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It is very important now I think while this is being planned and drawn up that every WP:Wales member and others are vocal here about what they want to see improved. Important that we identify weak areas and articles which we badly want. It can be on anything, somethign which has needed doing for a long time but nobody is doing it in particular. One we have more ideas of what to target (aside from the obvious core articles) then I can start to devise bonus points for developing/start certain articles which will benefit us and satisfy the demands of the project members.♦ Dr. Blofeld20:44, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
One of my interests is creating articles on places in Wales (particularly Pembrokeshire). I discovered early on that looking for places that don't have a WP article is not that easy. There seems to be a view that all places are notable, so looking for red links is one way to discover what needs doing.
So I'm an avid reader of "List" articles. There is List of United Kingdom locations which contains many red links to tempt editors wanting to create new articles, but it is alphabetical, not regional. Then there is Lists of places in Wales which is a list of lists by county. Those lists contain red links. In the case of Pembrokeshire (my principal area of interest), though, while there are red links, some of the blue links are redirects to other articles. (This is partly my fault in my quest to eliminate the red links from List of places in Pembrokeshire.) Other Welsh counties may be similar.
I'm not suggesting setting up a "List of Welsh locations", but it might have been helpful. I am looking forward, though, to seeing what's going to be on the hotlists for this contest. Tony Holkham(Talk)13:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Since one point of this contest is to attract more new editors to Welsh articles, I’d like to reiterate my suggestion of formulating a welcome message that includes details of the contest. Most of these potential new Wikipedians will be IPs, so would we need to encourage them to register? Which begs the question – will the contest be open to IPs? Tony Holkham(Talk)14:12, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Early stages, not yet sure the exact rules and format, will be adjusted accordingly as things develop. The bullet points at the beginning help a bit in the meantime. No, the contest will not be open to IPs. If they seriously want to contribute they'll create an account.♦ Dr. Blofeld20:05, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
However, I'm still not quite sure how the photographic contributions are going to be scored. Do we give points if someone finds an existing copyright-free photo online and uploads it correctly to Wiki Commons? If someone uploads ten of the same subject, do they get ten times the number of points, or should we have a sliding scale?
I'm not sure what Dr. Blofeld means when he suggests we "provide a link of the building you photograph to the listed buildings website britishlistedbuildings.co.uk". Do you mean simply like [1] in the photo description on Wiki Commons, or something else? Sionk (talk) 16:26, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. If it's a more obscure barn or pub or something I think it helps people. If there's no article having a link to info about it helps. In the descrption where you say Llanderfel Farmhouse in Fairwater, Torfaen Wales, a Grade II listed building. Where you say "Grade II listed building you link the listed building site. or link it in the name of the building. Ideally something like Llanderfel Farmhouse in Fairwater, Torfaen Wales, a Grade II listed building, or if the wiki article exists like en:Llanderfel Farmhouse in Fairwater, Torfaen Wales, a Grade II listed building. Often for the more organized photothons of monuments in the commons though they have that more professional looking strip across the top or banner which has code numbers of monuments. A system for Welsh listed buildings like that which would link to websites or whatever would probably be most ideal but would need a bot or something to start organizing I think.
Good questions. Photos must be freshly taken (otherwise some people might cheat and crop web photos), and only one photo would count to get the bonus points. If it is say 20 points to photograph a certain Grade II listed building, the candidate can take however many photos of it they like, but only one photograph can be submitted for the contest to get the bonus points. There may be a prize for the editor who produces the most unique photographs of different buildings during it, we'll see. On what I've said here, feel free to revise the description to make it clearer.♦ Dr. Blofeld16:34, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Can I suggest that we make sure we have suitable categories set up in a consistent hierarchy on commons where we provide a link to that category from the photo request. Also with that request could be an identifier like the Cadw id, the listed buildings number, or the Archwilio identifier?
Could we also offer some guidance for some types of building? For example, for churches it would be good to get not only a few general outside shots, but some specifics:
lych-gate
war memorials in graveyard
interesting or specific memorials and graves
the churchyard cross (even if only the base remains) - these are often scheduled monuments in their own right
architectural features such as gargoyles
And if possible, inside:
stained glass windows
memorials and plaques on walls
altar
rood screen
choir
pulpit
font
lectern
organ console
organ pipes
belfry
bells - if it's safe and possible to get to them
And finally, some photos of people using the church: a christening, choir processing etc. but especially if it is something unusual like preaching from the churchyard cross on Rogation Sunday. If I was trying to get a church article to GA status it would be useful to have some interior and exterior shots of unusual features. Robevans123 (talk) 15:03, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Great idea of course, though I would suggest the photo requests need to concentrate on particularly notable parts of a building. For example if a church has a particularly impressive window, or other element that is much better than normal, or a part (a tomb, wall, lychgate) that is separately listed, then it is extremely beneficial to request a photo. I'm worried that otherwise certain people might take a photo of every detail of a church and then, conveniently, request them to game the points system. Sionk (talk) 18:15, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - you'd need to do something to stop people playing the system & definitely not base points on the number of photos but the range of coverage. Also, if you're thinking of doing an article on a church say, you don't necessarily know what are the important features at the time you start. But if you do know that a font is of particular interest, then specify it, and say you won't get ANY points for interior detail if it doesn't include the font. If you do know the details, then include them at the time you post the request - our photographers are volunteers so you can't send them out the moment you know exactly what you want (or change the specification after they've read it).
I'm thinking of doing a a page on the C of E church in the village I've recently moved to. The church is quite old and Grade II* or Grade II. I've not any research on it yet, but I've wandered around it once and seen a few interesting bits. It's unlocked so I can wander around and take some shots just based on what looks interesting without knowing if it's important. Definitely not doing the bells though - I've seen the ladder! I'll take a set of shots to get some idea of what you need to get good coverage and put them up on commons so we can discuss it based on some real examples.
I'd certainly scale the points to what an editor could get for taking an article to GA status. Let's say it's 100 points, then a photographer could maybe get 35 points max (10 points for turning up and taking some general shots, 5 for shots of architectural details, 5 for graveyard shots, 5 for interior general shots, 5 for interior details, and 5 for action christenings! Probably best for me not to wait for a christening... I should get a chance to do a visit over the next couple of days. Must put the camera on charge and clear the memory card tonight... BTW - I'm not a specialist photographer - just take shots to illustrate articles. I'm particularly proud (cough cough) of "Pen-ffordd-goch Iron and coal patching, Blaenavon" in List of Scheduled Monuments in Monmouthshire - it's very boring but it is an accurate representation of what the site looks like...Robevans123 (talk) 19:56, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It may be worth going through some of the Grade I building articles and, if something is described as particularly remarkable, add a photo request. I'll dig around and see what may be desirable. I'm a keen photographer, but don't have a car so most of the further flung destinations are out of my reach, unfortunately. Sionk (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanting to firm this up a bit. Dr. B.asked me last week for my opinion on scoring the missing photographs. Understandably the photography side of this competition has taken less priority than identifying missing articles. I've continued to add to the Missing photograph hotlist in an attempt to make it reasonably complete by 31st March.
My opinion is I would agree with maybe 50 points for a high priority subject and 30 points for anything else on the hotlist. After all we are asking people to travel, have their own equipment and a reasonable level of photography skill. On top of that we're expecting people to sign away their rights to their decent photos. I suspect that many of the remaining missing photos are of the places that are least accessible. Obviously we need to aim to give these top points to good quality photos and this can be made clear in the instructions.
If a photograph is irretrievably poor (but the best we have in the circumstances) such as being out-of-focus or capturing the subject from a distance or only a small part of the image, then half the points could be awarded (15/25).
I would suggest that any Grade I listed building is high priority, and any populated place larger than a hamlet. Does this sound agreeable? Sionk (talk) 11:24, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
50 for top priority and 25 for anything else on the hot list I think is reasonable. But they have to be of reaosnable quality.♦ Dr. Blofeld12:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds about right. After a bit of an enforced wikibreak I'll try to add photographs for scheduled monuments to the hotlist. Don't know if these would be classed as high priority or ordinary priority. From my limited experience, finding missing scheduled monuments and taking photos of them is hard work (they are often scattered about and some distance from roads and not easily accessible), but the results are sometimes not very exciting... Maybe 30 points per missing monument, but a bonus of 50 for every 10 monuments? Robevans123 (talk) 13:08, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Dr B has expressed misgivings on my Talk page about the 50/25 scoring. I've reduced this slightly to 40/20, in the interests of keeping a happy ship ...and these are easily divisible by 2 ;) I can see there is not a major interest in photography being central to this competition (full articles are the priority) and, whatever the participation levels turn out to be, the list of missing photos will surely prove useful on an ongoing basis. Sionk (talk) 12:08, 25 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Robevans123: and @Tony Holkham:, what do you think is best for the list? Keep the level 1 and 2 separated and organize Level 2 with more entires by topic or simply merge all of them into a single A-Z list and just embolden the ones which are considered "Level 1"? I think it's going to get tough to really judge notability and then if we go into Level 3. Even now some ranked at level 1 or 2 are debatable either way. I think it's easiest if we have one big Core article A-Z list and just embolden the ones which are highest priority. What do you think?♦ Dr. Blofeld16:10, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Dr. Blofeld: I was thinking if it would be useful to start adding some groups to Level 3...(but thought that would be too complicated). As an alternative how about a top ten in ten certain key areas: Something like - History; Entertainment; Sports; Literature; Music; Industry; Tourist Attractions; Politicians; Heroes; Welsh Women. That would give 100 articles all at Level 1, and all on the front page, and then similar categories + others (churches, castles, listed buildings, scheduled monuments etc), with a separate page for each category and no limit on numbers?
I think an unlimited A-Z list with a few highlighted would make it hard to work on a specific area or to pick out the really important ones.
It would be nice to be able to prioritize on importance and quality (that is an important article with low quality would be a top priority), but that would be complicated to do, and also would rely on articles being ranked and rated consistently which I pretty sure isn't the case.
