Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Winners
Exactly a year ago, I began a contest with a promise of financial rewards for people who most improved core articles on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, due to financial difficulties on my end, I was unable to award the winners in a timely manner. I sincerely regret this. I am grateful, however, that several generous individuals have come together in support of this effort, believing as I do in the value that this adds to Wikipedia's content. It is because of their generosity and determination that we are able to award the authors of seven important articles which have improved the level of Wikipedia's content significantly. I am especially glad that contributors can be rewarded for their work, because, after all, it is their efforts, more than anything else, that make Wikipedia a valuable resource.
The original judges of the Core Contest scored the articles independently and assessed them by various measures, such as difficulty, the amount of new material written, and of course, its quality, the number and quality of new references, illustrations, illustrations, etc. Each judge then ranked the articles in the order of their assessment. The final ranking of the articles was determined by adding the judges' ranks together, and ordering the articles according to that sum.
The judges are pleased to announce their choices for the winning articles:
5th place (tie). did=174131549 Emily Dickinson by Yllosubmarine
5th place (tie). 174483226 Electricity by BillC
4th place. 35170 Raphael by Johnbod
3rd place. 9&oldid=170891672 Reproductive system by Earthdirt
2nd place (tie). did=172789349 Willem Barentsz by Sherurcij
2nd place (tie). did=173762325 Domestic sheep by User:VanTucky (now known as Steven Walling) and the best-improved article by a single author
1st place. 61880&oldid=173901969 Deforestation in Brazil Blofeld_of_SPECTRE (now known as User:Dr._Blofeld)
However, the list of winners is not complete! The combined ranking of the judges identified the article 173599632 Jane Austen by Simmaren and Awadewit as the single most improved article. However, as the combined work of two significant authors, it was placed in a category by itself.
These winning articles are indeed in a class by themselves, with many adding over 30 kB of beautifully written, richly illustrated, and heavily referenced new prose. The top article, Deforestation in Brazil did not exist on Wikipedia prior to the contest and highlights a critical problem facing our planet. Domestic sheep and Emily Dickinson have become Featured Articles, while Electricity quickly became a Good Article.
All the participants of this contest can be proud of their accomplishments; the judges found the entries to be stellar. The contest focused an incredible outpouring of energy into the most fundamental articles needed by an encyclopedia: articles that are too often ignored. As one judge noted, the core articles of Wikipedia improved more in this two-week contest than in a whole year of Article Improvement Drives. Congratulations to everyone on a job well done; we're all winners for each other's work!
If anyone has outstanding questions about the contest, you are kindly directed to ask them on the talk page of Proteins or to me personally via email, and not here. Thank you and congratulations once again!
Once again, I am especially grateful to those people who believed in the contest and made sure that it was carried through to completion. Danny (talk) 00:44, 25 November 2008 (UTC)