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Proposal: Multi-round scoring, not elimination

Some editors opposed option C based on the complications involved in implementing the tournament-point system. However, other good points were made in favor of option C, including the argument that this option would allow contestants to gain an advantage even if they joined late. Therefore, I will implement option C for at least the 2025 WikiCup. After the 2025 WikiCup, there can be a discussion on whether to keep the changes, reinstate the 2024 scoring system, or modify the scoring system further.

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.

I live in a beach town. I have a lot of time on my hands in the cold months, and much less in the hot ones. Very much relatedly, both years that I've competed, I've done pretty well in the first two rounds, and then not cracked 100pts in the third round (May 1 to June 28). I can't be the only person in this situation. Anyone who is a student, or a teacher, or works a seasonal job, or lives in a part of the world where Internet access is less reliable some parts of the year, can really only compete in the current powers-of-2-elimination model if their schedule happens to equate to having progressively more time for Misplaced Pages as the rounds go on. This strikes me as at once unfair, not a very entertaining competition, and a suboptimal way of encouraging people to create content. Consider that by the final two rounds we're only encouraging 16, then 8 people, many of whom would already be creating lots of content regardless. Furthermore, an elimination framework makes it impossible to join late, meaning that if someone learns of the Cup during the year and wants to sign up, they'll have to remember to do so between November and January.

1. Status quo: Final placement is determined through scores in the final round after four rounds of elimination.
2. Final placement is determined by the average of a person's placements in each round. No elimination.
3. The top 16 in each round get a number of Tournament Points equal to ${\displaystyle ({\text{places above 17th}})^{2}}$—i.e., from 1st downward, {256, 225, 196, 169, 144, 121, 100, 81, 64, 49, 36, 25, 16, 9, 4, 1}. Final placement is determined by total Tournament Points. No elimination.
4. Pure cumulative scoring: Final placement is determined by total points across all rounds.

Late joiners would be retroactively assigned a score of 0 in any round they missed. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 01:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• My preference is C > B > D > A, because C creates increasing incentives the closer you get to the top. I've added D per below; I don't love the idea, for reasons explained above regarding runaway victories and increased gaming, but I still think it's preferable to elimination. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 01:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• Sure, I like the sound of C. Why not? (fwiw, the status quo is five rounds not four). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Four elimination rounds, and a fifth round that determines final placement. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 06:35, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• C sounds great! IntentionallyDense 05:06, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• I think a system like this would be much better than the current one; at a glance, I'd be happy with B, C, or some other variation. With that said, it might be helpful to create some samples or consider different scenarios before implementing one. Perhaps trying different scales for C, though simpler is better. Obviously we can't foresee everything, but it would be good to avoid any likely scenarios where the result doesn't "feel" right and the apparent winner doesn't actually win. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:22, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• C sounds great, though I think the scale should be tweaked as a new scoring system might attract more competition and lead to more than 16 big contributors. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 15:53, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I very much like this proposal; it eliminates my biggest gripe with the cup as it's currently implemented (the frequent incentive not to promote content until opportune moments, such as the beginning or very end of the round). It's unlikely someone would be able to game it in a way that isn't obviously rule-breaking, since it'd require doing it for multiple rounds. It also keeps people engaged for longer, which is better for the spirit of it being about improving the wiki. Mark me down for option C.

Though a secondary question; this would take ties from "almost impossible" to "fairly plausible", right? We'd have to figure out a tiebreaker (or be okay with multiple winners sometimes). Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:19, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, one more idea before I go to bed: What if you also got Tournament Points by having the most points in a category? IE, if you're the person with the most GAN review points or FL points or GA points over the course of the cup, that counts as winning a round in your own right. This would allow editors with kinda niche areas of focus that don't rank in the points as much to still make quite respectable showings (and probably lead to like, competition over who does the most FAC reviews, which would never happen otherwise) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:41, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Oooh an end-of-tournament set of "vertical" bonuses would be really cool, and reminds me of some very fun boardgames like 7 Wonders. An elegant way to do that would be pegging the Tournament Point values of winning a category to the in-round value of one of that type, so like 200 Tournament Points for the most FAs (making it almost equal to winning a round, which sounds about right). For DYK we could round to 8, or take the average number of points the user got from DYKs. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 06:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

That could work, though my thought is we don't particularly need to incentivize players to go for the most FAs, since that's already the best way to win rounds. Equalizing the forms of scoring would benefit play styles like heymanimjosh's (Who consistently got tons of FLs and finished in the top few places most rounds) or sammi Brie's (only got first place in one round, but backed it up with a BUNCH of GAN reviews).

Overall, the effort to be the person with the most GAN reviews is gonna be similar to the effort to be the person with the most FAs, since you might only need like 6 FAs vs like 100 gan reviews Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:59, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point. It could be a flat 128 points for winning an individual category maybe? Exactly half the score of winning a round, a tenth of the highest possible pre-bonuses score, and a nod to our powers-of-two heritage. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 07:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

