Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Entries/AprilMay2023 archive

• See archives of past competition for inspiration: 2007, 2012a, 2012b, 2013, 2014, 2015 , 2017, 2021 and 2022.

The contest runs over six weeks from 00:01 UTC April 15 to 23:59 UTC May 31 2023. Generally editors nominate the articles they intend working on beforehand as it might help folks to reserve an article so they can prepare by gathering some book/paper sources, however nominating material after this period ends is okay too—editors can still submit material they improved during the period. When the six-week editing period ends, the judges will review the submissions and announce the winners within two weeks. Other editors are welcome to comment on the entries.

The potential article pool includes vital and core articles. Editors are also welcome to improve and nominate an improvement to a broad or important article not on the two lists if they explain why their article should be considered.

When you submit an article you improved for the contest, please list a specific revision that you're happy with, as well as a link to the revision on which you built your improvements. For example, this would show improvements made to the article Lebensraum. Only edits made during the contest period may be included in the diff link.

List of contest entries

List here articles submitted, and the diffs showing the improvement. Multiple segments are allowed to clarify the diffs submitted by a particular editor in a busy article. Co-submissions are allowed. Judges will comment on entries immediately below them, clarify benefits gained and offer feedback on what else needs to be done. Within two weeks of the conclusion, prizewinners will be announced. An example of how to lay out a sample entry as follows.

A very core example

• Nominator:
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments:

Simón Bolívar

• Nominator: Vami_IV (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: This entry is largely symbolic. I have authored a B-class article and it is currently undergoing its first review at GAN. As such the work is mostly done. I do not plan to participate overmuch this year, but I hope my boldness will inspire others to similar feats to mine. –♠Vamí_IV†♠ 18:21, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Your improvements are certainly a huge landmark in TCC's history. Good luck with your GAN! Aza24 (talk) 20:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Parkinson's disease

• Nominator: Lalaithan (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Initially caught my eye as one of the lowest rated (C) Top-importance WP Medicine articles, it's a level 4 VA & former FA. Obviously a few marked sections need updating but I've noticed duplicated and contradictory information sprinkled around. A lot of the citations are "old" per WP:MEDDATE so I'd like to look at them closer.

Comments by judges

Great to see a medical article here, especially one with such high pageviews! It seems like the median age of sources is 2014, a few years past WP:MEDDATE. There may be differing opinions within the panel of judges how much 'added encyclopedic value' one can add to a former FA (I think this is a high C/low B, but I don't know anything about the topic). Myself, I value highly when people replace (misleading) obsolete information, which is expected to exist in an older medical article. Do make use of the expertise of WP:WikiProject Medicine when needed (User:SandyGeorgia may have some wisdom to share). Note that edits before the start of the contest don't count. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

Thanks for the ping, Femke. I've had the article watchlisted forever, and it's in very bad shape and will require considerable updating from WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS knowledgeable editors. It is so far out of whack, and gets hit by so many students and lesser proficient editors that I gave up long ago, so any improvement will be welcome! To compete with the other heavy hitters here will require getting the best editors at WP:MED involved, so a talk post to WT:MED would help. I also recommend using the referencing method used at FA dementia with Lewy bodies, because we really should be identifying where in long journal articles one can find the content cited (all of the recent medical FAs have gone the same direction). The structure of the article at DLB may also be helpful as a guide, as the conditions are related. There is much much more than tweaks needed here; a top-to-bottom rewrite would not be remiss. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:57, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, improvements never happened here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:25, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• Great choice - averages nearly 6,000 views pd which I doubt any other entry will match. A lot of work, I expect. Talking to a specialist charity might be a good idea. Johnbod (talk) 03:53, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Crime

• Nominator: Thebiguglyalien (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Vital 3, appears on 103 other wikis, was briefly GA 2006–2007. Disorganized, unfocused, and mostly uncited, with lots of key aspects missing. I've been meaning to fix this one up for a while.

