next year, because I won't be in the WikiCup.--12george1 (talk) 02:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Personally I was sitting on the fence on this due to being out for the final but just seeing the scores, I have to say that to get that much for pictures is bordering on obscene. I do not wish to belittle others work but to get over 3,000 points in a month for a bit of image work I think is not really fair and reflective of scores. Things like that I know would discourage many people from participating fully if it happens next year. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

If you don't want to "belittle others [sic] work", maybe you shouldn't refer to their efforts as merely "a bit of image work". It's ridiculous that we can't have a discussion about this (and I'm looking at certain people on both sides...) without being aggressive or dismissive. J Milburn (talk) 16:35, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I doubt anyone who works with FPs will join the Wikicup for a long time, after the abuse that began being hurled around the moment it looked like someone who worked in them might win. I like that, after months of people abusing FPs, you decide to blame both sides. Because the people upset at their content being belittled are just as at fault, of course. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 10:59, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Please do not put words into my mouth. I very clearly did not say that. I've been one of the few people on this talk page defending you, and it gets harder for me to do so every time you post. J Milburn (talk) 17:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Then what, praytell, was the "on both sides" meant to mean? I realize you may want to be diplomatic, but blaming the victims isn't on.

“ "The most important rule is that the WikiCup is just a bit of fun — at the end of the day, we're all here to improve Wikipedia. The second most important rule is to treat Wikipedia and other users with respect. If through the WikiCup any participants are hurting the encyclopedia (whether through abusing the rules/systems, creating a negative atmosphere, or whatever else), they will be removed from the Cup. " - WP:Wikicup/Scoring ”

But that isn't true, is it? This competition, for the last six months, has been toxic, and I quit. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:08, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Peer Reviews

I made this suggestion earlier but the discussion got overshadowed a bit. Having experienced lengthy delays personally, I feel it would be beneficial to Wikipedia and to WikiCup participants if Peer Reviews are made part of the WikiCup. At the moment, people have to wait for months to get PRs done, if they are part of the Cup and eligible for points then it is likely that people won't have to wait long as people will want to do PRs for points. This would help the people requesting the reviews and also newer Cup participants. The scoring would be on a par with GANs, except slightly lower and with a minimum requirement of tangible comments made for improvement, for example 600 characters with a minimum of 3 improvement suggestions. This is just a theory and I hope it can be refined through discussion here. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:13, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

• I am in for having PR having same points as GAN and also having the same requirements. Nergaal (talk) 12:41, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Nergaal, my worry with that is that a GAC is necessarily "full"- you have to review all parts of an article. With a peer review, you could easily add 1500kb of text just talking about the images or reference formatting or something. Maybe we could specify that the review has to be relatively "full"- that is, not exclusively looking at a small area of the article. An image review or source spotcheck is not sufficient for points, for instance. I think the feeling is generally in favour of points for peer reviews- we just need to get it right. J Milburn (talk) 16:31, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
    • As I've said, put the same requirements that GANs have had this year, and give it the same points. In principle if an user gives a complete PR and then the article gets GANed, then the article can be quick-passed (and without additional points for GAN the PR would be in essence the same thing as a normal GAN). Nergaal (talk) 06:03, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Fairer groups

Right now, the groups/pools are, as far as I know, completely random. I think it should be like the following instead.

• Round 1 is still one group.
• Round 2 is seeded based on round 1. So for example if we have 8 groups again, the top eight scorers from round 1 are put into pot A, 9th–16th make up pot B, etc., and a random editor from each pot goes into each group.
• Round 3 is done the same way with round 2's scores.

Personally I would still have wildcards with this, but if it ruined the point of wildcards to some people then it's not like we have to have them. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 04:57, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

A FIFA-like or NFL draft-like system would be good, and could be a decent incentive to prevent some people from stacking/delaying entries for next rounds. Nergaal (talk) 09:37, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, the short version of my thought was that it should be like UEFA World Cup qualifying, but obviously not everyone knows what that means. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 15:10, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

UU: We have some discussions about the way pools will work next year at Wikipedia talk:WikiCup/Scoring. The proposal there is not necessarily in support of fairer pools, but in support of keeping more people in the competition longer. I'm not sure if the two are compatible, but they may be. J Milburn (talk) 16:58, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I take "scoring" to be a separate thing from "format", so I just put it here. I took a look and saw the "more people" discussion you're talking about, and no one else seems to be pedantic about the word, so I'll copy this section to that page since it seems to get more attention and the discussion can continue there.

