User talk:Shabidoo/Fall writing competition 2010

Fall 2010 writing competition. I am boldly announcing a fall writing competition and asking people for help. Many other wiki projects have writing competitions which are successful in first, bringing healthy competition amongst writers and editors, adding new articles, communication and community building amongst wikiidians and a chance to feature good writing and good writers.

I am looking for people to help me with ideas and advice on forming the competition, announcing it and spreading the word, organizing it, judging and making banners for the competition. All help, ideas and support is very welcome. Please keep comments within the appropriate category.

Idea

The general idea of the competition is to hold it over a 24 hour period in which each writer is expected to begin two feature articles (one suggested by another user and another based on a topic provided, of the competitors choice) and expand a stub (provided by another competitor). One article will be free to any topic and the second will be based on a specific topic (places, historical event) Advice and suggestions for this format is very welcome. This is not just an editing competition, it is about creating articles and expanding stubs as well.

Mechanics

Contestants will be paired up. Each contestant is expected to come up with an article that has not been created and find a stub that needs expansion. The participant then posts the names of these articles on his or her partners talk page (at the time told to). Each participant is also given a topic and has to create a page within that topic (on a first come first serve basis, i.e. the first participnat to create the page and place a banner gets it). The topic is announced just before the competition. Each participant will then post these article names on their partners pages. Any participant who contests the topic can do so during the first hour of the competition and will be given an extra half an hour of writing time if the topics are inappropriate (and will be supplied with a new topic). For the topic of the user created article, I am open to suggestions. I think its best to staz away from Biographies and perhaps geographical locations, but I would love to hear imput. It would be a good idea to check some projects and see if they would like to have a a bunch of users create a lot of new pages on the topic. Ideas on topics are very welcome.

Banner

A banner will be placed on new articles asking other wikipedians to give the writer 24 hours to edit the article before any new editing happens as well as with stubs, wikihow and the editing article phase. (Some may may have problems with this).

What do you think? WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 15:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I was about to actually give up on the project for lack of real help. THAT IS REALLY GREAT IN FACT! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shabidoo (talk • contribs) 22:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Judging

The three pages work will be judged by length, (to be determined), quality (sticking to the topic, using sources, original research, writing style, grammar, use of pictures, ingenuity, an editing eye (not digressing from topic), etc...) Comments and ideas and help are very welcome.

Depending on the interest of contestants and judges, the top 3 pages of each topic and the contestants with the best of 3 pages will then be evaluated by all judges and the winners will be announced for best new article, best article by topic and best stub expansion and finally winner of the competition with the best over all score.

Judging thoughts

• How will judges be chosen?
• How will judges be accountable?
• Length: Is that as important as quality?

Fiddle Faddle (talk) 12:49, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for writing. I assumed that I would ask for volunteers and would accept as many applicable volunteers as are. However, I would deffinately prefer more participants than judges! As for accountability I think its best to only take judges with writing experience, editing experience and atleast a little stub expansion experience. The more the variety of judges the better as well. I guess a good beginning base would say any one with atleast 100 edits and who has created atleast 2 pages and no history of serious controversy would be a minimum criteria?

As for length, no, its not more nor less important than criteria, but if we are creating a new article, it defiinately should have a bare minimum length. It should also adequately cover a topic. As for quality, amount of sources used, wiriting style, neutrality etc are all topics.

Tell me what your thoughts are. Shabidoo | Talk 14:32, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The challenge I see is that this may turn into a popularity contest despite your obvious intentions for it not to be. A rating scheme (with no midpoint, thus forcing a decision) could be useful, and the pool of judges might (should?) include all editors who happen to pass by. The greater the number of subjective assessments the greater the objectivity becomes. I'm not particularly concerned about controversial judges. One person one vote so any distortion caused is soon countered.

With a large assembly of judges I think you can cope with more entries than (say) 25.