@Robevans123: and @Tony Holkham:, thanks for the input. OK, how about we make it one section for "Core articles", but organize by topic like Architecture, Geography etc, and embolden the ones we really consider CORE. That way it'll be neatly organized and not seem too excessive but we won't have to worry about further sub levels. You see, I don't think we need to make list which is too huge, we're unlikely to get editors workong on them all, just a healthy amount with some variation which people can choose from. I don't know how many we have currently but around 1000 articles might be reasonable. might be more nearer 2000, I have no idea how many we currently have!♦ Dr. Blofeld17:17, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the Core article list will be moved to its own page once done, but while the project is being approved and gaining interest I think let's do this on the main page.♦ Dr. Blofeld17:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A sensible plan. I see the missing articles list as interesting (to me) as the core list. I hope the main page will be trimmed to the bare minimum otherwise editors won't want to wade through it. They can click through to the detail. Tony Holkham(Talk)19:54, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, long term of course having both core and missing article lists is a good thing to do for the project anyway. The main contest page will be split once the lists have been developed and it is approved by WMUK. ♦ Dr. Blofeld21:55, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully this gets approved soon. I'll rearrange the core article list tomorrow into one divided by topic. Sionk and Ham II may be interested to know that HJ Mitchell has mentioned he was putting in a grant request to cover him photographing war memorials in England, but could extend to Wales and have a focus on that too. Feel free to comment on the grant request talk page where the conversation is. Potentially could benefit both the Wales and Military History projects at the same time. I say the more collaboration and coordination between wikiprojects on this the better.♦ Dr. Blofeld21:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Aren't there other avenues more appropriate for photos/details of war memorials? Such as family history or military websites? I can't imagine many local war memorials warranting a Wikipedia article (though of course there are some impressive ones that certainly would warrant a write-up). Sionk (talk) 19:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There'll be a few notable ones. Personally I think the more articles we have on listed buildings/monuments the better. I suppose a list could be made of ones Grade II* or Grade I but would take a lot of time to filter down. I can't think of a source offhand.♦ Dr. Blofeld19:57, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There are about 180 war memorials listed on coflein. Some of them are listed buildings, but I need to check on the four Welsh Archaeology Trust sites as well to get the listing status. There's probably enough to justify lists of Grade I and Grade II* War Memorials in Wales. Some of them are national memorials so should get their own article. There could probably be lists of war memorials for each principal area. There doesn't necessarily need to be an article for each memorial, but maybe a section in an appropriate article. I checked out the entry for the Memorial Gates on Pontypool Park in the Pevsner Guide "The piers carry bronze plaques which record the names of the horrifyingly many local men who fell in World War I." That's definitely worthy of a photo and a mention in Pontypool or Pontypool Park. Robevans123 (talk) 20:20, 5 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - a good example. I've started compiling a list of war memorials in Wales. This is based on a search on coflein, but I've also found some from the Glamorgan/Gwent Archaeological Trust website that aren't listed on coflein. This should be of use to @HJ Mitchell: and @Thryduulf: who are thinking of a photography expedition. I'll aim to add any available photos and OS map refs to the list as a first priority, and then add other memorials and descriptions/details/references as I go along. There are some national and regional memorials that could do with their own articles. I'm planning to use this list as the basis for Grade I listed war memorials in Wales and Grade II* listed war memorials in Wales (as has been done by HJ for England), and also to create lists for each principal area, for example, War memorials in Torfaen. Robevans123 (talk) 10:48, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Robevans123: Very cool! All this is information that should ultimately go on Wikidata. It might be worth creating a machine-readable template for the war memorial lists to make that possible. See, for instance, {{Public art row}}, in use at List of public art in the City of Westminster and elsewhere. No Wikidata items have been generated from that list yet but I'm hoping that that will ultimately be possible. (PS: are there any Grade I-listed war memorials in Wales?) Ham II (talk) 18:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Ham II:, Thanks. I've deliberately avoided setting up a row template at the moment while I'm building up the data from a variety of sources but it could definitely be done in the future especially if it could easily export to Wikidata. Also need to explore templates like {{Public art row}} to get an idea of how to do it! I've not yet come across any Grade I (or even Grade II*) listed war memorials but I'm only about 10% through the details on the list (and finding more...) - will let you know if I find any! Cheers Robevans123 (talk) 18:47, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not wanting to rock the boat, but does the list need vetting to see whether all the articles actually need expansion. I looked at two completely at random, Welsh art and Rowan Williams and they both seemed very comprehensive. Anything at that level of development should perhaps be moved to the 'get to GA' list. Sionk (talk) 18:05, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's a mixed bag. If the article is highly developed and requires little work to get to GA then people can spot them and do it. Welsh art is pretty poorly sourced. It's not only about article expansion but overal quality and sourcing. Such articles need to be brought to GA status like the poorly developed ones too. One problem though might be if the article is veyr comprehensive already, that might make a 3kb extra expansion not possible or not a help. Perhaps we should put those alreayd near GA level then in a section and give points to people who put them through GA?♦ Dr. Blofeld18:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe any article brought to GA status (apart from the 100 and 50 point ones highlighted) should attract c.40 points? I assume that will be cumulative and if someone also expands the article by 3000 characters they'll get those points too.
Should more than 10 points be awarded for a new 1500+ article? 1500 is DYK standard so quite high. Or are we going after quality rather than quantity? Sionk (talk) 19:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If we up the points on new articles created people will just create lots of new 1.5-2 kb new articles which are a lot easy to create than expanding existing ones. The emphasis really needs to be on core and quality I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld21:26, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As it stands they won't write any new articles from the list of redlinks. But then I'm not taking part in the competition :) Sionk (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Remember though that there will be some extra bonus points and prizes though for like starting 10 missing Pembrokeshire villages, most articles on missing listed buildings etc or whoever creates the most articles etc.♦ Dr. Blofeld22:29, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah there'll be a lot more entries to choose from when it's complete. I didn't want to get too carried away yet as I really think we need to start to see some input from WMUK on this. If it's still not approved by the 20th we may have to set it back another month. I hope we don't have to though! I'll work more on the list tomorrow if I can. The missing articles one really needs a lot more work I think to root out a larger number of decent ones. It would be good if a bot or something could generate missing article lists from the Dictionary of Welsh Biography and from welsh wikipedia. ♦ Dr. Blofeld21:47, 11 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Dr. Blofeld: I've translated the Architecture list for the Welsh Wikipedia. A few things have cropped up:
The scoring of the English and Welsh lists will need to vary; some high-priority articles are not in bold on the English list because they're GAs, but they should be bold on the Welsh list.
These two need to be added: Carmarthen Castle (redirect), Hay Castle (redirect). They're Grade I and in my opinion should be in bold.
The Tudor churches in Gresford, Holt, Mold and Wrexham, and St Winefride's Well, all deserve to be in bold; it's a bit unbalanced that a lot of Cardiff churches are but not these. In general I think more (perhaps even all) Grade I-listed buildings could be in bold.
Ham, it's important that a few people work on these lists. Why are you telling me all this? If you want to make changes/disagree with anything feel free to change anything you want! Go ahead and make the changes you want, and that goes for everybody. It's really not an easy task drawing up this list, which is why it's important people assist with it to a list we're all happy with!♦ Dr. Blofeld20:04, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I was just trying to stabilise it a bit as it's easier to work from a finalised list when translating than one that keeps being added to. Otherwise I won't be able to move on from the translating. Is there going to be a date when the list has to be in its final form for the initial contest? An upper limit for the number of articles in the list would also help; currently there are 201 on the Architecture list. I don't mean to whine, it's just that translating takes time. I'll make the changes I've suggested in the morning. Happy to add more of my own ideas to the list! Ham II (talk) 21:11, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Understood, thanks for that. The emphasis is always going to be on architecture and grography, but the list should have a fair range. Those are practically done now unless you think there are some really important omissions. I still have some "beefing" up to do on some of the ones like history, politics, sport and transport but the list is virtually complete from Architecture down to Economy unless you want to make changes. I'll move it to its own page when done. Anybody if you spot ones you disagree with boldened or not please fix it yourself. The list doesn't have to be anywhere near "perfect" or include all the articles which are really important, to really produce a superb list which covers everything will really take a great deal of browsing and research I think. If we held future contests the same list would be used so overtime it should evolve and eventually get there.♦ Dr. Blofeld10:42, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ham II: Hopefully I'll have the core list finished tomorrow. We'll need to devise a scoreboard and discuss the points aspect of it. Casliber might be a good one to ask for input on that too. I was thinking of a similar scoreboard to the core/stub contest Casliber, what do you think?♦ ♦ Dr. Blofeld19:41, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've also added all female biographies listed in the DWB here (beware: by the time you reach the table, some anti-Welsh user most probably will have taken it down. If so, the Welsh language version can be found here). Llywelyn2000 (talk) 13:58, 16 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice to be liberal with the old Barnstars during the competition. Maybe a specific competition one or just someone in charge of ensuring that the love is shared. Maybe it's time to redesign the old Wales Barnstar too, but I'm no artist. Any thoughts? FruitMonkey (talk) 00:16, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea, yup, I agree. Yeah, we'll invent a range of barnstars to be given out too. I'll take care of that and invent a few. Perhaps we could create one for each major subject and give them out to those editors who accomplish the most in a given field and some for general hard work but customised for Wales.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:15, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
With the breadth of articles on offer there is little chance of cross-contamination but could it be possible for authors to tag articles to stop people doubling up on articles they may already have worked on? Maybe a bagsy tag on the this page to let other know you are working on it? Cheers, FruitMonkey (talk) 00:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As WMUK still haven't approved and seem unlikely to within the next few days, shall we set it back for April? March is a very busy month on here of course with a lot of editathons and that going on at the same time. But there's only six days left now and we can't really publicize it in a day or two, even if this is approved tomorrow. Or do we run it for March but as an initial editathon without prizes? How long do you think we really need to publicize this?♦ Dr. Blofeld11:42, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think an extra month of preparation would really help. I'll finish the translations ASAP and then start with the publicity. Editors on the Welsh Wikipedia might want input in the lists as well. Ham II (talk) 14:07, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah the month has gone really quickly, and the shortest month of the year too. We'll have to find a way to fit in the Women in Red collaboration in April. I think we need a few weeks too to build up the missing article lists more which really take time. If any of the participants can only find time in March rather than April though then we'll still welcome contributions in March, but obviously not start the official contest until April. I think we really need a few weeks after this is approved to discuss and publicize it properly.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:39, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, the project has been approved at WMUK who've agree to front £250 towards prizes. What we need to quickly decide now is whether it's too late to run this for March or whether we need more time to draw up the missing lists/plan it/publicize it. Most of the framework at least on English wiki is already drawn up for this, but deciding the points and publicizing this within four or five days now does seem a bit rushed. Can I see a show of hands and people sign their name under the month that they would feel happier this running?♦ Dr. Blofeld16:46, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