  I mainly focused on structure and sourcing, cleaning out most of the unsourced and unnecessary content and replacing it with a better structure. Maybe some day in the future I'll go back and build on that to bring it up to GA. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:44, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Comes close to the ideal article for The Core Contest. Supercore, there should be a good amount of sourcing available, and the article has not seen love in a long time. Readability is somewhat low (f.i. https://readabilityofwikipedia.com/check/Crime), even if we can expect quite a general audience for this article. A mixed references / further reading section does not inspire confidence. Good luck! —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:01, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
• Definitely a good place to put your attention. There is little precedent for high-quality articles of such broad, hard to define, subjects on WP. I recommend taking a look at Torture if you need any ideas. The only other thing I can recommend is trying to avoid any sense of the Western world as the default for a topic like this. Aza24 (talk) 19:17, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Nearly 1,100 views pd. A tricky choice. Currently seems rather UK-leading, and law-based, but it seems important to keep it global. I notice almost all your editing is on US subjects, so there's a trap there. Johnbod (talk) 17:55, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Jurisprudence

• Nominator: Dawkin Verbier (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + [1] ) (added by Femke, two edits in April)
• Comments: 21,000 page views a month; C-class with multiple issues, including OR and requiring additional sources. The scope of the article is somewhat lacking and giving unequal weight to different jurisprudential schools, with some theories being only briefly discussed. Style of the article is also somewhat flamboyant and unencyclopaedic. Planning on adding scope and sources, and verifying/removing unsourced claims. Also need to merge Philosophy of Law into the article.

Comments by judges

• Could definitely use some care, the huge unused further reading section is rather concerning! I question the need for a "History" section at all (which seems very difficult to write convincingly) and would recommend hugely trimming the ext links. You're definitely correct about the uneven coverage between schools of thought, but there should be more generalization in general, this isn't an outline but a topic article. That being said, the skew towards Western thinking atm is rather extreme, surely there are huge jurisprudence traditions outside of the occident; one thinks of Sharia and Legalism for instance. Aza24 (talk) 05:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

International law

• Nominator: Sammielh (talk) 09:11, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: A level 4 vital article with roughly 360,000 page views in the last year. It is largely uncited, with a big discrepancy between the history section and a number of later sections which are missing any prose. I'm not sure how much I will get done but excited to give it a shot!

I generally retained the structure (although I added a section on international actors, removing 'courts and enforcement' which had duplicated and tangential information) and focused on expanding the lists into text (+2,308 words) and adding references (+207 refs) throughout. I didn't quite get around to international legal theory and there are a few sections which could benefit from expansion (and probably a copyedit) but now there is hopefully a lot more information on the page, rather than simply linking to other articles. Sammielh (talk) 09:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Great choice! I wonder if there is some kind of conspirarcy to teach law to us judges. If there is, I'm perfectly okay with it :). The article has generously been given a B rating, but there are too many issues that make a C a better rating: many many lists, scarcity of images (but still a WP:SANDWICH!), the use of dictionary as a source about how Islamic World foreign relations.. I wish you good luck! —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
• Seems like a decent structural outline is there, but everything is too "listy" as Femke says... The "History" has some decent content though, even if its worthy of a little trimming. The Further reading has many good sources, they just need to be used! Please heavily trim the external links – Aza24 (talk) 22:33, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• This is absolutely brilliant, Sammielh. Good choice. 〜 Festucalex • talk 10:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Prehistory