And they are compatible, you just put an arbitrary number of editors in each pot to make the same number of groups. Or you can raise the number of pots if you want more people in each group instead. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 21:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Straw polls: 2014-2015

Ok, based on the discussions above, I am now opening some straw polls to help work out what changes, if any, we need to make for next year. J Milburn (talk) 17:10, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Peer reviews

Should peer reviews be awarded points, provided there are certain guidelines to prevent incomplete/shorter reviews are not eligible for points? If yes, how many points should reviews be worth?

Yes- peer reviews should be awarded points

1. tentatively yes. Anything that encourages collaborative editing should be encouraged, and Peer Review should be a vital cog in the wheel of article improvement. Harder to quantify than others though. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:18, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
2. As nominator, of course since it gets lots of backlog with people waiting months for reviews because there is little incentive to work there. Including it in the WikiCup would change that and also give newer editors a chance to pick up a few points. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 10:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Peer reviews should be worth fewer points than GA reviews

1. Support as the nominator. It is the one section of user related contributions that is untouched by the WikiCup and should be part. My opinion on point numbers are on the lower side but I don't mind so long as PR gets into the WikiCup. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 23:16, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Yes, it is unstructured, and even a few passing comments can be extremely helpful - would rather just give a base 2 point bonus and the minimum requirement of two pieces of advice in a Peer Review section of a given article. That way, if someone makes two driveby comments each to several articles at PR, I think it is in some ways more helpful than one in-depth analysis. There are plenty of subjects I know ziup about but could make a couple of comments for. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 05:18, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
3. My preference is for "lighter" requirements for a PR review to count - as Cas Liber notes minor comments can be very helpful - and a lower point top match for PR in comparison to GAR. I would also accept the same requirements and same point numbers as a second choice. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:48, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Good article reviews

Should good article reviews be worth more points? Indicate the amount you think would be appropriate in your vote.

No- Good article reviews should stay at 4 points per review

1. I feel that GARs should never overtake DYKs in relation to points. DYKs require hard work, individual research and continuous improvement while GARs require going along the GA and copyedit checklist and making sure that the article meets the list. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 10:41, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Four points, i.e. justa bit less than a DYK, seems right to me. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:49, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes- Good article reviews should be worth more points

1. torn on this. we really need to push for content. I could live with the same but maybe a bit more would be good. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Good article review discussion

• I guess it is a question of what is worth more to the 'pedia..one good article reviewed (and passed/failed) or one DYK. If I think of it like this, I don't think a GAR is 40% (or less) of a DYK nomination in value, so maybe increasing it to 8 or 10 points maybe (?) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Featured pictures

Does something need to be done about featured pictures? There has been concern that they are currently inappropriately handled. If yes, what?

Featured pictures should be worth fewer points

1. I suggest that FPs should score 20 points each. If that score were applied to this year's competition, the winner would still be Godot13, but he would win by a much smaller margin. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:32, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. The point numbers we were seeing were obscene, I think we maybe need to narrow the field on this a bit. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 23:17, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
3. 20 or 15 15-25 per FP. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 16:13, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
   • If you're going that low, Just remove FPs, FPOs, and FT's from the stystem, and stop pretending this is about anything but article work. Seriously. That's ridiculous, insulting, and wrong. Just have and article club, and stop pretending to care about any other content. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
4. Having different types of FP worth different values seems tricky and a source of potential problems down the road. Based on the speed of the various review processes, concisely illustrated by Sturmvogel 66 below (Review Speed), some kind of FP point reduction sounds appropriate, until such time as other review processes become more efficient (I’m not holding my breath). Below 20 points is insulting (and to me reflects a devaluing mentality as opposed to fairness in scoring). At 20-25 points, I would be looking to try and develop an FP set bonus structure. Since nobody appears to appreciate the difficulty of sets over individual FPs that’s highly unlikely to happen. At a minimum score of 25 points (a 30%+ reduction) I would hope there is the possibility of a lively (productive?) discussion.--Godot13 (talk) 23:53, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
   • Eh, on a second thought, I think 25 per FP is fair. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 06:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Featured pictures should not be worth fewer points

