Wikipedia talk:WikiCup/Archive/2015/4

Question about DYK

I recently expanded Mesa Verde National Park from just under 2,000 words to more than 8,000. It also passed GAN. But if I read the rules correctly, I cannot claim points for a DYK about it unless the expansion was fivefold and within the last 7 days. Am I reading them right? RO^(talk) 22:12, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

If the article has just become GA rated, then it's eligible for DYK. MeegsC (talk) 23:56, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It's eligible for DYK, but that DYK is not eligible for WikiCup points. "Regular" DYKs, that is, fivefold expansions or articles created in the last seven days, are eligible for points, but it was agreed that this newer form of DYK (the "new GA" criterion) would not be eligible. Josh Milburn (talk) 07:57, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

So, it's not eligible because I added only six thousand words, but had I added eight thousand it would be eligible? And had I added 1,000 words to a 200 word article that would be eligible, but adding 6,000 to this one isn't enough? RO^(talk) 15:30, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Well summarised, yes. Harrias ^talk 15:57, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

So what's the thinking behind "the expansion must be fivefold regardless of total words added"? Some FAs aren't even 6,000 words long, but they might be worth 600 Wikicup points if in 50 wikis. RO^(talk) 16:07, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

We're following the regular DYK rules here. So adding 15,000 words to a 5,000-word article won't qualify. But it would probably pass GAN at that length, so you'd get points for it that way.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:14, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Except that regular DYK rules allow for new GAs, but we do not, which makes the matter of fivefold really the only determining factor, but why fivefold? The Ursa Minor FA was worth 600 points, but the article is only 2,500 words long. RO^(talk) 16:30, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I think you're overcomplicating this a little. The WikiCup rule is pretty simple- if it's eligible for DYK under the old DYK rules (new article or five-fold expansion), it's eligible for WikiCup points; if it's eligible for WikiCup points under the new rule (new GA) but not the old rules, it's not eligible for WikiCup points. Josh Milburn (talk) 17:00, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right, and I wasn't around for the "old rules", so I guess new GAs weren't eligible for DYK last year unless they had been expanded fivefold? That's really my main point, that adding 6,000 words doesn't make the article "new" enough, but adding 8,000 does, but many FAs aren't even that long. I guess we have to draw the line somewhere, but I'm not sure why the article should be eligible for DYK but not for DYK Wikicup points. Why have two sets of rules? RO^(talk) 17:58, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

The rule about new GAs being eligible for DYK was a "new" rule (over at DYK- the WikiCup had nothing to do with it!)- in 2013. Previous to that, no article (GA, FA, FL, whatever) was eligible for DYK unless it was created recently or was a fivefold expansion. The decision was made in the WikiCup community not to count the "new GA DYKs" as eligible for WikiCup points on the grounds that we were already giving points for the GA, and no extra work was required for the DYK (I can dig out the discussion(s)/straw poll(s) if you're interested). It's not the only area where there are different rules for the WikiCup and the main process- very short GA reviews, including quick-fails, are not eligible for WikiCup points, but are no less GA reviews for the fact. I can't really respond to your "adding 6,000 words doesn't make the article 'new' enough, but adding 8,000 does" comment, as it doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the issue at hand. It's fine to disagree with either the DYK "five times expansion" rule or the WikiCup "no new-GA DYKs" rule, but neither has anything to do with the absolute number of words by which an article was expanded and both were established on the basis of consensus-based discussion processes. If you think the "five times expansion" thing should be changed, you need to make your case over at DYK, not here. If you think the "new GA DYKs not eligible" thing needs to change, then here is the appropriate place, but we have a longstanding tradition of not changing rules mid-competition, so you'll have to wait until our annual "what needs to change" discussion opens. If this doesn't answer your question, I'm afraid I have misunderstood you. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:21, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

You totally answered my question. Thanks, J Milburn. I guess I was conflating two sets of rules with two versions. I'm not trying to be a pain or change the rules mid-stream, I was just trying to figure out what the new material restriction thing was all about. I guess I can see why that's kind of a double dip to get DYK on your own GA, but I think fivefold should be changed to a set minimum addition of say, 2,500 words, but I understand that this isn't the place for that discussion. Thanks again. RO^(talk) 18:50, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't think you were trying to be a pain, I just wasn't quite clear what the problem was! Glad we're all on the same page now. Josh Milburn (talk) 19:26, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Follow up question J Milburn, when I started editing Perovskia atriplicifolia, it had 370 words: ([1]), but only 165 were actually sourced, so is the fivefold number 5 x 165 or 5 x 370? RO^(talk) 20:22, 21 August 2015 (UTC) Pinging Miyagawa. RO^(talk) 21:18, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