From the point of view of the missing photographs, March would be better because the trees haven't sprouted their leaves (though I guess that doesn't preclude people taking photos earlier and waiting till the competition starts before uploading them). There's something also very compelling about relating the editathon to St David's day, which is obviously 1 March. Sionk (talk) 22:13, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'd thought that about St David's Day too. I think if it had been approved a week earlier we could have managed it but I think four days is too short notice and this is best done publicized a few weeks in advance.♦ Dr. Blofeld11:54, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
While part of me thinks we could quickly get this publicized, I think we really need more time to draw up missing articles and plan and publicize this more. I think it might prove more successful if held in April, as March is an extremely busy month on here with multiple editathons taking place at the same time. I think now that this is approved people might also be more willing to help draw up lists and further build on what we've started. So I think April is probably better for this.♦ Dr. Blofeld16:55, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK people, the entries and scoring will be done like Wikipedia:Stub_Contest/Entries and Wikipedia:Stub Contest/Scoreboard. Each editor will have their own section on the entries page to list there article and claim points which will then be approved by me. I will then update the Scoreboard. We'll need some careful thought on how many points to give. I really think doing GA and core have to be worth at least 10 new articles for the work, but I don't want people to stop creating articles or expanding ones because they feel like they can't win the contest that way. But I also don't want people to be able to win the contest by just taking photographs or creating 1.5 new articles, I'm hoping that they'll do a both quality and destubbing/expansion work, so that's why I've attacthed some bonus prizes for the most expansions/most listed buildings created etc. We'll see how the scoring system works during the initial one, I suspect it may have to be revised for a future one if we think people are finding a way to easily accumulate points with minimum effort. ♦ Dr. Blofeld12:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I'm taking part for the personal glory and immortality this competition will obviously bestow upon me. But I'd be happy with a series of badges or awards that acknowledge those that have taken the spirit of the competition to heart. It would fill my libertarian, socialist, wishy-washy soul to the brim if we could turn this into an event where competitors can appreciate each other. Maybe even if the scores point one way, maybe the competitors could vote for their favorite article/s to give an editors champions. No award, but the acclaim of your peers. Maybe. FruitMonkey (talk) 00:01, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, if you win the contest you'll gain immortality! Well, the contestants who have signed up so far I'm sure will appreciate each other's work. I can think of certain banned editors though who if competed might be less than courteous in the final stages! We'll see how the table/points format works. A future possibility is simply divide the funds into small Amazon prizes for tackling individual articles and we just place a "bounty" on getting each one to GA. At the end of the month then as you say everybody involved can vote for the best article and then the winner given a larger prize.♦ Dr. Blofeld13:39, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Go for it Heledd Hall! Happy to help you if you need it. I believe the National Library of Wales is on the core article list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Core articles. I'll add the collection to it too. They're in the culture and arts section. Although the "contest" is being held in April please do contribute and encourage others at the editathon to create and leave your articles at the bottom of the main page here with the others today and throughout this month too. Getting those to WP:Good article status minimum would be quite something and achievable! Can I tempt you and others to sign your name under the participants for this contest on the main page? You can contribute this month and enter the contest next month if you like.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:29, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Can articles created or expanded in March be submitted in April and count towards the contest or must entries relate to content added during April? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:21, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, nope. articles have to be created/expanded or submitted in April only to enter the contest. Entries beforehand won't count towards the contest but will count towards the overall editathon without points. ♦ Dr. Blofeld12:33, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, though technically of course somebody could write 300 odd articles offwiki in March and formally post them on wikipedia at 11:50 pm on April 30 and they'll count because the articles would have been created/expanded and submitted on wikipedia in April. The only rule is that the content has to all be submitted in April to count towards the contest. Obviously if they did that though they'd miss out on all of the significant points they'd get for producing GAs/bonuses on the lists.♦ Dr. Blofeld13:46, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Judges. Hope you don't mind me signing Stacey and myself up as a pair. We've basically been collaborating on articles that we've been writing this year, so it seems unfair for one of us to get the glory! We've got our eyes on the cakes (who's baking them by the way?) and since we're in the same household, we should be able to share them out! I do have one question though. I'm very tempted to expand Teresa Helena Higginson, who was born in Wales, but didn't stay there. How Welsh does a Welsh woman have to be? WormTT(talk) 11:04, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Welcome aboard Worm That Turned. The person has to have some notable link to Wales, either born there or have done something of note related. If they were born there then regardless of whaere they later went they'll be Welsh!♦ Dr. Blofeld11:07, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thankyou, I'll make sure to write her up in April. I spotted a book about her last time I was at the library and she's on my to do list - just a happy coincidence that she was born in Wales! WormTT(talk) 11:09, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not that strong on Wales, only been there a few times (I've got different Celtic interests) - but one place that had to be on there was Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch! WormTT(talk) 11:31, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to the discussion over at the signpost, I got alerted to this WMlabs tool: [2]. Basically if when someone edits, if they use a hashtag, then it can be searched for using that tool. So if people edited and added #AwakentheDragon to their edit summaries then you could find all the edits in a single search. Not sure if it's actually useful, but I thought it was neat. Miyagawa (talk) 17:24, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Women in Red is tweeting the Dragon articles about women. I added the Twitter icon to 3 of them last night. I've tweeted more of them tonight (Jones, Skeel, Prout, Lloyd, Dillwyn) but don't have time to add the icon; perhaps someone else can take that on, if you wish. --Rosiestep (talk) 02:51, 16 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Sionk: and @Tony Holkham: and others. Thanks for your work on the lists! Perhaps for this initial contest we should merge all into one missing list. I think it would be easier to maintain and draw up for the time being if they were all on one page. We could have the top priority ones listed emboldened like in the core list. Perhaps give twice the number of points for those who start the top priority ones? Drawing up a highly comprehensive missing list will take months/years, but just getting down some basics for this, a few hundred that people can start I think will be OK.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Dr. Blofeld: I certainly think the list should be a permanent fixture so we all know what's still to be done, beyond the contest. As for one or two lists, a single list with priority articles in bold, as you've done with other lists? I would like to see the structure unchanged (i.e. grouped by subject), so those with particular interests, e.g. churches or people, can find them. Tony Holkham(Talk)14:48, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, definitely in this structure by topic, that wouldn't change. But simply embolden the ones we consider "high priority" missing ones, rather than having two separate lists. If we continue running Dragon contests throughout the year then this list over time will evolve and potentially we could have dozens of missing articles ists by topic. But for this initial one, just one page with some basic missing ones should suffice. Let;s see what Sionk, Ham II and any of the others think first. For me who is going to add more missing entries this week leading up to it I know it'll be much easier to work on one missing article list.♦ Dr. Blofeld15:22, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean the missing article lists? I think they need a bit of work but they would be more manageable if they were kept separate. I'd be inclined to move the populated places to the Missing article hotlist and move the Hotels, Lifeboat Stations and 'Others' to the secondary list. The Women Biographies list (I've only just noticed this exists) seems to contain a mixture of articles and redlinks, so is a bit confusing. Sionk (talk) 18:30, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
See, that's part of the reason I want to merge, it's not always easy judging what is missing "hotlist" material or what is just missing. I'd rather just have one list and eombolden the ones which seem a bit more important. Haven't finished the Women biographies list. If I have time I'll go through and red link the relevant ones instead of linking to wikidata or a cy interlink if it exists in Welsh. Of course once done we could merge into the main list but I thought it was easier to leave it in the big table.♦ Dr. Blofeld18:45, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So has this been advertised on Welsh wikipedia and a page set up in Welsh yet? Perhaps somebody could ask Ham II how he is getting on?♦ Dr. Blofeld13:58, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The contest formally begins in an hour. Here's to a super productive month! Best of luck to all of the contestants and participants!♦ Dr. Blofeld22:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, it's like waiting for New Year and the bongs of Big Ben (or perhaps that should be the hour bell of Cardiff City Hall), after all this anticipation :) Sionk (talk) 22:26, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is like waiting for New Year haha!! Let's just keep all of the work done during this in one section on the main page. I will add a note that entries from #85 onwards though were done during the contest itself. All of the entries in the contest and independently will go in that one list.♦ Dr. Blofeld10:35, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It would help if the "Articles" section was renamed to be more explanatory e.g. "List of new/improved articles". After all, these are the 'outcomes' of the project so it's pretty important people can find them easily. I've renamed the "Photographs" section because its name was identical to the "Photographs" section in the main body of the page. Sionk (talk) 14:45, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Because the articles are extremely important/valuable for Wales, and they have the tendency to be neglected, 500 points is now available for getting the central core articles like History, Geography, Economy, Culture, Transport etc, the vital level 1 type articles, to GA. I've also added an extra 250 bonus for anybody who can get three articles in Principal area (county) of Wales or Preserved County or three cities over 25,000 listed in List of localities in Wales by population to GA status within the month on top of the extra you would get. The articles must all be of high quality and very well researched though and have the bulk of what is required for such articles. Do just a couple of the central core ones and you could potentially win the contest! These are the articles which matter the most for Wales and what any credible encyclopedia would have quality articles on!♦ Dr. Blofeld17:01, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I note that the core list does not include any of Wales' contribution to British military history. I know this is just a short lived contest for April, but there are numerous articles that could be promoted to be worked on. For example:
38th (Welsh) Infantry Division - currently awaiting an A-Class review, with the intent to promote to FA status and get it on the main page for the 100th anniversary of their baptism of fire on the Somme.