1. There hasn't been a single argument for devaluing that hasn't reduced to "how dare someone who works in a field I don't do well in this competition." This has been explicitly made at times, with people complaining that it was somehow wrong for people working in pictures to be doing better than people working in articles. Given people working in pictures aren't going to touch this toxic, hostile competition again anytime soon, making sure that we never return would be a terrible idea. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. The maximum number of points from a FP shoudl stay unchanged. However, I am in favor of a tiered structure. See comments below in the "Different kinds" section and in the "Discussion" section. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:25, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
3. ThaddeusB and especially Adam Cuerden's postings of how much work is required convinced me. If it takes more time, then of course it gets more points, that's the only thing that makes sense. And if Godot wins by a large margin because he put tons of effort into the category that takes the most work... then duh? –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 04:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Featured picture sets should be worth fewer points

1. FPs should be worth the same amount of points, but I think with sets of more than 3 images, any image past the 3 threshold should be worth half the points. It is still possible to runnaway with FP sets and slaughter everybody, but at least this discuorages sets in the same nom, and encourages separate FP noms. Nergaal (talk) 13:29, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Feature picture sets should not be worth fewer points

1. There hasn't been a single argument for devaluing that hasn't reduced to "how dare someone who works in a field I don't do well in this competition." This has been explicitly made at times, with people complaining that it was somehow wrong for people working in pictures to be doing better than people working in articles. Given people working in pictures aren't going to touch this toxic, hostile competition again anytime soon, making sure that we never return would be a terrible idea. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Sets should not be treated any differently than multiple individual nominations. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:23, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Different kinds of featured pictures (photos, scans, restorations, etc) should be worth different amounts

1. The main "problem" with FPs is one of perception - non-image people do not understand the amount of work that a good image requires. However, there is also a real problem - vastly different amounts of time/effort are required for some types of image work than for others. Therefore, I am in support of a tiered scale. In the original discussion above, I suggested 35pt for photographing and (extensive) restoration work, 10pt for scanning, licensing, and minor cleanup, and 3pts for obtaining the image from a third party and uploading it. Those numbers can easily be adjusted, but I feel a scale is needed. See more extensive comments below in discussion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:25, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Featured picture discussion

I've been keeping an eye on this year's competition and some of the discussions about featured pictures. I personally feel the best way to move forward from here is to eliminate points for featured pictures all together and keep this competition focused on articles. It would be a shame to have to do this, of course. But pictures and articles are just two very different items to work on and it's near impossible to compare the two and come up with a "correct" answer on which is harder. The nomination processes and the preparation for the nominations are very different for FACs/GAC and FPCs. It's great how many featured pictures have been produced over the past few years, likely as a result of this competition, however with only one-two editors utilizing the featured picture points and the remaining editors focusing on articles, I feel the best way to move forward is focus the competition on articles, though I'm expecting a lot of you will disagree with that. Gloss 17:37, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

So, you're basically saying "this produced a lot of great images - but bugger improving the encyclopedia! Let's make this article-only." It's not like people who specialize in pictures are going to jump over to articles. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I have nothing against improving the encyclopedia, you can clearly see that you've put those words in my mouth. I'm talking about this competition and this competition only. For the sake of this competition, only 6 editors claimed a featured picture out of 137 competitors this year, and it's been the same every year so far. It's not a widely used category, and it's a whole different ball game from what the other 131 editors are working on to stay alive in this competition. So maybe it's best to keep the two worlds apart and focus on the majority (131 to 6). Gloss 18:12, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

If the number of editors claiming points in a given field becomes a criterion for inclusion in the Wikicup, then we would also need to drop Featured Portals and both Featured and Good Topics.--Godot13 (talk) 18:37, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that the initial public discussion regarding the “over-valuation” of FPs was launched by two protest withdrawals from the competition (which seems to have gone missing from the archived talk page material). I understand the desire for competitors to feel there is a level playing field among the various categories in the Wikicup. What I do not understand, evidenced immediately above (and elsewhere on this and other talk pages) by several editors repeatedly, is the need to put down or minimize both the work involved in Featured Pictures, and their importance as content in an encyclopedic reference.