• Nominator: Joe Roe (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff) - no edits made during contest
• Comments: A level 2 vital article with c. 1200 views per day (so just scrapes into the 100 most-viewed archaeology articles), currently C-class. It's tagged with {{more citations}}, though some sections are better sourced than others. The main problem I can see is lack of coverage. The article is on the whole far too short, what discoveries and events make it into each section seems almost completely random, and there's a strong bias towards Europe and Western Asia throughout. – Joe (talk) 07:54, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• 🎉🎉 A level 2 article! Like you said, the sourcing standard in the article is highly variable, and I imagine many of these old sources will be showing some datedness. In general the article is okay with respect to WP:MTAU, but I do notice jargon in a section headings (Chalcolithic definitely, Palaeolithic maybe too). It may be worth hunting a more accepted / modern image for migrations (assuming the 'accuracy is disputed' in the caption is accurate). I'm excited to see the article become less biased towards Eurasia. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
• The Occident bias is a good observation (I highly recommend publications by Liu Li for China-related prehistory), but also missing is any substantial coverage of so many cultural aspects, i.e. Prehistoric music, Prehistoric religion, Prehistoric art, etc. A great place to put your time and effort. Aza24 (talk) 22:39, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Great choice, & best in the hands of an expert. Johnbod (talk) 15:19, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Ellesmere Island

• Nominator: Reidgreg (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Level 4 vital article, B-class, with 156k views last year. I wanted to bring this to GA for early next year and thought I could start working on it as part of this contest (though unlikely to rank high). I've gathered some sources via the Wikipedia library and hope to visit my local research library later this month (unsure if I'll find top-notch sources). The article would benefit from expansion in a few areas and a lot of layout work/reorganizing (perhaps using the FA Antarctica as a guide).
  • Progress notes: I'd hoped to get further along with this... but am still pleased with the progress. I've made the expansions which were ready today, more than doubling the article's wordcount, with new History and Climate sections, and intros for Geology, Geography, Ecology, Settlements, and Transportation. Everything about it would continue to benefit from additional work, but it's heading in the right direction. The organization is not perfect and it could use a copy edit, but I think that can wait until I'm finished expanding it; hopefully it's understandable enough to be 'live'. I didn't get too far down my reading list so it relies pretty heavily on one source right now. Hopefully I can add more balance in the nearish future. – Reidgreg (talk) 01:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

Normally I lament the misclassification of C articles as B articles, but here we're likely misclassifying a C as a B. I think it should be quite obvious what's missing: geology, a prose description of climate and climate change (rather than three massive tables). A lot of the glacier section can be rewritten with modern secondary sources to avoid a random collection of time frames. We have sentences like "It is forecast to remain on Ellesmere Island in 2020". I found editing Antarctica quite straightforward, so hope you'll be able to find sources as easily. Only thing that requires more sensitivity is the description of High Arctic relocation. Great choice, good luck! Femke (alt) (talk) 07:13, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Donatello

• Nominator: Johnbod (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement)
• Comments: Level 4 vital article, C-class, with 279k views last year. The majority of it remains the EB 1911 text, just patched up over the years. Only 22 refs (+EB 1911), most to rather non-specialist sources.
  • • Almost entirely rewritten. Words up by 6556 from 1781 to 8337, refs up from 22 to 171, many using multiple sources. Av ref age 2019, from 2016, and quality of refs vastly improved. Whole chunks of his career were missing, or just referred to in a line. There were many errors, or out of date info. Johnbod (talk) 23:54, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

A great place to put your attention. A word or two more about his influence might be fitting, and perhaps the works list could be split into a separate article. Of course, incorporating the "2020 discovery" section better and scrutinizing the "Popular Culture" portion may be warranted as well. Good luck! – Aza24 (talk) 07:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

This article is a tour de force, a top quality review of the literature. This is "featured article" standard without a doubt (though I agree about the "popular culture" section, I've never seen one that wasn't a trivia magnet). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:28, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Ferrari