@EnigmaMcmxc: Absolutely, I agree, but I know little about the military and what is notable or not. This is a great help. :I'll add a military section to the core list. If you could join and work on any of these it would be enormously helpful.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:38, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I won't really be able to work on the articles (I can make some amendments in regards to orders of battle and what not for the Second World War related parts), but I can make the edits to the list per your comments here and on my talkpage.EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 15:36, 2 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For this week I'm introducing a sort of game to blast away those stale old stubs. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Stub Obliteration 2016. Expansions rules don't apply to any articles done through this, all you have to do is ensure every article you submit is minimum 1.5kb readable prose in total and adequately sourced and readable and remove the stub tag and update the project tag on the talk page. It could be that the article is 1.2kb readable prose and you simply add 0.3 kb prose and just quickly smarten up the sources and give a minor copyedit. The goal is reducing the number of stubs we have and making them more consistent, minimum start class entries. Read the top for the rules and more details and add your name to it in the style of the main entries page if you want to participate. It's open to contestants and anybody who is participating in the editathon independently.♦ Dr. Blofeld10:07, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully this broadens the options here and will make the contest more enjoyable. There's quite a few different ways to earn good points now. So if you want a break from heavy core article work for a week in favour of some simple destubbing work go for it! It's important I think with this as the inaugural one to try a few things and see what people are interested in or not. So I'll be trying a different theme for each week and giving people different ways to earn points for that week aside from the general ones. Any feedback on this would be appreciated, cheers.♦ Dr. Blofeld12:58, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I just wanted to check something before I did something really stupid - the points claimed in the stub obliteration drive - can they be claimed more generally in the main drive as well, or are the two things separate? Miyagawa (talk) 18:57, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Depends. If you do a 3kb plus expansion, yeah, you'll get the +25 for the expansion as normal, and that's on top of the 5 or 10 for destubbing. If it's a core article too you'll get the usual 40 or 50 points if it's a 3kb + expansion. You won't get the 10 for +5 years though as most stubs are old and stale haha! There's some slightly different rules involved though which is why I've split it from the entries page. The points will still be added to the same overall scoreboard though. The main one is that there's absolutely no expansion minimum requirement for this, just as long as the final result is an article no less than 1.5kb in prose length. If there's something I've overlooked you can spot let me know! If you look at the other bonuses section of the rules and scoring page you'll spot a way that you can actually earn fair points by some very basic quick stub expansions. There's some ones like 25 points per castle stub, and 15 listed buildings destubbed. Potentially anybody can really be clever and target some several of them in one destubbing and earn a load of points for doing some in bulk! PLus there's a bonus 250 at the end of the week for whoever does the most, which is worth two and a half GAs, so if it is played well there's a chance for a lot of easier points. It's just for a week, I thought it would give people a chance to be freer with their contributions and have to concentrate less intensively on any one article for a bit. ♦ Dr. Blofeld19:14, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The destubbing ones list on the stub page the reason as it will be easier to track how many each person has created. And of course where you're claiming for the 1200 page encyclopedia as you've been doing.. If I start to see more support for this destubbing one and more entering it I'll consider extending it to the end of the month and change it so the winner gets the full £50 in Amazon vouchers at the end rather than gradually and the 1200 Page Encyclopedia/or £15 voucher. So potentially there might be £65 to win for destubbing the most articles this month!♦ Dr. Blofeld19:59, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be closing the destubbing contest on Sunday evening. It will reopen later in the month. So take advantage of all those bonus points for destubbing listed buildings and settlements while you can! Remember there is a 250 bonus and £10 just for destubbing the most articles this week.♦ Dr. Blofeld12:48, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Anybody who commits to start getting History of Wales, Geography of Wales, Politics of Wales, Economy of Wales or Culture of Wales to GA status by the end of the week I will double the points they get for every new article and article expansion they do for the rest of the contest. So for new articles you'd get 20, 3k expansions you'd get 50 points thereafter. They're currently worth 925 points each (due to a big 750 bonus for getting it to GA) for this week only! They don't have to be brought up to GA status this week of course, but any editor who promises to have it brought up to GA status by the end of the month.♦ Dr. Blofeld06:32, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I'll bite. Put me down for Culture of Wales. It'll be an interesting one, as there is only one "Culture of..." article at GA already, which is for the Cook Islands, so not really one I can compare to! Fortunately there are several at B class, so I can see the direction the article should be taken in. Miyagawa (talk) 09:43, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Great, I know you can be entrusted to get it up to GA status by the end of the month so I'll start awarding you double from now on, just remember to claim 20 for starts and 50 for +3kb expansions for every listing you put forward!♦ Dr. Blofeld09:45, 7 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to have to drop out from working on the Culture article. It was pretty tough going anyway, as I'm not all that used to writing these general overview topics and after an IP editor (who was obviously not an IP editor) came along and deleted all the work I did yesterday, I've just lost the desire to do it. Sorry Dr. B, you'll need to go through and remove all the central core bonuses from my submissions. Miyagawa (talk) 22:09, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Understood, it is quite demanding I agree because of the plethora of different assets but does require concentration and not easy to do when there's somebody from Neath messing with it. He's been reverted. Worm That Turned, Cwmhiraeth or anybody else is welcome to continue where Miyagawa left off, there's still the 750 on it for passing GA. I'll make the exception for this. If it's promoted by the end of the month I won't take off Miyagawa's extra to date as he has made pretty good progress with it. But obviously the double score won't apply any longer!♦ Dr. Blofeld07:59, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Core Attack is now up. This will open tomorrow, and will likely remain open for the remainder of the month. Stub Obliteration will close around 11 pm tomorrow, with the new focus on the core attack one. The stub one will likely reopen at the time as "Wales in Red" (for missing articles) is introduced later in the month, maybe about 10 days before the end of the contest. So in the last ten days there will be the three of them running and contestants will really have to give it a good think what they'll do to win the contest. Overall I would say that the editors who focus on the central core/core articles and GAs stand a better chance, but anybody who takes advantage of some of the others by mass basic content improvement/building and steadily accumulating points may also have a chance. I hope this sees a good balance from editors, and variation. This makes for a more exciting contest then I think. We'll see how things evolve. It should make the end of the contest interesting anyway haha! I think the key to winning this will be from those editors who smartly take full advantage of the bonuses.♦ Dr. Blofeld11:04, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Stuck in a dilemna over scoring for these. I really don't want to have to change the scoring if I can help it but in relation to some of the combined bonuses 100 didn't seem enough for a GA. 200 seemed more appropriate but I don't want to annoy people who've already got articles to GA and missed out on 100 points. I would appreciate some input from a few people on what to do with this. Finding a fair balance is difficult, it'll take some time to perfect this. If we keep it at 100 I think I'll have to adjust some of the scoring on others, which will take a lot more time to do than simply giving a bit more for GA. Perhaps we can all agree on 150 points for a GA?♦ Dr. Blofeld13:36, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Sturmvogel 66:, Miyagawa, Cwmhiraeth, FruitMonkey, The C of E etc. Please state how much you think GAs should be worth each until the end of the contest. Remember that there's quite a lot to be obtained from bonus points and I think there needs to be a balance as GAs do require a lot more work. Can we agree on something we're all happy with?♦ Dr. Blofeld13:46, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There are so many different ways of scoring points that people can adjust their strategies to suit themselves. I will be happy for GAs to be 150 or 200 points, whatever others wish. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:56, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's hard to say since I haven't been tracking all of Cwhiraeth's points for the various stubs and don't have a feel for the balance between basic de-stubbing and the various bonuses. I can say that we're actually reasonably close if you add in the points for my unpromoted GANs, (BTW, HMS Cornwall's been promoted) although I gather her stub-leading bonus will be pretty sizeable and will re-open her lead over me. So let's try 150 points and see how that plays out for a week or so. If the stubs still appear to be easier to crank out than GAs, then we can look again at increasing the value for GAs still further.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:22, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The destubbing and basic expansions for the core list coming from tomorrow is important work and deserves decent bonus points for doing it. But at the same time Good Articles do require hours of solid hard work and research and of course is uwhat we're really looking for on the site. (aside from FAs ultimately of course) I do think there should be great deal on offer for editors to pick and and choose what interests them and find their own pathway to winning the contest. The contest really is intended to target stale older content, so both core article and destubbing is important. I think anybody should be able to win the contest by heavy work in any one field. But the amount of work needed does need to roughly correlate. It's difficult to know because some articles require less effort than others for GA. I'll wait to see what Miyagawa and Fruit Monkey and anybody else thinks. A rounder 200 would be easier to tot up in the scores than 150 from my perspective, and as the contest progresses with people who take advantage of the expansion points and see what they'll get for higher quality we might see more GAs as a result.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:31, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy with either 150 or 200. If 200 makes it easier for yourself Doctor, then go for it. Those GA's do take quite a bit of effort so rewarding that milestone is fair enough. FruitMonkey (talk) 14:49, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's got to be very decent points for doing bulk I think. One good article is valuable, but so is 10-20 consistent decent quality starter articles. I will try to give this coming Core Attack one more thought later today.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:39, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, given that I'm giving very decent points (with combined bonuses) for doing basic core expansions in bulk for this coming Core Attack one I'll make it a round 200. And that includes the ones which were in the queue today I think so nobody misses out by nominating something a little too early and missing out on a lot of points. I think for everybody once you see how much you'll get for solid 3kb+ expansions/improvements in bulk on certain subjects like geography and architecture for this it might tempt more people to add that bit more and go for the GA. Also given that there's a 500 bonus at the end of the month for whoever does the most GAs perhaps this would work better. We may need to adjust something again this time next week as the Core Attack one unfolds though so be warned in advance everybody! I will do my best though to try to keep things more consistent with the existing scoring. As things progress though expect to see new bonus offers appearing in the main scoring page for doing bulk on certain subjects. I think we've got most of them largely in place now though and we don't want to make it over complicated.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:56, 9 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've adjusted it now so everybody who has produced a GA so far has got 200 points. I thought that was reasonable enough given that some people would be missing out on quite a lot of earlier points. It would be good at this stage if a few of you take the time to check your scores and that everything is accurate. There's still three weeks left on this, and once we get the balance right and everything in place it should make this more enjoyable. There's a still a few things I want to experiment with but I will keep this as stable as possible for next week anyway.♦ Dr. Blofeld18:48, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Core Attack is open. Please read the rules and scoring on it carefully. Unlike the stub one, entries will be posted on the main entry page in the relative sub section under your names. Remember to also check the other bonuses section and spot ones which you can score heavily on for doing multiple articles. The minimum addition requirement is just 1.5kb readable prose added to a core article, but you have to demonstrate that you've improved the articles overall, and that the text has been verified/updated/resourced if possible. In many cases it will be better to just nuke the text and write them from scratch. You will score most heavily on this if you do minimum 3kb additions as you'll get the usual 25 expansion, 40./50 points for tackling a core article in addition to the 10-20 points for doing ones on the list, plus there's bonus points on the main rules and scoring page for doing them in bulk. Doing a number of solid expansions on towns in particular will pay off, and of course there's a big 500 bonus for doing 20 3kb minimum expansions of core articles and for doing GAs as well. But there's numerous bonuses for doing things like roads and politicians and a book to be won for historical figure expansions. Good luck! This will be open now until the end of the contest, and will be the best way to earn and win!♦ Dr. Blofeld10:12, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
50 points available for destubbing railway stations
If we run this again folks I'm going to completely simplify the scoring to 10 new article, 25 for minimum 3kb expansion and 200 GA. No bonuses except for a core list and for doing the most articles each week. Bare with this anyway, there's a good chance to earn loads of points for this one ;-).♦ Dr. Blofeld07:36, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, as so far there's been a strong focus on core and quality, I'm allowing for a weekend of some lighter work. This weekend from Friday morning to Sunday night there's a stub fest for Dragon. You will be awarded the same points for whatever you create, 5 for a stub no less than 750 char, 10 for a min 1.5 start, 25 for a 3kb + start. Set bonus points won't apply, not even +10 for on missing articles list, but at the end of every day I will award 250 points to the person who creates the most articles in that day, 100 for the runner up, and further give a 500 point bonus to whoever produces 200 new entries, stubs or start or 50 minimum 1kb entries on listed buildings. So if you produce heavily every day of this there's a chance to win over 1000 points on this, 750 points alone for producing more than anybody else. But it's just three days. Depending on how it goes it may reopen for another weekend later in the month. The important thing is that even if shorter new entries with bare minimum 750 char (this is 840 odd char), these are clean, quality starts with a few important facts, crisp stubs. A decent short stub which can be easily expanded is valuable I think, though of course overall we want no stubs on here eventually. There's so much missing notable content for Wales that I think this will be productive, for a weekend anyway. When the destubbing competition reopens there may be further points to be obtained for destubbing stubs you create for this. Take the time to read Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Wales in Red and what is required, and have great fun doing this over the weekend, a chance to let your hair down on here and show what can be started on here!♦ Dr. Blofeld10:46, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Am I correct in assuming that whatever is produced must be properly referenced? Destubbing unreferenced stubs is a particularly painful experience...