This is not said with any condescension or provocation intended – unless you have spent multiple hours at a time working on a single image at 400% size (give or take) using applications like Photoshop, Lightroom, or equivalent software, respectfully, you do not understand what goes into making the editing and restoration of Featured Pictures, or how maintaining (or creating) uniformity between images make FP sets more difficult than single image nominations.

Should FP and FP Sets be “devalued”? Never. Should they be worth fewer points? Perhaps, depending on the type of work involved (e.g., “merely scanning” versus scanning and restoration). Some sets required new articles to be researched and written (as did some single images). The large sets planned for the final round (coats of arms, and the BEP portraits) took months of restoration, not to mention researching and writing original articles to legitimately use them (in addition to placing over 90% in separate individual articles). The Cuban silver certificates took the better part of two multiple-day trips to the Smithsonian.

During the course of this year alone I made at least five trips (possibly more) from the New York area to Washington DC and spent 4-5 days per trip digitizing, cataloging, and doing condition assessments of currency. I have never done any notable restoration per se on a museum object (despite the often tedious work of alignment, color correction, and image preparation). Why is this relevant? I cringe to think that under some of the proposed scoring revisions offered during the year my work would be classified as “merely scanning”.

Like many of you, I worked my ### off on the Wikicup this year. But I worked too hard on the final round. It was not enjoyable producing a massive number of (unnecessary) points, and it provides little satisfaction winning (still unofficial) by such a large margin. Unfortunately, knowing the opinions of the FP critics throughout the year, it seemed necessary to produce a score that would “hold up” even when judged by the revisions/devaluations almost certain to take place moving forward.

What has given me great pleasure is furthering the advancement of numismatics, in particular U.S. banknotes. I would have done this with or without the Wikicup, but participating certainly drove me to work much harder than I otherwise would have thought possible.

I'm happy to engage in cooperative and constructive (and respectful) dialogue on how to best achieve some kind of harmony moving forward. I hope we can all keep in mind that this is a competition (game) ultimately for the benefit of Wikipedia...--Godot13 (talk) 06:54, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. Point taken on "devalued"- I have rephrased. J Milburn (talk) 08:51, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Adam C put it best in one of the original discussions above: It is easy to underestimate the amount of work required to do all types of image work. Photography might feel like "go to a location and push a button" to a casual photographer, and indeed that may be all that is required for casual photography, but professional quality photography is much more involved. And no, it is not a matter of havign better equipment - skill trumps equipment by a large factor. A high quality image involves carefully picking prospective, angle, and lighting (which may come down to good luck) to get things just right. And it normally involves post-processing to clear up minor, barely perspectable flaws. A professional photographer will normally be happy to get one truely good image out of a session of photographing the same subject for an hour or more. The kind of restoration work Adam does is even more involved, and nothing at all like knowing the right buttons to push in Photoshop. I can easily understand why he has been upset greatly by people claiming pictures don't take much effort (or worse aren't very important).

Obtaining permission to access/relicense a professional photo of someone else's can also be quite involved. And scanning an image, while less work than restoring or creating one, is not trivial. Obtaining a great image on the first try is virtually unheard of, and even a great image will normally require "minor" (perhaps an hour of) postprocessing to get it looking as good as possible.

Even just uploading, categorizing, formatting, etc. an existing free image can be a fair bit of work. I often do this for my articles, and it usually takes a half hour to do it right.

Regardless of the amount fo work required, there is the other issue raised by some people who said or implied image work is not important. Those people are utterly wrong. A well-written article with an amateur (or no) picture looks just as amateurish as a poorly written article. Fighting the perception that Wikipedia is unreliable requires effort on all fronts, and image work is no less valuable. So any point adjustment should be based purely on work required, not importance.