5 x 370; sourced or not, that makes no difference.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:55, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for the reply. RO^(talk) 22:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Is there a minimum number of words for a new stub-based DYK? RO^(talk) 22:30, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Nope. We follow DYK rules for our DYKs, aside from no points for new GAs, so don't be over thinking things.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:42, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Question for Casliber

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Figureskatingfan, Miyagawa, and Sturmvogel 66. I was looking at Casliber's submissions, because I am in total awe of how he accumulates so many points, and I noticed that he claimed DYK points for Ursa Minor. I'm still trying to figure this out myself, but it looks like the GA version from June 27, 2015, had 2,417 words: ([2]), but the version on June 1, 2015, already had 2,405 words, so I'm failing to see how this was expanded fivefold in the seven days prior to the June 28, 2015, DYK nomination, because 14 months ago, on June 4, 2014, it already had 1,342 words: ([3]), and today it has 2,567 words: ([4]). I sincerely apologize if I have something wrong here, as I was making a good-faith effort to figure out how he's managed to earn so many points, particularly bonus points (Casliber has 788 bonus points this round, and everybody else combined has 373), and in my own struggle to understand the rules here I am looking for examples to go by. If I have caught an error on Casliber's part I truly hope it's an isolated one, and not representative of previous rounds, or of the rest of this round's submissions. RO^(talk) 21:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I looked at another and found the same problem, and I've only looked at two so far. When Norma (constellation) passed GA on July 2, 2015, it had 1756 words: ([5]), but on June 3, 2015, it already had 1745: ([6]). On May 17, 2015, it had 1350 words: ([7]), and today it has 1872 words: ([8]) so obviously there has not been a fivefold expansion of this article in the last three months, but Casliber claimed it for DYK points: ([9]), with lots of bonus points. RO^(talk) 21:37, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Those have both been removed from the submissions page. All submissions are checked before the final scores are tallied against the end of the round, just I've been busy this round and managed to get behind. These hadn't been checked yet, but would have been picked up in a couple of days time. Miyagawa (talk) 22:36, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, but the very first one I checked from last round, round three, Frigatebird, had 1,822 words on December 31, 2014:([10]) but it only has 3,365 today: ([11]), so no fivefold expansion occurred there either. RO^(talk) 22:44, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

And the eight minutes between our last two replies is exactly how long it took me to find another example from last round. RO^(talk) 22:50, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

There's no need to get snarky; we've all got real lives and may take a bit to get up to speed.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:15, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't get pinged by these. I was not aware we weren't allowing claims from DYKs nominated by 5x expansion only (i.e. excluding those improved to GA). My bad. Will remember for future. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It's the other way around, only 5x expansion counts for the Cup, not reaching GA. Your current DYK noms are fine.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 12:27, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Question about deadline

The round ends on the 29th, but when is the last minute that we can still claim points for this round? Is it 00:00 August 30, or can we claim something on August 31 and still get points for this round? RO^(talk) 18:12, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Anything promoted (or a GA review closed) before 30 August (IE, up to and including 23:59:59 on 29 August) is eligible for points. You don't have to add it to your submission page before the end of the round- this is part of the reason we have the "grace period". We don't have an explicit "must have been added before this time" rule, but make it as quick as possible! Anything promoted after the end of this round but before the start of the next round can be claimed in the next round, but should not be added to your submission page until the next round starts. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks again, J Milburn! RO^(talk) 18:55, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Likewise, the quicker you add it to your submission page, the less likely it'll get missed when I tally the final scores for the round. Miyagawa (talk) 22:24, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't intentionally wait till the last minute, but I was wondering about stuff that closes near the deadline. RO^(talk) 22:28, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

You'll pretty much have the first day out of the two to get the stuff on your submissions page. If you don't then you lose it. If the article passes something in the gap between the two rounds then it should be claimed in the following round. Miyagawa (talk) 12:34, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Reviews should be worth more