Can I also put in a word for scheduled monuments (the poor relations of listed buildings)? There are over 4,000 scheduled monuments in Wales. We have, thanks mainly to User:RobinLeicester, 33 articles of the form "List of Scheduled Monuments in Principal Area" (some areas are split into groups because there are limits of about 200 on the number of items that can be shown on the included maps). Some of the monuments include links to a reasonable article, for example, List of Scheduled Monuments in Cardiff, has a link to Castell Morgraig, with a reasonable start article. But only 5 out of 28 of the monuments shown have a direct link to a relevant article. There are some that include a link to the area the monument is in. I would estimate that there at least 2,000 (but probably more like 3,000) potential articles here. So there's easily 20,000 points available!
I'm pretty sure there is a good case for stating that a scheduled monument is notable, by virtue of it being scheduled. However, sometimes I think it is sensible to embed the description in a bigger, related, article. For example, in the Cardiff list there is an entry for St Mellons Churchyard Cross. I think this would be perfectly well covered by a section like "Churchyard cross" or just "Churchyard" in the (recently created - thanks to User:The C of E) St Mellons Church, provided the section is properly referenced. It's probably best to create a separate redirect page as well so that categories can be applied.
BTW - there's often not a lot you can say about most churchyard crosses - medieval, 3 or 4 steps, pillar made of whatever, top knocked sometime in the reformation or civil war... but some have interesting features or stories.
There's usually two or three sources you can find (from the appropriate Welsh Archaelogical Trust, a record from coflein, and the scheduling record from Cadw). Churchyard crosses were used for outside preaching and many churches are reintroducing the practise occasionally (I think usually on rogation sunday before beating the bounds - but correct me if I'm wrong) so you may find some mention of the cross in local news/parish magazines etc.
I think if someone adds a reasonable section to an appropriate article, creates and categorises the redirect, updates the link in the List of Scheduled Monuments ... (and updates the details cell in the table - many are missing), that's just as good as creating a standalone article.
Read the rules, I explain in the rules that articles have to be sourced ;-). yes, the stubs must all be properly sourced, no unsourced claims, have a few sourced facts and have minimum 0.75 kb of readable prose. There's 500 points available for whoever creates 200 sound stubs, or 50 1kb minimum entries on listed buildings (which includes Scheduled Monuments) on top of 250 points for producing the most new entries in one day. Yes, there's thousands of missing articles, and there's no limit to the amount people want to create, and the greater the effort which goes into this this weekend the less work it might need later on to win the contest. Later on this contest or possible others there may be further big bonuses for whoever destubs the most listed buildings in a day, so getting the articles started is to be encouraged as eventually we'll blast away those stubs! There's a big difference anyway between a quality start stub with correctly formatted/sourced text and a substub or unsourced, badly written/formatted entry. So hopefully this would create a lot of articles which can easily be topped up at a later date.♦ Dr. Blofeld12:55, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK I've started St Daniel's Church, Pembroke. That length with some sourced facts is perfectly fine and constructive I think. That's 840 odd char and easily adequate I think. 750 I think is fine and that's halfway to 1.5 kb which we normally classify a start class with. The important thing is constructive stubs are created, not problematic ones which require years of cleanup! ♦ Dr. Blofeld14:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think proper stubs such as this one, St. Daniel's Church, are important. After all, most articles start as stubs, e.g. the first edit. It's just important to have enough context to make the article meaningful to the next person who reads it or expands it. Nicely done, Dr. Blofeld. --Rosiestep (talk) 08:42, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Rosie. The main goal of this contest though is tackling stale old article and highlighting the important stuff. The Wales in Red was just a chance to earn quickly and a break from heavy editing on this. I think in the future Wales in Red could be its own contest, but rather than put people through a gruelling month of just that haha it would be shorter like five days or something. I think if we had the chance though the next one would be a destubathon by county of Wales, like the one I'm doing on the 25th. You could offer say a £10 voucher prize for every 20 articles destubbed by county. If there was £250 budget again you could simply reward anybody who does sets of 20, on a first come first served basis. That gives people then an incentive to do it directly, and the more work they put in and get done the more they simply reap for doing it. And the contest would guarantee that we'd be 500 less stubs better off. Potentially anybody could earn up to £250 for doing that. I think that would be the best one to do if we get support for it, and we'd aim to blast away most of our stubs. Then when they're largely gone you can host Wales in Red ones aimed at created new stubs etc.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Echoing User:Dr. Blofeld's edit summary when he added S. O. Davies to the list of improved articles. Great work by User:Brianboulton, an example of work to emulate. I'm not that familiar with Wikipedia's rankings of quality and importance, but if someone who is happy working in this area could take a look at the talk page and check the rating and importance, that would be great. For what it's worth, I believe it's a good article of mid-importance. Robevans123 (talk) 16:45, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, I've given in mid importance, though one of the politics wikiprojects might object, but definitely mid importance for Wales.♦ Dr. Blofeld16:53, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As to date there's been at least three superb contributors to this contest, would anybody object if we split the second place prize of £50 into two 25s for the two runners up? I wasn't able to secure any extra on this unfortunately. In my opinion all of you deserve something from contributing to this! But to reward the top 3, would that be OK to everybody? If we could raise another £25 we could probably have £50 second and £25 third.♦ Dr. Blofeld13:32, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We'll see. If the third place contestant really tries hard to catch the second place towards the end and the final result is fairly close then we'll split it. If not and the top two are well ahead of the rest we'll keep it £100 and 50 OK?♦ Dr. Blofeld16:29, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As it's only 3 days I've revised the 500 bonus point promise. Whoever produces 50 stubs on anything, or 30 min 1kb new entries on listed buildings will get the bonus. It's doable I think, but will require a decent effort.♦ Dr. Blofeld20:18, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Plenty of time left today and tomorrow! Remember you'll get 500 points if you manage to produce minimum 30 stubs on listed buildings within the next two days.♦ Dr. Blofeld06:54, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations everybody for 400 article improvements and creations! Keep up the excellent work! The dragon is really starting to wake up now and has both eyes open! :-)♦ Dr. Blofeld07:19, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
22 - 24 April - Wales in Red (coinciding with National Library editathon)
25 - 29 April - The Preserved County Stub Obliteration challenge/Core Attack
30 April - A special event for the finale (TBA)
This is roughly how the rest of the contest will look. For those of you working primarily on the core articles and garnering the most points from that or have central core articles started try to get as much done as you can from 18th to 21st week over those four days as there'll be another Wales in Red contest next weekend. The next four days then there will be four/five days dedicated to destubbing articles by area of Wales, tackling two of the preserved counties each day - there's eight in total. At the same time as that (25th-28/29th) there will be another opportunity to earn heavily from Core Attack with some new incentives, but I hope that it'll make winning the contest equally possible for working either on Stub Obliteration or Core Attack. On the final day there will be something fun, but a way to be superproductive at the same time, I already have a good idea of what it'll be but I'll announce that in a week or so.♦ Dr. Blofeld16:26, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Superb effort folks, really impressive! We'll run this next weekend but rather than the emphasis being just on quantity, the theme on 22nd will be diversity, to create as broad a range of articles as possible. There will be a "22" challenge within it for the 22nd April, that is there will be a 500 bonus for whoever can produce one article within a different county in Wales, 22 articles in total. During this week I will work on a missing article list to help contestants, though anybody is free to produce what they want. Anybody can produce anything they want for it but for that big bonus on this you'll need to complete a round of articles over the weekend, and tackle a variety of types of articles from across Wales including listed buildings, settlements and geo features, historical events, biographies etc from across Wales. That will be a good exercise leading into the County Challenge which is following it on the 25th, again with a regional focus for each day but destubbing/article improvement rather than creation. Its not compulsory for the contest, anybody can still continue with their core article work and aim for bonuses for that and not compete, but there will be another chance to earn heavily through it.♦ Dr. Blofeld07:55, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've updated the scoreboard. Wales in Red has made a dramatic difference to the overall scores, the immense efforts of Sturm and Cwmhiraeth in particular have widened the gap considerably. I had thought Cwm unbeatable on the second day, some of the most amazing prolific work I've seen in a long time but Sturm matched it and managed to do a bit more and steal the 250 on the two days. Both of them managed to nab the 500 points, obtaining it in two different ways. I'll create a Hall of Fame for this, Jaguar's 18 on Day 1 will make the cut. Great stuff everybody. Though the gap has widened, if you still want to win this you can, work hard on promoting a few central core articles to GA and you'll get 1000 odd points for each one and catch the leader! History, Economy and Politics still not taken for over 1000 points apiece. Thankyou to everybody who participated in Wales in Red, and hope you look forward to doing this again next weekend with a focus on diversity.♦ Dr. Blofeld10:41, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We have a problem with SSSI's ... the infobox template works only with English SSSIs. If any dragon awakeners are able to fix this problem, that'd be appreciated. More here. Thanks --Tagishsimon(talk)11:14, 19 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, though I don't know how much use it would be for Wales, I can't imagine the other wikis except Welsh wiki having a lot we don't have.06:25, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