As someone who has extensive article experience and a good amount of image work (mostly outside Wikipedia), I can say that "technical work" (scanning, obtaining re-licensing, minor restoration such as rebalancing the colors, etc.) is usually about as much work as an average DYK. Ten points seems fair, given that a DYK can easily earn lots of bonus points. "Creative work" (detailed restoration, photography, drawings, etc.) takes a good deal more effort. I do not think it is vastly different than the amount of work required for an average GA. Now, some GAs require a lot more work than others and some pictures require a lot more work than others. GA has the multipler to partially compensate for extra work, while FP does not. The current 35 points seems reasonable. Finally, I would like to see a small amount fo points awarded to those who "find" existing high-quality images suitable for Wikipedia and go through the efforts of properly uploading, describing, and categorizing them. In theory this will open FP up to more people since no special skills are required, while giving non-image people an idea of how much work is required in even the easiest FP cases. Perhaps 3 points could be given for such work.

The only issue with a tiered system is that some judgement calls will have to be made, but I trust the vast majority of participants to fairly assess their own work and the judges to weed out an bad apple that tries to exploit the system. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:23, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Here's what I think everyone's real beef about FP's. They can score points so quickly, and that from a non-FP standpoint, makes competing against users who do FP's for lack of a better word, frustrating (don't get me wrong, this is nothing personal). Aside from lowering the FP points that I have agreed with aove, I'm afraid there isn't much that can be done to prevent such scoring outbursts and lulls (I don't think it is right to devalue sets). YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 06:42, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

My 2¢: In the past round, Godot13 produced 181 FP's in 61 days. Assuming an average of 6 hours per day doing nothing but FP's, that's one FP, and 35 points, in 2 hours. That seems like a much higher point accrual rate than possible with GA's, FA's, FL's, FPO's, DYK's, or ITN's. Even though FP's are undoubtedly important, the effort involved is significantly less than with other types of recognized content. - Ypnypn (talk) 21:08, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Vital articles

Should the WikiCup take greater account of vital articles? If so, how?

No- The WikiCup should not include vital articles

1. I think the points multiplier strikes the right balance. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. I stand by what I said last year, vital is flawed and arbitrary and shouldn't be relied on for extra points. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:26, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
3. I agree with The C of E, the vital article lists are too inconsistent, with lots of things that are just as famous or basic as what makes it on being left out. If the lists were actually good, it would be good to award extra points, but they're not. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 04:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Bonus points

Should bonus points be adjusted "so that points accumulate faster at the low end and less fast at the high end"?

No- linear progression is fine

1. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Fine as it is with the multi-wiki and rolling 5 year rule. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 23:26, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
3. If anything, articles like Jesus that are on every single wikipedia should get a bonus because it there were more languages then they would have for sure more links. I think from a fairness pow, any article above 150 (or 100) should be worth even more. Nergaal (talk) 13:39, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes- bonus points should be changed

1. I think the multipliers can get out of hand for very well-covered subjects (which aren't necessarily very important topics - cities and species are low hanging fruit that often get made early in a Wiki's history, sometime by a bot, regardless of actual importance). Additionally, while some articles are certainly harder to write because they are more well covered and/or broad in nature, there is a limit to this. A broad subject (say "birds") might be 5x harder to write than a narrow one ("Yellow-throated sparrow"), but is not much easier to write than a very broad one ("animals"). Thus, I would prefer less accumulation of additional points at the upper end. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:44, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Bonus points discussion

I'm not sure of the merits of receiving bonus points in DYK for expanding older stubs. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm a strong advocate of anything encourages the expansion (rather than the creation) of articles, especially ones that have been in poor shape for so long. I believe that the bonus points helped foster this expansion (I know it encouraged me to pursue older stubs). I got strong satisfaction out of seeing people earn the extra points, knowing that they helped improve something older. That said, I haven't heard a good reason to scrap the bonus points but am willing to listen if someone feels strongly. Regards, Ruby 2010/2013 01:40, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I would also like to raise a discussion on something that was raised last year but got buried under the text. Nergaal made a good suggestion for DYK that for every year that the article existed 2009 and before, an extra bonus point could be awarded on top of the 5 for the 5 year rule. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 13:53, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I would be in favor of this. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:02, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I would also support this. So if an article was created in, say, 2006, it would earn 8 points (5 + 1+ 1+ 1)? Ruby 2010/2013 16:33, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Rounds discussion

Should rounds be adjusted so that more people stay in the competition for longer? Should some points carry over from round-to-round? Should we have a "draft" system to ensure fairer pools?