I think 4 points for reviews is too little incentive for such an integral part of the Wikipedia process. Also, it seems hard to get image reviews, source reviews, and spot checks at FAC. Maybe these important steps should also be recognized with Wikipoints. RO^(talk) 18:37, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

The FAC community (or, at least, a vocal section of it- I couldn't make a claim about the whole community) have always been strongly opposed to FAC reviews being awarded WikiCup points. I think GA reviews and peer reviews do belong as part of the Cup, but the majority of WikiCup participants have favoured keeping them at the lower end of the points scale. Personally, I think keeping them low is a good idea, as I don't want to see people encouraged to rush through them and produce bad reviews. As they are the only content not audited in some way (even DYK has a review process checking the submissions) they are particularly vulnerable to shoddy efforts. Josh Milburn (talk) 19:38, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree. People will take easy points by giving more and more "drive-bys" if reviews were worth more. In my view, GAR points should never be more than DYK base points. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:06, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

GAR points (4) are currently less than DYKs (5 to 10). I agree that quality control is an issue, as it would be difficult to check all the reviews for substance. But I also see a general lack of reviewers, and it would be nice if this contest could be an incentive to review, which it currently isn't. There can be no GAs or FAs without reviews, and I see content creation and refinement as our primary objective. RO^(talk) 20:36, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

In that case, then maybe GARs and DYK points should both be raised. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 20:45, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Personally I think that the points are reasonable as they are. Completing GA and PR reviews are in some ways a bit of an unofficial QPQ anyway: while not directly, reviewing other articles can help your own nominations get reviewed sooner, and being known as someone who completes reviews does tend to help your own nominations get reviewed sooner. While not everyone is reviewing for that purpose, those that do review regularly without creating as much content can have a number of reviews running concurrently that would rack up huge numbers of points if we granted more for reviews. I think a "token" amount of points as is currently given is a fair balance to ensure that the emphasis of a review is still on completing a quality review, rather than churning through reviews to gain points. Harrias ^talk 21:14, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed- I like the idea of GAC points being "token", rather than something people can rely upon to win. I also don't like the idea of DYK points being raised- I really think that featured/good content, the genuinely audited content, should be the real point-scorers. On a loosely related note, it'll be interesting to reflect on the change in bonus points at the end of this competition... Josh Milburn (talk) 21:36, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

In case people aren't aware, the GA Cup is a WikiCup-style competition which is entirely about reviewing good articles. Signups are closed for this year, but people may be interested in what's going on nonetheless. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:34, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

That's a good point. I guess reviews are not really part of this contest except for a few token points. I can see why. RO^(talk) 21:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• GAN and PR were added initially DEFINITELY to reduce the backlogs there by encouraging more people to do them. FACs get sufficient reviewers these days. However, I've had like 5 FLCs in the last years that pretty much failed because of lack of reviews. I strongly encourage judges to add FLC reviews to the list of available options. Nergaal (talk) 23:09, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• 4 does seem an odd number, I think 5 is more rounded off.  — Calvin999 10:05, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

  It is better to give points to actions which have a clear and definable rule structure. We've run into plenty of issues this year with PRs because there isn't anything to say at PR that you can't just stick a one bullet point line in and it'll be fine - but there is stuff against gaining points for that in our rules. So in effect we ended up throwing about somewhere between a quarter and a third of all of the PRs submitted for points this year. The other major issue is that everything else requires a certain interaction and a level of scrutiny. For example, you review a Good Article and you need the nominator to fix various things. If you do a wordy but ultimately pointless review, the article can be taken to GAR for that which in my mind would result in the original reviewer losing the points. However, with PR there is no such process nor interaction. In fact, technically there is nothing to stop a user from waiting till the last day of a round and then posting a bare minimum PR type review (the content of which could be wordy but ultimately rubbish) on every single nomination. Each one gets an instant 4 points when it is posted, and then us judges get put in the corner of having to decide whether or not to wipe out someone's entire points score for a round because they've posted nonsense multiple times. Same issue would go for FLC, FAC etc, and I think that is what the FA crowd are concerned about. My concern is for the volume of this in the earlier rounds for the judges as sorting out that PRs during the first three rounds were extremly time consuming and very repetitive, and ultimately I am doubtful that including it was particularly helpful to the actual PR process. Miyagawa (talk) 12:49, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