• Nominator: Marisauna (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: From old (13 April) to new (31 May). Diff
• Comments: Level 5 vital article, B-class, appears on 89 other wikis and had a little over one million views in 2022. As it stands it's a mess of trivia, misplaced information, and text citing either nothing or hagiographic primary sources. I plan to do a drastic rewrite, and I have been working on this and related articles for about a month now (with some breaks): Ferrari#Identity is almost all my text, as are Prancing Horse and History of Ferrari#Early history.
• 1 June: I came in hoping to finish the whole article, but I was only able to publish rewrites of the lead, History section, and parts of the Motorsport section. Along the way I removed a fair bit of trivia, proseline and other gunk but there's still much work to be done. Real-life issues (like finding an apartment and job) got in the way at points, I overestimated the amount of material on hand (reliable Ferrari sources are surprisingly hard to find), and I definitely spent too much time working on related articles like "History of Ferrari" (shaping up to be enormous) and "Prancing Horse" (currently just about perfect, in my eyes). This has all been a huge learning experience for me: before this March I had never undertaken a task as huge as a total article overhaul, especially a core article with as much to discuss as this one. I will continue to work on "Ferrari," and other automotive articles, in the months to come. See you next year! Marisauna (talk · contribs) 00:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Nice one! The first thing that stands out to me is the horrible display of sales data. This should be in a simple line (or column) graph, rather than duplicated in a huge table / massive graph. The work you've done so far looks great, so good luck with the rest :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:18, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Nice! Like so many car articles, the abundance of original research and poor sourcing is only matched by the superfluity of images. Your work on the identity section seems really good, so if you can get the rest of the article to the same standard, that would be fantastic! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:44, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit (rover), and Opportunity (rover)

• Nominator: Artem.G (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff) Diff MER, Diff Spirit and Diff Opportunity
• Comments: Not that core as most entries, but still important articles on Martian rovers. All three are C-class, and had almost 250K (Oppy), ~100k (Spirit), and 70k (MER) views in 2022. The articles are poorly sourced, poorly structured, and had so many images they were painful to scroll and read. Spirit and Oppy ones would be identical in some parts (design, history, instruments) and would share it with the MER article, and this is the reason to work on all three together. I've already brought two articles on Mars rovers to GA (Sojourner (rover) and PrOP-M), and will try to rewrite these ones. Artem.G (talk) 17:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• After last year's taste of success, why not do a second and a third article, all in one year! Two of the three are VIT5. The third borderline in terms of coreness (so that will count relatively little towards the "best additive encyclopedic value", but we've got a few more borderline entrants). Total pageviews just under half a million. Reading the article, I see that Oppy is an "official" nickname, cool! I see you've done the initial moving of meh content to lower pageview articles already, so you're working from a cleaner slate. It's difficult to avoid WP:SANDWICHing if you have such a long infobox, which can get ugly in V22. I see a surprising lack of scientific articles in Oppy; there must be some literature out there, I assume. Good luck! —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:16, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Declarative knowledge

• Nominator: Phlsph7
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments:The article itself is not a vital article but it's the most-discussed form of knowledge, which is a level 2 vital article, and it's the main topic of epistemology, which is a level 3 vital article. Since the beginning of the year, it has had about 25k user page views per month (including its redirects). It's an omnipresent phenomenon, for example, most of what is found on Wikipedia is an expression of declarative knowledge. I've already implemented most of the changes I had planned by expanding it from a stub to a proper article. I would like to get it to GA status so I'm open to further ideas on how to improve it. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:33, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

Curious to see that jump in views from about January, views over last year is 130k. Nice topic, would certainly consider it squarily equivalent to VIT5 level (maybe going in the direction of VIT4?). With a tough nut like this, I will very much keep WP:make technical articles understandable in mind, and general readability concerns. I see an admirable job already in places. The first paragraph is quite good (except I don't know what "It is not tied to a specific purpose" really means). The second paragraph is arguably too long, as 200-300 word paragraphs are more typical of academic writing rather than general audience writing. A shorter lead (400 words?) may work better.