Rounds should keep people in the competition for longer

1. Somehow, but not sure how. Maybe fewer and longer rounds? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Add more users to the rounds. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 16:10, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Points should not carry from round-to-round

1. The rounds should be completely separate. I guess this is to stop people from delaying entries or to make an epic performance in a previous round not worthless, but if we really want to do that then we should abandon elimination entirely and have one long round, and that would be really boring. Non-entirely random groups will make more points than most other advancees in a particular round worth something, and keep the rounds from weirdly flowing into each other. Also, early contributions would be worth more in that they would help you through rounds they weren't in—people nearly idling for a couple months then getting through on a previous round's points would be really annoying. (Having just some points carry over might fix that, but not the other problems. Also few would be happy with the exact fraction, and it's just not as simple as discrete rounds.) –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
2. No, I think the current system is fine. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:36, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
3. Agree with the above. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

We should have a draft for fairer pools

1. Support as nom, in a weird way. I'll put more detailed thoughts in the discussion section. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 18:02, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Pools discussion

• Right, this proposal also involves keeping slightly more people in the competition for longer, which is why it doesn't strictly belong in one category, but it's mostly incidental to make the round progression more symmetrical. You'll see.

Round 1 would be one group. The top 81 advance to 9 groups of 9.

The best 9 performers each go to into a different group, then 10th-18th, etc.. It could be by random selection, which is simpler, or a "zigzag" where 1st-9th go into groups 1-9, 10th-18th go in 9-1, and so on.

Best two in each group and nine wildcards advance to 3 groups of 9. Seeding is the same.

Then best two in each group and three wildcards go into the final round. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 18:15, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

There's nothing stopping you from voting in three different sections, here- as you say, there are three different questions. 19:01, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Anything else?

Are there any other changes you would like to see for next year's competition? J Milburn (talk) 17:10, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Delete text from WP:WikiCup/Scoring

The constant attacks on FPs and the management's failure to do a thing about them shows this should be deleted:

“ The most important rule is that the WikiCup is just a bit of fun — at the end of the day, we're all here to improve Wikipedia. The second most important rule is to treat Wikipedia and other users with respect. If through the WikiCup any participants are hurting the encyclopedia (whether through abusing the rules/systems, creating a negative atmosphere, or whatever else), they will be removed from the Cup. To quote Durova, winner of the 2009 Cup, "Wikipedia is the real winner". Let's hope we can keep it that way. ”

That's a lie. Noone will be removed, they'll be allowed to drive people out, then vote to declare their contributions worthless. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:46, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Of the several people who have been in favor of having a status quo for FPs, I have failed to see anyone that has moved their own opinion anywhere closer to the middle (as in agreeing at least partially to change the status quo). If people are of the way "my way or I am out" then I don't feel inclined to empathize with them. Nergaal (talk) 13:44, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Review speed

My only major concern about the Cup scoring process is that the winners of the last few years have been able to exploit processes that review submissions far more quickly than any of the article review processes. The last couple of years it's been DYKs with their QPQ policy that enormously speeds reviews and this year FP. In contrast it can take a month or more to get a GA or FAC reviewed. I was impressed that one finalist managed to get four FACs reviewed this round as I only managed a pair myself and that is likely the record over the entire history of the Cup. I'd never make the argument that FPs are easier to do than articles, but it's undeniably easier to get them reviewed.