@Sturmvogel 66:, Cwmhiraeth, Miyagawa and others. Would you like to run Wales in Red again this weekend, or would you like some more free time for core work? I was thinking that it might be best to run Wales in Red for the last two days of the competition. It is pretty exhausting Wales in Red, and I think it might affect how people do the destubbing if we hold it this weekend as people need a few days to recover from it haha. So we can focus on the core until 24th, then have the four day destubathon by county and then a two day Wales in Red finale, OK?♦ Dr. Blofeld07:04, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Fine by me, although I'm not sure what I'll do if I run out of Pembroke-built ships ;-)
OK, thanks. We'll run Wales in Red on 29th-1st May . I think we can extend it to the Sunday on 1 May evening, and that will be the end.♦ Dr. Blofeld16:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That reminds me, I was using the wiki time (UTC?) as the deadline during the Wales in Red competition, but is that an hour later than the current time in the UK?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:00, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Since it's British Summer Time now the clocks have gone forward one hour. I don't think UTC keeps up with that because when I sign my comments it puts it back an hour. Is that just me? We could have one extra hour of the contest. JAGUAR21:24, 22 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it might be BST, but was too lazy to look it up and see when it went into effect. I really don't care if we do or don't, I honestly doubt that it will matter much one way or another as I suspect that I'll be relying on my usual GANs for points at the end. But who knows, maybe Cwmhiraeth will make up so much ground during the Preserved County phase that we'll have a real horserace at the finish and I'll be cranking out stubs like there's no tomorrow.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:54, 22 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Just preparing the county challenge now. It'll be five days, but really a week as the finale I'm thinking of combing the best elements of Wales in Red and Stub Obliteration/Core attack into a game. There will be something fun for that last weekend, a way to earn a lot of points through a mixture of whatever the editor wants to do, but also challenge the editor beyond simple random creation/expansion. I won't spoil the surprise yet but I'll announce it on around the 26th!♦ Dr. Blofeld12:28, 21 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Noticing that there is a grey area on this in that it's often difficult to register what new prose has been added and what has been rewritten. For some which are already comprehensive it's difficult to really add 3kb of new prose. For the last week I'm willing to relax the expansion requirement for core articles to 1.5 kb, but only if it is agreeable to the contestants here. The problem is that there's already extra for tackling a certain section on top of the Level 1 or II and then the expansion bonus. What I think might be best is if we scrap the bonuses for sections and for expansions and just make the requirement minimum 1.5 kb. No points for the expansions but we could up tackling any core article to 100. The important thing on this is that as many core articles are improved as possible, and that people are free to continue to do that or go for the points offered in the upcoming Destubathon this week, or possibly do a bit of both. Cwmhiraeth, Sturmvogel 66, Miyagawa and others. Thoughts? ♦ Dr. Blofeld08:51, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mind how you arrange things; however, the scoring is extremely complex, making it difficult to calculate how to optimise one's score. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:17, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that might be a part of the challenge of this, really make you think about the best way to winning it. Give people a range of different options and be selective with what they do. But I can see that it's easier for everybody if kept simple which is why I've been simplifing it for Wales and Red and the one next week. If we scrap the section bonuses and expansion amounts for Core Attack and just up the scores for Level 1 and 2 it's not going to change the overall scores for expansions much I don't think. And it would make scoring much simpler.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:22, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the basic scoring is extremely complex, but I think it's because we have so many bonuses and a few different ones running like Core Attack and Wales in Red, it's difficult to remember what the original basic scoring was and what the scoring is for each. It's the bonuses which confuse people which are largely best avoided for future ones I think. If you had a two week contest for destubbing for instance you could completely scrap the points system and just give a small prize every day to whoever does the most articles. And then whoever wins on the most days is crowned the overall winner. It's because I've tried to cram in a range of activities on this for testing which has made it more complicated.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:33, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
On further thoughts, I think the Core attack scores should remain as they are. This is because some competitors may be moving on to destubbing while others may be sticking to the core attack, and the balance between the two would be upset if the scoring is changed. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:35, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Simplifying the scoring on core attack I don't think would change the scoring much because we'd be removing the bonuses for tackling a section, expansion level and for the others and just giving a set amount for tackling a core article. Sturm would be getting 300 for each expansion and GA (pretty much as he has been doing throughout most of it), while for core attack if you destubbed say 10 geo articles and more than anybody you'd be getting 450 points a day for some quick expansions. Plus there's a 500 bonus for doing 50. I'd say even with the slight adjustment there's a greater potential for destubbing this week. I'm just trying to find a balance and keep everybody happy on this. I would prefer it though if for the final week more people were doing destubbing work from across Wales as I think it's a really poorly covered area.♦ Dr. Blofeld11:26, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it's fairer if we keep it as it is, there's nothing stopping people from destubbing their own articles from the other week and aiming for the 500 on the 50 anyway. I'd still like to hear from the others on this, Miyagawa and The C of E etc? ♦ Dr. Blofeld11:58, 24 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Preserved County Challenge is now open. Today's focus is on Clwyd. 1000 points available throughout the week in total for doing the most destubbing every day, 25 points each for a geography article and a bonus of up to 1000 for anybody who does 100 articles. Ensure that the articles you expand are minimum 1.5 kb prose in total. If you are taking on smaller hamlets though which began as really short stubs which genuinely don't have much info on them 1.2kb is permitted to scrape by, but this is for cases where you genuinely can't find 1.5 kb without waffling.♦ Dr. Blofeld06:56, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hint ;-) There's a chance to be really clever on this.. Whoever finds a core article on geography or train station from the given county of the day which is still a stub and does a 3kb+ expansion you get 25 for doing a geo article or station + 25 3kb+ expansion + 40/50 core article for each. At the same time it's another towards that 500 overall bonus for 20 3kb+ core article expansions so killing two birds with one stone ;-) At the same time there's 200 points up for grabs for doing the most each day, 1000 for the week. At the moment the most a contestant has done is 1 article each. Destubbing an article takes 10 minutes.. So a chance for an easy 200 by 20 minutes work. ♦ Dr. Blofeld17:59, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Just to remind people, tomorrow is Glamorgan and Gwent. You'll have to treat them as two different ones, list your destubbed ones under either section. 200 points available for each so if it's played well tomorrow I'd estimate that there may be 700 or 800 points available if both are won.♦ Dr. Blofeld20:26, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think the only topics not covered too well during this are scientists and sports. Doubling the basic 3kb expansion score for anybody who tackles any of the ones on the core list in the sciences and sports sections between now and the end of the contest. 40/50 core article, +50 scientist/sportsperson, so now worth 90/100 points apiece.♦ Dr. Blofeld18:08, 26 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Finale is up. This is going to be a considerable challenge for everybody involved. Not Wales in Red, a mishmash of everything in which you will need to use your thinking cap to decide what to focus on. As I stated earlier, the emphasis is on diversity and range of work over the weekend. All the existing bonuses, such as 10 for missing article list, 20 for women, 40/50 points core apply etc, but you'll need to work out the best way to earn. 500 points is available for 50 creations/festubs/improvements on Saturday-Sunday. However, there are also two challenges in which people could potentially earn a lot more. One is 250 points for spelling the name of a Welsh celebrity/person on the core list correctly with the first letter of articles you start or improve, the other is a 500 bonus for anybody who manages to produce 22 article starts or improvements on a range of subjects from the 22 Principal areas of Wales. Obviously if you manage to hit some core ones, aim to spell out words of Welsh famous people and manage to hit all 22 areas of Wales you're going to score heavily.