Really this is a project to improve quality, isn't it? So maybe this has a home in an existing WikiProject? Fiddle Faddle (talk) 15:19, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

What about asking previous WikiCup winners to become judges? Kayau Voting IS evil 11:42, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

That is a really truly great idea! I am really hesitant to open this up to "any one can judge" as I think that is a bigger path towards popularity contest and it will make this first attempt extra complicated. Having winners or even finalists judge along with interested admin people and volunteers with a good history of writing and editing would bring a bit of credibility to it, and they may be extra motivated to participate. We could probably even get three judges per page. My idea was to take the top three finalists (though I think top 10 per category is better) and then have everyone judge those articles. A further way to avoid this becoming a popularity competition is to stress anonymity and unless judges look at users talk pages, they would not be able to know who wrote what. For a first attempt, I really think limiting this to 50 participants will help keep the administration of this under some control and if it is fun, productive and successful we could look at implementing more judges and candidates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shabidoo (talk • contribs) 11:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Limit

There should be a limit to contestants as managing anything more than say 50 contestants for a first attempt is a bad idea. Hopefully there will be even 25 contestants. It should also be a one stage event as opposed to wikipedia cup.

Time

The time of the competition is 24 hours to accommodate people from all time zones and should begin at 18.00 (6pm EST), 15.00 (3pm PST), (23.00) GMT and 00.00 (European central time) which should also be not an ungodly hour for people in Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

Date

As for a date, I think that either a Thursday or a Saturday is ideal to begin taking the competition to a Friday or Sunday.

Sign up

A sign up page can be added somehow, either on the talk page itself or somewhere else.

Name

I don't know what to name the competition. I vainly thought Shabidoo writing competition would be a funny name, and keep it informal as opposed to a wikipedia event.

Awards

A banner can be created to be displayed on the winning articles. Ideas?

The banner would be best on the talk pages near the wikiproject area, like the DYK box, I can create that if you want. I also recommend creating a barnstar for participating users - for that you would need an image, which you could make the official image of the competition or something. Either create an original one (which I can't do, 'cause I haven't got a program to support transparency) or use one already made, preferably which isn't used by much already, (I would personally recommend something like: File:Flaming-wiki.jpg). WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 15:54, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I can start work on a barnstar and banner for pages in the competition now if you want, all I need to know is which image you want to use. WVRMAD•Talk •Guestbook 10:03, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

General

This is an informal competition, it is a bold idea and needs to take shape and form. All help and ideas are very welcome though please lets not get too far off course, limit this to no more than dealing with three pages over a 24 hour period with no more than 50 contestants, keeping it fun and informal.

Some thoughts from J Milburn

Ok, you contacted me on my talk page about this, but I can see a couple of potential problems with this format.

• A large number of new articles/expanded stubs on one day could flood DYK, which is not a good thing. The WikiCup has already been accused of doing this.
• This is more like the Amazing Race Wikipedia than the WikiCup, which failed. I'd be inclined to say that the reason it failed was related to something that jumps out at me in this competition- "The general idea of the competition is to hold it over a 24 hour period in which each writer is expected to begin two feature articles (one suggested by another user and another based on a topic provided, of the competitors choice) and expand a stub (provided by another competitor). One article will be free to any topic and the second will be based on a specific topic (places, historical event)." This is very complicated, and forcing people to write about specific things in specific timeframes is not going to be popular. People like writing about certain things- let them stick to that.

At the moment, the idea is rather underdeveloped, so I can't really offer much more than that. I don't really think I get it. J Milburn (talk) 13:58, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

thanks for the quick response. Its clear after reviewing some other competitions that you are right on almost everything you say, a 24 hour time constraint is extra limiting and having 3 tasks assigned is too much. Its simply a format that has worked on other wiki sites for competitions, but probably not so in wikipedia. I will keep this extra simple. However, I dont think that asking to have someone create an article on a specific topic is so absurd, as the bacon theme in the wikicup side competition is the same concept and it works. It tests a writers ability to work on a topic that requires research and good writing skills on a topic they may not be familiar with. I think it will really be better to get a team of a few people who will dedicate themselves to helping me with this, pick a theme together, develop it (expanding a stub, writing a new article, illustrating large articles without pictures, etc...), then ask for advice from experienced competition holders and then hold this over a week or two weeks at most, allowing for perhaps more competition. If it works and we even have 25 people complete the competition I would see it as a small success, and I would hope to repeat the same with a new theme later. Wikipedia does encourage bold new ideas after all. Thanks for your feelings and being frank and direct with me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shabidoo (talk • contribs) 16:09, 10 August 2010 (UTC)