So how do we restore some sort of parity? If I have everything all to hand and don't have any distractions, I can write a 6 to 8K GA-quality article from scratch in 3-4 hours or less, depending. For subjects with more available information or detail, that roughly doubles for a 20K article, etc. My 50K article on HMS Illustrious (87) took me about a solid week, writing 3-4 hours each day. So I could have written something like 7-8 GAs in that time and gotten more points, if I'd been able to get them reviewed in a timely manner. It happens on rare occasions, but it does happen, so you can't discount the possibility.

In general I think that people have been more concerned about the amount of work involved when assigning values for the Cup than about the speeds through the review process. We need to address the issue directly as we have no way of speeding up reviews unless we want to massively increase the points awarded for reviews (which I'd discourage, although a modest increase would probably be beneficial). Awarding bonus points for longer DYKs was a good start, although the bar may be set too low at 4500 words, and I think we might want to consider doing the same for GA and FA articles. I'd suggest that the minimum bonus for those be set at 10K as my average GA-quality article is about two-thirds of that size. I'd also like to see the bonus scale for longer articles so that a 50K article has some sort of multiplier so that very long article are rewarded commensurately. We can discuss how to the scale the multiplier and how the multiplier ties into the existing bonus system as I think both should apply, although I think that the current linear bonus scale might need to be reworked so that a very long article like User:Cwmhiraeth's 86K Sea, that's on a hundred or so other wikis, doesn't win the Cup single handed.

The more competitive people among us, myself included, have long exploited the points available through the review processes that work quickly and I think that it's past time to rebalance the Cup's points to account for the work involved and how fast it gets reviewed. Having won once I'm not as hung up about winning as I once was, but I'd like to have a real chance to win without being overwhelmed by a flood of bonus-point heavy DYKs or speedily reviewed FPs.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:42, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

This all sounds very sensible (to someone who is essentially a WikiCupOutsider) but I might comment that the amount of work on Sea was very considerable. Not only was the article long, but being a major topic, it more or less inevitably attracted a substantial "audience" of editors, both during the construction phase and during FAC, who expressed enough opinions to consume many hours of our time. Getting an article of this type through to FA is therefore both slow and risky. To a non-competitor, the chances of success often seem slim; to a competitor, I imagine the delays and amount of input required must be gut-wrenching. As a rough rule of thumb, I'd cheerfully predict that the amount of hassle would be exactly proportional to the length of the list of other wikis ... and hence to the resulting score: i.e. the existing scoring system is exactly fair, because risk, effort and delay (all critical in a competition) are well and truly factored in. Just my tuppence-worth. By the way I think the Cup admirable in its aims and methods. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

My 2 cents. In the past, the DYK flood was dealt in two ways: decrease the value of DYKs, and give bonuses for working on the higher traffic articles. The people who wanted to work had their attention grabbed from DYKs. Currently, FPs are not a problem, but FP sets. I truly believe that most people attending the cup are happy to see FPs, so FP contributors are actually welcome here (although that might not be visible here). I believe these contributors should be attracted to to cup and encouraged to participate in non flood-nominations (in other words tweak the discrepancy between the rewards of regular FPs and those for FP sets). Nergaal (talk) 13:51, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Recent deaths

Postings to the recent deaths section of ITN are not current eligible for points. This is not intentional, but rather an artifact of the fact such postings didn't exist when the Cup started. From an ITN perspective, such posts have teh exact same requirements as any other post - a well written, throughly updated article. However, by nature, it is sometimes easier to get an RD posting because there isn't a lot to say about someone dying. If the article, was already in great shape, there isn't much to do (unlike other current events, which enatil a lot of new information). On the other hand, sometime articles are in very poor shape and take more work than would typically be required.

Recent deaths should logically be worth some number of points. The simpliest thing to do is just make them worth 10 like normal ITN posts, but with teh caveat (which applies to all ITN material), that substantial work is required to claim Cup points. If an article was already in great shape, it simply wouldn't earn any points here. The alternative, is to make RD worth less (say 5 points). I am fine with eitehr option, but feel RD should definitely count for something. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:38, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I think they should be the same as any other ITN post. As you say, we already have a substantial work rule, so there's no need to worry about that. –Ugncreative Usergname (talk) 04:16, 4 November 2014 (UTC)