You've got two days to think about the finale for this and how you're going to play it. If you have any questions or problem with the scoring please ask me before it starts. I think this will prove more productive overall and see more diversity than a simple Wales in Red stubathon. After so much effort with the Destubbing one this week, it didn't seem right one to up the number of stubs back to where we started! But people can still create just new articles if they wish, but this time it's minimum 1.5kb.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:20, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Cwmhiraeth:, @Sturmvogel 66:, @Miyagawa:, @Robevans123: etc. Just occurred to me that it's Bank Holiday Monday on 2nd May. We could extend it to Monday evening if you like? It's just for some aspects of the Finale it might be a little rushed with just two days, three days you can do more and have some time for a breather haha. You all OK with Monday night last day? Or would you prefer the holiday Monday for a (well-earned) rest?♦ Dr. Blofeld11:45, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Miyagawa:, @Robevans123:, Penny Richards, Deb, The C of E etc, you OK for Monday night? I think three days is healthier on this rather than two but I needed five rather than four days for the county challenge. When I say 23:59 GMT I mean British Summer Time, I think in some places wikipedia might be an hour behind if you don't adjust it. I'm writing this at 16:20 GMT, but signing it may come out as 15:20. So if you're seeing an hour behind adjust it to 22:59 being the end, that make sense?♦ Dr. Blofeld15:20, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah so 8 hours behind it would end at 4pm on the Monday and would give you a chance for entries on Sunday night and day on Monday if you're not working on that day!♦ Dr. Blofeld16:07, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The 2nd it is then. The Preserved County Challenge and Core Attack are closing in about 2 hours time. Still 2 hours left to try to gain some points. Remember that there is 400 points available today for coming first for both Gwent and Glamorgan!.♦ Dr. Blofeld20:59, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Cwmhiraeth:, @Sturmvogel 66:, @Miyagawa:, @The C of E:, @Deb:, @Penny Richards:, @Robevans123: etc. Just to let everybody know, at 12 noon I'm going to effectively open "Wales in Red" again until the end of the competition by relaxing the new article requirement from 1.5 kb of prose to a minimum of three facts and upping the scoring for each one to 25 points but you won't get double on the creations for this Cwmhiraeth, the 25 is for everybody now. So that might also save time with checking prose count. Try to make the stubs worthwhile new entries with some key facts and adequately sourced, even if basic, but you don't have to worry much about length for new entries now. This last day and a half is to be enjoyed with some fun creations I think, though destubbing of some articles still encouraged to find some of those letters! Remember that if you target missing Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings you'll get an extra ten for them being on the missing article hotlist ;-) Grade I are worth 50 in total and Grade II* or Scheduled Monuments 35 points each for a basic start. Obviously if you can still find articles to score those 250 word points and the 22 different counties for the 500 this will earn more. You may have to still destub a few articles to find some of those letters! The bonus for destubbing 15 articles on listed buildings and settlements is still on in Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Rules and scoring as is "Expanding a stub on a castle or country house" (there's barely any castles left but I think there's still some country house stubs left), so it will still prove worthy to destub as well as create. There is 500 points available for every round of 22 articles done for the counties, so if you created/destubbed multiple ones from each county you can claim 500 for every round completed. If somebody managed four creations/destubs from each county, this is worth a bonus of 2000 points.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:11, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Sciences are the only section which haven't see many core article improvements. If anybody feels like expanding a few Welsh scientists on the core list go for it. Remember there's double points for expansions over 3kb for people/articles in the sciences. For people who had under 1000 points on the main scoreboard when the finale began there's a point bonus on the lifetime of the people too♦ Dr. Blofeld14:30, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
On the mostly-dormant group blog Disability Studies Temple U., I wrote a piece for today about the four disability-related biographies I started for Awaken the Dragon. I'll be interested to hear about any others' outside writings about the event.Penny Richards (talk) 00:40, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Cwmhiraeth:, @Sturmvogel 66:, @Miyagawa:, @FruitMonkey:, @Deb: etc. Just a reminder that the contest will be closing in 4 hrs 15 minutes. 23:59 GMT, wikipedia might be an hour behind so double check on this. Make sure all entries are submitted by that time. GAs will have to have passed by the deadline to count too. For the last few hours I'm going to offer 250 points in total (a set figure, you won't get the core and other bonuses on top of this) to anybody who cleans up Swansea or Abergavenny, making sure it is all verifiable, sources formatted and detoxified into a technically sound article. Collaboration is permitted for this, any of you can work together on either. To get the 250 points though you will have to have put in a reasonable effort to improve, not just a few basic edits. Be careful to avoid edit conflicts though. I encourage people to be bold on it and blast away existing text and replace with clean new material. The articles are an absolute stink and for such major places in Wales to end on them being improved I think would be a very positive thing.♦ Dr. Blofeld19:05, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Clock is ticking. Tick tock... If anybody feels like creating some basic stubs on Grade II* listed buildings to finish go for it, they're worth 35 points each, 25 + 10 missing hotlist. Minimum of three facts required... There's also a few Grade I listed buildings left, they're worth 50, not many left now!♦ Dr. Blofeld22:01, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to thank everybody who has contributed to Awaken the Dragon, from the earlier content producers and people who helped with the lists like Sionk, Ham II, Robevans123, Tony Holkham, RobinLeicester etc to the quality steady writers like FruitMonkey, Aymatth2, The C of E, Deb, Penny Richards etc to the prolific contest leaders like Cwmhiraeth, Sturmvogel and Miyagawa. Also some of the Welsh contributors like Llywelyn2000, John Jones and Dafyddt also deserve some recognition for their work on Welsh wikipedia. We've seen a number of important articles created in Welsh too. You've all played a role in making this a success and it is greatly appreciated. I think this has arguably been the biggest achievement in terms of organized content production/improvement in the time period in the history of wikipedia. To my knowledge we've never seen this level of overall improvement before. Most contests tend to ignore a lot of the existing articles in favour of new stubs and articles. It's been an unbelievable contest, nearly 1100 articles, 150 core article improvements, over 60 GA and FA articles and a number of central core articles like Geography, Clwyd, Ceredigion, Welsh cuisine etc brought up to GA status. I see 17,000 odd WP:Wales tagged articles, I know there's more which aren't tagged but we've effectively covered roughly 1 out of 17 Wales articles and 1 in 5000 odd articles out of the entire encyclopedia. You'd never get that level of improvement for Wales normally. Arguably decades of work for WP:Wales in a month or two. We've demonstrated that with a positive mindset and a format which makes editing fun and makes improving stale articles more attractive it's possible to bring about significant changes. If we had even greater numbers participating we could make this an even bigger success.
At present I'm awaiting feedback from WMUK on this, but if they were willing to continue to support this we could run a few Dragon contest throughout the year and possibly some ones with a more regional focus. I'm considering proposing a Destubathon/Improvement drive for Anglesey/Gwynedd, possibly for 10 days-2 weeks.
That could be the start of regional contests run as part of Dragon which really target a given area of Wales and give that area the love and nurturing they typically don't get. I think with that something like a smaller daily prize for most article work might work better rather than a points or main prize system. It's about time that there was a mechanism which rewards sheer hard work, the real hard workers on here deserve to get something back and given more esteem for doing so. Through this we could aim to eliminate virtually all of our stubs given time, including the new footballer ones! I know Rodw has become interested in scaling this to SouthWest England, including Somerset, Devon, Cornwall etc later in the summer. If we can get the backing on that, that might be the next major one to hold. If I get the support I'm also thinking about running Wikipedia:The British Isles De-stub-athon later in the year. But Dragon I think has been too much of a success to die out, we'll hopefully host a few more of these each year, and I would love it if WP:Wales members keep it alive between contests as a scheme for content improvement and continue to work on content and list articles like they did in March.
The winner is yet to be announced on this, it's extremely close between Cwmhiraeth and Sturmvogel 66 on this. Everybody is a winner in my book, and you've all played a role in making this great. Hopefully nobody was too put off by the exotic scoring system and changes made during it for future ones, it needed to run to take shape and see what works and what doesn't. I needed to cram in a few different mini contests to see how things go, and had to come up with some more elaborate bonus systems to get people to target those really important articles nobody wants to improve usually. They all seemed to work, some better than others, but I think it makes the contest more interesting and varied. Even now I have ideas for future ones, A "Mr. Muscle" one I think is badly needed for disinfecting nasty B class articles! High points given for people who are bold in blasting away the shoddier core articles and replacing with clean well sourced content. With more of a framework in place, future ones would be more straighforward and may even focus on one of the "games" throughout. I think the scoring would be more simplified for future ones, and give contestants the full contest run to work out the best way to win it. So everybody who contributed to this please remain interested in competing/contributing and we'll see if we can get the funding needed to bring in new contributors and make it a more exciting contest. Cheers.♦ Dr. Blofeld08:54, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Here's a diff of the WP:Wales article quality table, 3 April - today. Presuming that all articles got a WP:Wales template - and that's certainly not the case, though I've added a few hundred over the last couple of days - and presuming the Wikiworks engine is up-to-date ... even with partial counting, it shows the extent of the quality improvements, especially from stub to start, stub & start to C, and stub, start & C to GA; as well as a very considerable number of new articles. (Clearly, quality ratings are rather cronky, but we maybe lack better metrics.) --Tagishsimon(talk)09:35, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Class
Change
FA
1
FL
1
FM
0
GA
50
B
1
C
44
Start
345
Stub
-81
List
14
Assessed
392
Unassessed
-58
Total
334
Clearly a lot of the articles still need assessing. Plus this doesn't register the core/higher importance quality improvements which were brought about. 150 core article improvements and 60 GAs speaks volumes.♦ Dr. Blofeld09:39, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Extremly well done to everyone involved, and particular thanks to Dr. B for organising. The only thing I would say regarding further competitions is that I think it'd be best not to do them any more frequently than once a quarter, simply to give people a break! This competetion has certainly opened up a few new subjects for me, not the least being women's rugby and medieval Welsh history, both of which I aim to continue working on. (Although from next month I'll be tied up doing Olympic related articles for DYK during the Rio games and then Star Trek articles to attempt to emulate the Sinatrapedia full sets seen last year on the Trek 50th anniversary in September) Anyway, I digress. 1 in 17 articles is frankly amazing, and I think the work here should be used as the standard for all future short length editing contests. Miyagawa (talk) 12:02, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Cheers Miyagawa. Definitely not more than one a quarter agreed! A full blown month contest covering everything is a huge undertaking. I think two or three larger ones a year, but have a few small ones for a week-2 weeks on destubbing perhaps. A 10 day one for Angelsey with a daily prize for most articles destubbed might be achievable. I think even the full blown contests two weeks might be better, a month is a huge effort.♦ Dr. Blofeld12:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My congratulations as well - the result has been amazing. Altho I haven't been able to be as involved as I'd hoped, what has to be done is much clearer. Tony Holkham(Talk)12:23, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This has really been a one-man show, and Dr. B has worked harder than anyone, running this incredibly successful competition single-handedly. I thought the varied format fine but it was difficult to keep up, as one new sub-contest followed another with great rapidity. I didn't see information about a railway station initiative until after that sub-contest was finished, for example. Great work Dr. B! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:55, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Cwm! Yes, I crammed in more sub contests than I'd have liked in the duration but needed to test a few things. If we get the support for future ones we could have smaller duration ones focused on one aspect, or a set one for each week of the contest. Next time I'd introduce a "Mr Muscle" sub contest though for cleaning up the important bloated B class artices. But when you have the "games" set from the start, anybody can plan the contest in advance, which with this made it difficult. I don't like the points system myself, it's tougher to manage and difficult to work out the best path to victory. I think I'd favour a simple article count for future ones, though for the general one that would be difficult to measure quality expansions. Something simpler and easier to plan right from the start would at least make that easier for everybody though. With scoring I think if you divided each form of work into article count, whoever does the most destubbing, the most 3-5kb expansions, most cleanups, most new articles, most GAs etc you could tally the figures of each by article count. Then whoever wins one aspect of it during the duration gets a prize. Then whoever wins the most aspects is crowned the overall winner. That would work I think. Of course that takes away the excitement of working out scores, but would be much easier for people to see how much work they need to do.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:29, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Congrats to all involved, especially Dr. Blofeld, Cwmhiraeth, Sturmvogel and Miyagawa. I was a casual contributor to only a few articles but I've kept an eye on the contest and it's been amazing to see the amount of content that has been created (and cleaned up) over the past month. 97198 (talk) 15:40, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to offer my thanks to the (Not-so-good) Doctor for organizing and running this; it's been interesting and rather fun, albeit in an exhausting way. I would like to offer up one thought on something that I had occasionally problems with. And that was finding articles to work on in that fit the criteria that I was looking for. Often times, it seemed that there wasn't a relevant category that I could use to select my next article to work on, especially when trying to destub something. So it might be worthwhile to have a part of a contest that rewards expanding categorization (forex, adding motte-and-bailey castles in X) and populating those categories. Granted this isn't hard, and shouldn't be highly rewarded like adding or expanding articles, but it should be worth a point or two. Now this would take a little supervision to ensure that people don't go crazy with absurd over-categorizations, but I think it would be worthwhile, especially if you can persuade a wikignome with categorization experience to assist. And building lists is a pretty good thing to do as well, although those take a hell of a lot more work than categorization.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:02, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well I had a blast, and I've learned a few things along the way. I too want to express my appreciation to the Doctor, for his enthusiasm, dedication and down-right bloody mindedness in getting himself and us through this incredible creative experience. Thanks too to the editors who worked hard setting up all the lists. I'm sure there are many 'lesson's learned' to come out of this editathon, especially when running a future version, but I think we can leave that to another day. Congratulations to the top three winning editors, and to all those that worked on Welsh cuisine (especially Worm that Turned), it could be my favourite article of the tournament, but I'm only now starting to look through all the contributions. Hats off! FruitMonkey (talk) 17:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've followed up the contest from the very beginning and congratulate all the participants and Doctor, the organizer especially. So an amazing organized effort. I also have a small comment. The project page (and future The British Isles De-stub-athon etc) needs a summary statistics table for achievements. Items might be Created (New article), Destubbed, GA, FA, Uploaded photo, Maps, Template etc (depends on the criteria of the contest). It will also help to assess things in wiki, as a short archive for future. Now we only have a long detailed list to explore :). As a good example, Russian wiki has a long tradition of such joint efforts.