Very impressive improvements so far :). The license of the chocolate photo is a bit questionable, so you may want to switch that out. A good GA reviewer may be able to help you polish the article before the end of May. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:43, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the actionable suggestions! I've tried to implement or at least approximate them. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:16, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Ubangi River

• Nominator: Amakuru
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff) - no changes made during contest
• Comments: This is classified as a level 4 WP:Vital article, but is currently little more than a stub. Not sure what sourcing I can get hold of at the moment, but interested to see if judges think this is a viable case. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 10:25, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• A big river, but it only gets ~50 views pd. It's unfair to call it a stub, and the basic riverine stats are well-covered, but settlements and trasport along it are not directly mentioned etc. Johnbod (talk) 13:05, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Antonio del Pollaiuolo

• Nominator: Johnbod (talk) 15:29, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
• Improvements: (start + improvement)
• Comments: A bonus ball here, with Donatello above my main entry. It's not a vital article, was rated start-class, with a very pathetic 12.5k views last year - hopefully a better article will get more. Again, the majority of it remains the EB 1911 text, just patched up over the years, with an excessive number of errors, not all based on Vasari. The old version had 5 refs, 2 to dictionaries on the pronunciation. Johnbod (talk) 15:42, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
  • Almost completely rewritten, with citations going from 5 to 73 (many of these citing multiple books). Raw bytes up from 10,887 to 30,630 - will be on DYK as a 5x expansion of text soon. A range of much better sources used, leaning heavily on the most recent monograph in English (Wright, Alison, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome, 2005, Yale). Johnbod (talk) 23:44, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
    • Currently on MP in DYK. Johnbod (talk) 03:43, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

The Holocaust

• Nominator: (t · c) buidhe 06:12, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
• Improvements: (start (April 20) + improvement diff)
• Comments: I rewrote the entire article to remove undue information, restore balance (eg. between Western and Eastern Europe in light of nearly all Holocaust killings happening in the latter location) and ensure all important aspects are covered based on recent scholarship. I ensured all information is cited and replaced weaker sources with more recent, high quality ones. I also used summary style to reduce the length of the article and increase readability. New sections were added covering attempts of the victims to survive, profiteering, perpetrator motivations, forced labor, legacy and remembrance, etc. The article passed a GAN.

Comments by judges

Wow! That must have been a daunting task, on such an extremely important topic! I see the GAN is well-underway too. For my fellow judges, these difficult diffs are sometimes easier to parse if you use Visual Diffs. (At least, on desktop, they recently broke it on mobile) —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:47, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Not an easy diff to parse. Lots of changes, for sure. I note the article size has reduced from 233K raw bytes (too long, for sure) to 90K. Johnbod (talk) 11:35, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Education

• Nominator:Phlsph7
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: This is my second entry. It's a level 2 vital article with a little over 1.9 million user page views in 2022. Reviewing these changes could be a challenge because they address many issues. The main points are to leave out overly specific details that do not belong in a general concept article, to include central topics that were missing before, and to have a clearer overall structure. A more in-depth explanation is found at Talk:Education#Changes_to_the_article. The edit summaries may also be helpful for some of the details not covered on the talk page. I would be glad to get some feedback on further improvements before I nominate it for GA. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:49, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Another amazing topic! And another one for which WP:EXPLAINLEAD and WP:ONEDOWN are important. What audience are you expecting for the lead? I think this is likely to attract people who are still in education who may prefer an easier style. For instance, I don't understand "A further issue is whether education is value-free or involves an improvement of the student". How is that a contrast? And members of what later in the lead? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:02, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Withdrawn entries

Klaipeda

• Nominator: Shadow of the Starlit Sky (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: (This is my FIRST contest, so be patient =) ) Level-5 vital article about a major city in Lithuania. Start-class assessment as of right now; needs more citations and copy editing due to extensive grammatical errors. Some sections seem quite unencyclopedic and crufty at times, and others include significant amounts of wikipuffery. Especially, all sections below "City municipality" needs extensive improvement and expansion. -- Shadow of the Starlit Sky 02:18, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

• @Femke Just messaged Pofka on his talk page if he would be willing to collaborate (waiting for his reply as of now). -- Shadow of the Starlit Sky 23:28, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

Great to see newer editors find their way to TCC! Like Georgetown above, the city isn't too big, and viewership is under the threshold for the Quarter Million Award if it were brought to GA. Its rich history makes me believe it is eligible for the contest, but you'll need to make very significant improvements to vie for the top spots. I've noticed Pofka has been improving the article recently. Note that you can sign up together for TCC, and working with an experienced editor can be very helpful. Edits before the start of the contest do not count unfortunately.