  I'll bet if you asked one of the review requesters who waited weeks, if not a month or more, to get some comments if it was helpful they might disagree. I've reviewed about 10 this round that had zero comments prior to my review. RO^(talk) 18:01, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

  I'm not disagreeing with you, but that's really not the point for us. The administrative burden for validating PR nominations is high and PR's are vulnerable to being gamed. Having to throw out over half of the PR noms earlier is not a good thing and wastes a lot of time for the judges.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:07, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Conversations are starting to get a bit pointy and personal – let's keep this thread more generalised

*::::But there is literally no aspect of this competition that can't be gamed, so I'm not sure why you would single out peer reviews as especially gamable. Take DYKs for example, some participants get theirs approved within days or even minutes, while others wait weeks or even longer. Take a look at Template:Did you know nominations/Ursa Minor. It looks to me like one of our judges is helping some people to fast-track their noms, but not others. Isn't that gaming the system? Is that fair? RO(talk) 18:27, 24 August 2015 (UTC) Given that Casliber is sure to make it into the next round, I see no issues with Miyagawa reviewing one of his nominations. If it made the difference between somebody advancing or not, then there would be an problem, IMO. As for the wait time for DYK reviews, that's strictly an issue for the DYK reviewers and there's nothing we can or desire to do about that since DYK mostly operates on a QPQ system. Just like GAN, nobody's obligated to review your nomination, and that's OK, annoying, but OK. I've personally reviewed about a dozen GANs this month for the GA Cup, but I chose them for a variety of reasons; because their topics seemed interesting, the nominators have reviewed some of my articles, etc. Don't forget about the role of personalities in how reviewers choose what to review; there are people out there that I will never review ever again at any level because the first time was so painful and/or exasperating that I just don't want to deal with them. And other people are congenial, with articles that need very little work, etc., so that it's a pleasure to review their articles. I regret that nobody's reviewing your nominations, but you're taking the same chances as everybody else. All that said, the issue of time and effort required to validate PR noms by the judges is a concern for me and we will be re-examining the issue before next year's Cup.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:50, 24 August 2015 (UTC) If it's that much of a time-sink, then I don't blame you for wanting to drop it. But as far as judges helping some participants accumulate points faster and not others, I think it's a matter of ethics, not that "Casliber will advance even if the judges didn't review his stuff". Frankly, that's a silly justification, and it's exactly what Miyagawa said about him getting points for DYKs that do not even qualify (see below). Fair is fair, and it's little consolation that "there's no stopping him anyway". If you want to talk about gaming the system, I think getting 690 points for adding less than 1,000 words to an article is exactly that, but you are concerned that people might be getting 4 points for gaming. Did you check to see how much work Casliber put into his 4 FAs this round? I mean, how in the hell could someone get four FAs through in 5 weeks without lots of help or gaming? Calvin999 knows what I'm talking about here. RO(talk) 21:23, 24 August 2015 (UTC) DYKs are the only things in which the amount of work (aka 5x expansion) matters in terms of the Cup, so I am utterly indifferent that he only had to add X number of words to pass FA. It takes a lot of effort to pass FA and I'm sure that he had to do a lot of tweaking to get it ready for FAC, so a strict word count is really meaningless. The amount of work, however you want to judge it, is only meaningful for DYKs, nothing else. I've added 20,000 characters to some articles which didn't meet the 5x criteria, so I missed those points, but got a lot when they passed GAN and FAC. Calvin may know what you're talking about, but I don't, OTOH, I don't think that I care very much. Casliber made a self-admitted mistake with his DYK noms earlier, and the improper ones have been removed, but he's a very experienced editor who does a lot of reviewing so he naturally gets a lot of reviews for his own articles. I gather that you feel that there's a certain amount of injustice right now, but I think that you're getting all wrapped around the axle about the amount of work that you feel is appropriate for a given number of points. I have to tell you that the amount of work involved is generally irrelevant to the Cup so you're getting all spun up over nothing. I'd suggest that a far more productive use of your time would be to write and review more than kvetching here about misconduct that doesn't exist by the Cup's rules.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC) I've capped this as it is getting a bit too personal. If you have a specific complaint about one user, make it in a thread entitled such, and notify that user on their talk page. Harrias talk 07:35, 25 August 2015 (UTC)