Here they have statistics table for weekly achievements and a nice map of focus. I can see all the overall effort since 2010 (by weeks).
It is a country-wise weekly effort each week with a different country, region, territory etc. It especially helps to increase content on countries etc. with the lowest number of articles... Hanberke (talk) 09:33, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please review the templates below in the above link for country focus with flags etc. List of translation tools are also proved there. Hanberke (talk) 09:39, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Such tables will make it easy to see the whole picture and progress by time. Participants will feel great (I hope they'll agree) to see what's achieved jointly in numbers, as a legacy to be proud of (Time passes!). In this very case, there are too many sub-contests (The British Isles De-stub-athon will have more for sure) and we don't know clearly which of them are most successful and vice versa. As a different example, yearly and most famous Wiki Cup contest also lacks such overall tables and now it seems all those efforts gone onto the dust of wiki history! Hanberke (talk) 10:26, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that is really nice:) 74 FAs, 240 good articles. If only it is in the visible History section of WikiCup page itself. OK, may be things work different in different wikis. Yet I still believe highly visible statistics are important for this kind of contests in English wiki. Hanberke (talk) 05:10, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
My first feeling when I saw the final scores was that it was too close to really call a winner. Due to some issues with the scoring which means that either could probably find a way to claim being the winner, offwiki we've agreed to call this a draw and split the prize money between Cwmhiraeth and Sturmvogel 66. Excellent sportsmanship and I think the right thing to do, Perhaps in future contests there will be a rule that the winner must win by more than 500 points or something to be crowned the winner!♦ Dr. Blofeld18:40, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've been having a think about this and depending on funding I reckon this could work as an ongoing thing. I'm seeing some strong support for a Hot 100/500 type hotlist of the most important articles, 100 articles which must be no less than GA. The central core ones, the really important ones extracted from the core article list. If I can get the funding you could attach a small value to getting each one up to GA status or every 5 GAs etc and let Hot 100 run throughout the year. No deadlines or rushing but a chance to earn for getting the really important work done. When the 100 are at GA you select a new batch and so on. The wikicup people can then contribute and win something for promoting the top Welsh ones at the same time. I'm thinking that the best thing to do rather than too many full blown month contests including everything what might work best is hosting a county contest every few weekends, like we had with Wales in Red and the Finale but concentrating on destubbing/cleanup etc. Short but productive bursts with prizes for a given county and eventually vastly improve the quality of coverage by area of Wales.♦ Dr. Blofeld11:04, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've mentioned county contests/Anglesey/Gwynedd twice now, aren't people interested? I think it would be a great way to improve coverage. Shorter duration ones but long enough to get a decent amount improved.♦ Dr. Blofeld07:35, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We're all lying down and having a bit of a rest! Seriously though, yes, good idea to carry on, just still thinking about possible formats. Am working on a list of Scheduled monuments in Anglesey that are missing. 143 monuments and ~30 articles (some of which are inadequate redirects)... Robevans123 (talk) 08:11, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Me too, finding a darkened room to crawl into. Though up until September I will be working hard on Paralympic athletes with the build up to the Games, so I will need to split my duties this summer. FruitMonkey (talk) 17:40, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Haha, me too! We'll try to find a week for this next month if possible. I'll set up a page for Anglesey and Gwynedd next week. Soon I will archive the 1065 articles and allow people to continue to put articles on the page like we had in March to keep this going. Everybody has deserved a rest though!♦ Dr. Blofeld09:42, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
While the next one planned is a regional one for Wales, the next major one might be The West Country Wikipedia:WikiProject England/The West Country Challenge. If anybody here would be interested in doing one for the West Country late in the summer please put your name down there. It'll likely be very similar in format to the April Dragon one. Hopefully we'll do another full blown Dragon one for Wales in the Autumn some time. Perhaps we all need more of a break still to even be thinking about future ones haha but if you think you might be interested after a long rest ;-) ♦ Dr. Blofeld12:02, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your support. We won't venture outside of Wales too often hehe but we've got to vary things a bit and keep contributing fun and interesting! One obstacle on this might be the Olympics, we'll need to find a time to do it when things aren't too preoccupied with that I guess.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:25, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Of course I could have added a paragraph of heavy praise for the contributors and talked about improving Welsh content more in future ones but it'll do, everybody knows that they made it work!♦ Dr. Blofeld11:32, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Tweaked. Perhaps not specifically new content, but the fact is that a lot of people prefer to create new articles and ignore the poor quality stuff, that was my point.♦ Dr. Blofeld16:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What sort of feedback has AtD received from outside Wales? It would be good to know if others found it inspiring or interesting. FruitMonkey (talk) 23:03, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Planning a Gwynedd/Anglesey contest for June 13-20 week. I think that would be good to avoid conflicting with Wimbledon which I love to watch haha.♦ Dr. Blofeld17:38, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Good! Will have a detailed list of needed scheduled monuments and map of the ones needing photos sometime this weekend. Current count is that there are 143 scheduled monuments in Anglesey - of which 27 have articles, and a further 9 are covered to some extent by redirects (and the 27 includes the 8 recent additions by User:Cwmhiraeth), and about 60 are in need of photos (although I recently spotted one on Geograph - will do a full search to see if there are any more there). Robevans123 (talk) 19:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't looked at anything I've put on the list yet. Do you always have to be negative about anything I say or do?♦ Dr. Blofeld21:10, 13 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You mistake me, sir. I was asking a simple question about whether you wanted to keep GA-level articles on the Core list, perhaps to encourage somebody to take them to ACR or FAC, or not. If not, then I'd delete them as I ran across them. I was certainly wasn't criticizing you for not having reviewed them yet as their sheer numbers alone would persuade me to find a better use for my time on Wiki than checking their status. This is your playing field, I'm simply trying to ascertain what your desires are here. If I make suggestions, they're to improve things, not to criticize you for not having already implemented them, as they may or may not be helpful, depending on your intentions.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Why, was there a wolf or jaguar or something in the wilds of those Carmarthenshire reserves doing the biting ;-)? Seriously though I don't know what you're referring to, I've been nothing but complimentary about your work on the reserves but I didn't warm to your tone in some of the comments on my talk page complaining about the stubs.♦ Dr. Blofeld07:10, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hoping we can still run something on June 13-20 with this but as usual it depends on the response of WMUK. I really don't want to have to open a full new grant proposal for the regional contest as I was thinking of no more than £100. Of course we could run one without a financial prize, but wouldn't be the same. Hopefully we can do it anyway.♦ Dr. Blofeld12:44, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately WMUK aren't willing to fund even 50 pence into the Anglesey one. We can still have a drive for a week or two if a few people are still interested though.♦ Dr. Blofeld07:48, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the response. Do we want a mini contest or just a plain editathon? If we did make it a contest the scoring would be extremely simple for this!♦ Dr. Blofeld18:46, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'll have the contest page and rules set up this evening. In the meantime if any of you could help add entries to the core list for Angelsey and Gwynedd, could do with some biographies, perhaps Deb could find some for that. The emphasis on this is more on places and buildings though of course.♦ Dr. Blofeld14:07, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well done Cwmhiraeth, you won by a clear margin! We saw a number of decent article improvements during it so it was worth running. I was thinking of extending it but I don't think the interest can be sustained. I myself have been side tracked from wanting to contribute what I had intended on this! It is clear though that a regional level one isn't really going to work as a contest unless you have a decent prize and get more people on board. Perhaps it's best to stick to an overall Dragon one then. We won't hold another contest now until we have financial support with prizes. I will try to still work on a few north Wales articles the next few weeks and hope others can do the same!♦ Dr. Blofeld18:03, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hear hear. Well done Cwmhiraeth! What happened to the end date?! Last time I looked it was Wed 22 June. Just finished Porth Wen Brickworks... 10 points, so I wasn't in the running!
I disagree that we should dismiss regional contests (I was sidetracked by life during the short period of this contest). We should give it another go in a few months or so (with or without prizes...) 28 new/improved articles in a 7 day run is worthwhile. Robevans123 (talk) 19:39, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I don't know if anybody is watching this still but I invite anybody to sign up for the women contest, over $4000 to win, Wales and UK will be a part of it. Hopefully we can run another Dragon contest sometime!♦ Dr. Blofeld16:04, 10 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