Working on neutrality always has a high "additive encyclopedic value" (the metric on which we judge articles), so that works. The article now uses a mix of general references (Klaipėda#References and inline references Klaipėda#Notes). For articles above ~500 words, it becomes really difficult to know what text is supported by these general references, so a conversion to a pure inline citation style would be benificial. The city is part of a free economic zone. Has this impacted worker's right or life in the city? Further work is needed on copy-editing too, and removing spam (external links within the article's body). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:35, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Being recognized as one of the finest content creators in Lithuania's topic, I will surely help to improve this article. Keep me informed about further actions and if any help will be needed. -- Pofka (talk) 07:16, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

History of geography

• Nominator: Freedom4U (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: I was really dissatisfied with the state of the article and made a mental note to come back to it a month ago. I think this is the perfect excuse to spend some time editing it. There's a dearth of sourcing in the article, much of the content is written from a eurocentric lens, and there appears to be a significant amount of original research that conflates cartography with geography. Certainly a lot of room for improvement!

Comments by judges

• A fascinating subject! A bit low on page views (less than 100k annually), but there is definitely room for improvement in the article. I think your OR observation is spot on, and indeed it seems that many sections were likely written by different editors, meaning that even the better written ones (i.e. the China section) don't have much cohseivness in the article as a whole. The OR probably also stems from the lack of sourcing; aside from the China, Islamic World and Babylon sections, the sourcing is either suspect/spotty (Byzantine Empire and Syria) or entirely absent (all of Early modern period to the present-day). I think a bit of reorganization could help get things going as well, particularly the creation of an antiquity section, which almost all the sections before "Middle Ages" would fall under—the later content in the China and India portions would just have to be moved into the Middle Ages (although "Post-classical", a more universal term, may then fit better as the section name here). Aza24 (talk) 05:14, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Georgetown, Guyana

• Nominator: Eddie891 (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: The capital city of Guyana, suffering from a dearth of citations, up-to-date information. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:57, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• I'm excited that TCC is contributing more and more to addressing our systemic bias! That said, the city is relatively small (120,000), and pageviews are only just about enough to get a WP:Quarter million award. The article is now in a deplorable state, so that's a plus. Conclusion: will be somewhat difficult to compete against more core articles if people find articles in half as bad a state as this, but a lot of potential for improvements. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:39, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
• Indeed perhaps not as core as other South American capitals, but a great idea considering what seems like a general dearth of high-quality Guyana articles. You may find that using categories will help with figuring out what to add; e.g. consulting Category:Buildings and structures in Georgetown, Guyana. The relevant chapter in this book may be helpful too, but it's not outwardly academic. Aza24 (talk) 21:18, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Reformation

• Nominator: Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Vital level 3, on 79 wikis. 58,000 views a month, got 697,000 in 2022. It's 12,400 words, with 127 footnotes - but only about 46% of the body text is referenced. It's got 8 cleanup banners, and 31 inline tags. (I had thought about doing Classical antiquity but I think I burned out on ancient history last year... heh.)

  I'm likely changing my choice because another editor began work on Reformation in the last few weeks - I just haven't decided between Ancient Rome and Early modern period. Ealdgyth (talk) 11:31, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• A great choice to spend your time with. I'd definitely recommending consolidating the scope of the "Reformation outside Germany" as much as possible, possibly in more regional divisions, or removed entirely and turned into topical—rather than geographical—overviews. Will definitely need much pruning in general. Good luck! Aza24 (talk) 18:20, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Wow! Good luck. Excellent choice. Johnbod (talk) 00:25, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
  • (After note) Well, I can understand that! Perhaps oddly, AR gets x2 the views, and is a good deal longer, perhaps too long. Both could do with a lot of work! Johnbod (talk) 14:43, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
• Whew, what a pick. But if anybody could tackle an article like this, it'd be you. –♠Vamí_IV†♠ 11:50, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Tenants union

• Nominator:TheTranarchist (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Currently an unassessed article under the Human Rights Wikiproject (and probably should be under Organized Labor as well). However, it seems to me to obviously be an article on a broad and notable topic that deserves much improvement. Currently, it is only 2 paragraphs, a sentence-long lead, and some notable examples. I plan to update it to include 1) information on the history and development of tenant unions 2) statistics on tenants union membership and laws by country 3) different notable ways they've historically been organized and 4) details on their significance in various forms of leftist theory (anarchist, communist, socialist, social democracy). I want anyone who reads it to come away with a good encyclopedic overview of tenant unions and to try and take it to a GA! TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 20:44, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Compared to another borderline core article we had recently Italian Renaissance sculpture, it has less than a quarter the pageviews. Of course, pageviews may go up when there is actually an article to speak of. Semantic scholar gives only 120 results for semantic scholar (twice as many compared to IRS). Improvements need to be pretty massive to vie for the top-3. I'm curious to learn more about the topic. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:45, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• TheTranarchist, I presume you mean Tenants union and not Tenants' Union? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:53, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29 Yes, thanks for catching that! Just corrected it lol TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 20:59, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

• Plenty to do, I'm sure, but it currently only gets c 12 views a day, which is limiting. Johnbod (talk) 15:21, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
• Just on Femke's comment, it's nice to see that the views on Italian Renaissance sculpture, a new article for last year's contest, have been growing steadily since last August, doubling between then and now, which one can hope continues. Johnbod (talk) 14:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
• Withdrawing because I'm still not done with my finals and I doubt I'll have the time to give this the attention it deserves sadly. Collected a lot of sources though so will probably try and work on it in future. Looking forward to participating next year!TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 21:52, 18 May 2023 (UTC)TheTranarchist

Roald Amundsen

• Nominator: Festucalex (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: It surprised me that Amundsen's article was C-class and rife with {{more citations needed section}} templates, and so I decided to take it. It does help that I've taken a bit of an interest to Antarctica lately.
  • I have unfortunately found myself unable to improve this article during the period of the contest. It will remain on my to-improve list for a later date. 〜 Festucalex • talk 14:29, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Such a cool topic! Definitely take a look at the late Brian Boulton's work on the Amundsen's South Pole expedition article if you need sourcing/content ideas. Perhaps not a super core topic, but certainly important, and got ~400k page views last year alone. Aza24 (talk) 19:34, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for the suggestion, will certainly do so. The man who got to the South Pole first is certainly a cool topic. I mean, how cooler can one guy get? 〜 Festucalex • talk 21:52, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Silk Road

• Nominator: AirshipJungleman29 (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Decided on this after discussion at WT:TCC#Need help deciding. Copying over my comments from there: "Level-3 vital article, 9272 words with 179 inline refs (51 words/ref), 0.9 million views/year, C-class. Some historical sections incomplete or abandoned, while great emphasis is placed on the Belt and Road Initiative and WP:CRYSTALBALL determinations of what Chinese investment will bring." Plan to refocus the historical details and include standardised and better-quality references. Hopefully can get the article to GA or near—I do think it's a less expansive Vital-3 article than others. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:46, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• A great idea to work on this article, which currently stands as a classical product of WP: years of cruft built up and never molded into anything cohesive—the extremely varied authorship stats represents this well. I would definitely recommend consulting a few bibliographies (this is moderately helpful, as is this) to find a handful of authoritative sources to use, otherwise, the article would probably remain too messy and diverse in scope. The current sourcing relies too much on region/period specific studies, which naturally causes a lack of generalization. Both the "Precursors" and "New Silk Road (20th–21st centuries)" sections should probably be cut quite a bit, and of course the "Initiation in China (130 BCE)" section is intimately long and dense. Given that it was ~9000 words, the pure amount of present content—albeit of questionable quality—may make it difficult to place in the top 3, but it is certainly a valiant goal. Aza24 (talk) 21:06, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

• Thanks for the bibliographies, Aza. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:09, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Election

• Nominator: Astrophobe (talk · contribs)
• Improvements:
• Comments: I don't have specific plans yet, but I've been meaning to focus on it for a while, and it would be hard to make it any worse!

Comments by judges

• Great idea! Looks like there are some decent publications in the Bibliography section, but none are really used often enough (or at all). Generalizations will carry you to victory... the rather strange "Elections as aristocratic" section should probably be scrutinized further. Aza24 (talk) 19:30, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
• Nice one! That section stood out to me too. I do think many of the ideas in there are important, and also discussed outside of the academic literature (for instance in Tegen verkiezingen, which was a hit in the Netherlands when it came out). But it's not quite written neutrally now and structure is awkward. The large see also section may give some inspiration of topics to cover before culling. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:18, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Good choice, though it only gets c 600 vpd, less than one might think. There are too many SAs, but some should probably have sections here - voter turnout, political party and so on. Or at least be worked into the text, if they aren't already. Many unrefed passages. One could argue the title is wrong, as only national general elections seem to be covered - there are many other kinds. Johnbod (talk) 20:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
• Glad you chose that. Suggest the judges give you a bonus point or two for relevence to the real world. A bit off-topic but I just noticed that unfair election is only in English. I know many people don't like excerpts but you could consider moving some of the unfair detail there and then excerpting from that article. I remember the book "Good and bad power" by Geoff Mulgan was excellent but I cannot remember how much it said about elections. Chidgk1 (talk) 13:49, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

The Communist Manifesto

• Nominator: —indopug (talk)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: Thought I'd resume my abandoned attempt from eight years ago to bring this level-4 vital article to GA status.—indopug (talk) 14:32, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Really cool choice :). Mealsy 39 references. Apart from better sourcing, it can do with a readability check; I don't think "desire to eschew the catechism format" is something more than a quarter of our readers will understand. Some of the paragraphs are on the long side. Good luck! —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:14, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Journey to the West

• Nominator: DanCherek (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: (start + improvement diff)
• Comments: I'll give this one a shot. Vital 4, 636K views last year, and one of the Classic Chinese Novels. I think the article could use some work in terms of properly balancing summary of fiction versus real-world perspective.

Comments by judges

• That is a lot of pageviews for an article about a Chinese book! A grand total of 25 references so start with, many overly long or overly short paragraphs. The further reading section seems to offer some modern (decent?) sources; some of them are already used as source, but still feature in the FR section. Good luck working on this underappreciated topic :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
• Hurray! It is so exciting to see this here... though I am a Water Margin fan myself. This is the kind of book which needs an "influence" or "legacy" section, beyond a typical list of media representations (though given the huge amount of adaptations in this case, I don't such media content is irrelevant either, but simply needing to be prose rather than a list). I've not checked it myself, but if you can get a hold of an edition of Wilkinson or The Cambridge History, I'm sure both have fantastic bibliographies. The "Main characters" section probably has too strict a definition of "main" and perhaps too much information on each it features. Attempting to divide the synopsis into formal sections would be ideal, one might think. Aza24 (talk) 18:12, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

  The Water Margin... now there's an idea for an article to take on here. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, too. Our coverage of the book and its characters, in and out of historical fiction, is not the best. We particularly do not do my boy Cao Cao justice! –♠Vamí_IV†♠ 03:40, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe one of these days I will crack open de Crespigny's massive 2010 Cao Cao biography and go ham... Aza24 (talk) 05:28, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by others

• An excellent choice! One of the Four Classics of Chinese Literature, and easily the one best known in the West. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you will accomplish here. –♠Vamí_IV†♠ 03:38, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
  • Battle of Red Cliffs is FA. But I haven't looked at it since. § Lingzhi (talk) 14:10, 8 April 2023 (UTC)