For an individual round, I think it's fine to say that if multiple editors get the same score, they all get the same number of Tournament Points, with a corresponding number of spots skipped afterward. So if you, me, and Eek all tie for 1st in a round, then we each get 256, and if Alien is next behind us, he's fourth and gets 169. For ties in Tournament Points, I think best single-round performance could make for a cool tiebreaker; it would partly offset any feeling of "wasted" points for winning by too much in one round. (And then secondary tiebreaker is second-best single-round performance, and so on... If two people somehow get the exact same score in every round, we call it a true tie and tell them to go play the lottery.) -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 06:41, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• As I said above, if we want a marathon kind of competition, then I suggest creating a new competition. I think that could be pretty cool actually, to have a separate competition that effectively recognizes the person who overall contributed the most content to EnWP in a year. I think Tamzin has identified a rather nifty scoring system for that competition (in option C). Now all we need is a catchy name... CaptainEek ⚓ 06:24, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  I really don't think the enwiki editorial base is big enough at the moment to support two big competitions on the scale of the Wikicup. If we have one big prestigious one (well as prestigious as a contest for internet points can be), it'll incentivize more editors to get involved. If we have two, we run the risk of both fizzling out. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:30, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  Hmmm, that is actually a pretty good point. I'm not opposed to C, and think it would be interesting to give it a try. Tamzin's scoring system really is innovative. I will note that I'm opposed to B though, I think that takes some of the competitive fun out of it. CaptainEek ⚓ 06:36, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  I agree with Eek that C seems the best and B seems the worst. I like the idea of bonus points for the top person in non-FA verticals, either each round or over the year. -- Guerillero 09:01, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• I like the general idea, especially C (B doesn't sound so convincing). There would still some end-of-round excitement but perhaps less of a feeling of wasted effort by doing things too early. So I guess support C. —Kusma (talk) 14:39, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  If we are to rank all choices, I vote C > D > B > A. —Kusma (talk) 10:13, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• I think this is an interesting idea that warrants discussion. I will leave more comments later, but I'm going to briefly say that, even if there is a consensus on this idea, there might not be enough time to implement this for 2025. (I'm not even sure yet whether LivingBot will be updated in time to reflect the much more minor change to FL scoring, which was discussed a few weeks ago.) It can, however, be rolled out for 2026. Epicgenius (talk) 15:39, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  I don't see why LivingBot would need to be updated at all -- the basic scores are the same, there is just a different way of adding scores from different rounds. —Kusma (talk) 15:46, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  Oh yeah - isn't the between round stuff manual? And tabulating the total quantity of "tournament points" seems trivial to do by hand at the end of each round. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:52, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, we manually clear the submissions pages after each round. I was mentioning LivingBot in the name of efficiency, since I think a bot would be able to distribute these points more accurately if it were done automatically. Blanking the submissions pages and determining which contestants advance to the next round don't require calculations, like the proposed "tournament points" system does. Epicgenius (talk) 19:41, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  Well the calculations are just matching the top 16 to 16 predetermined values, plus sometimes a few tweaks for ties. That could be done with a Lua module, JS script, or bot if desired, but I just tried the following for round 1 of this year and it was pretty straightforward:

  1. Open a round's table in VE.
  2. Copy-paste the table into Google Sheets (I assume Excel/etc. would work as well).
  3. Add another column called "Tournament Points", giving all cells the value =IF(ROW() < 17, (17-ROW())^2, 0)
  4. Manually check for ties. (In this case, that means The Night Watch and NegativeMP1 tie for 12th and both get 25; Tails Wx is still considered 14th, getting 9.)
  5. Copy the spreadsheet and overwrite the table in VE. (VE at this point will freeze for about a minute.)
  6. Optional: If you care about preserving {{Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Participant15}}, the calls to which get substed during the above steps, then switch to code editing and do a find-and-replace for \+)\|\1\]\] \(\\]\) → {{Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Participant15|$1}}
  7. There would presumably be a table on the main WikiCup page listing round-by-round and total Tournament Points for anyone who's scored any. (No need to bog things down with a bunch of 0s.) This can be done quickly by VE-to-VE copypasting of cell values and then some quick arithmetic (or maybe there's some module to sum the cells in a row?).

  That looks complicated, but it's actually just a few minutes every two months, most of which is spent waiting for step 5 to unfreeze. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 21:57, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for that, @Tamzin. This would be helpful if there is a consensus to implement the new tournament points system. I wanted to find an efficient way to do this (i.e. I'm lazy), so that's why I was thinking that the bot would need additional code, but I guess that works too. We just have to find a way to get LivingBot to not malfunction when I add the extra column to the WikiCup table. Alternatively, to avoid the need to ask Jarry1250 to edit the bot's code, I can configure these tables so the "tournament points" only appear in the archives for each round (e.g. Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/History/2024/Round 1) and not in the main Misplaced Pages:WikiCup page.Incidentally, I had a few thoughts written up about this, including some commentary in case the tournament points were not separate from the existing points system. However, your comment confirmed that these two were separate, so I will leave some thoughts on this later. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:42, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  @Epicgenius: I've added a subsection below to hopefully clarify any remaining questions. Let me know if there's anything that's still unclear. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 01:38, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose B and C there's usually a very big gap between the first couple of high-scorers and everyone else: this scoring system doesn't adequately reflect that gap. I'm opposed to any scoring system that assigns points based on relative position instead of the actual content someone's making. AryKun (talk) 08:18, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  The content scoring system would not change. What is being proposed is that instead of some people being eliminated and others taking zero points from the previous round into the next, the top 16 people (by the standard content scoring) would keep some points, and the final winner would be decided not just by the position in the final round, but by a cumulative score. Note also that the proposed system includes a large gap between top scorers (who get up to 256 points) and everyone else (who score a handful points). I understand that you are opposed to the change, but I do not understand your argument. —Kusma (talk) 09:57, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  The system doesn't change within rounds, but the tournament points are not related to the amount of content someone is writing. The differences between positions are not nearly significant enough; in round one of this year's cup, Generalissima (in first) had 60% more points than AJ29 (in third), but this points system only gives them 30% more points for that. My argument is that we should not award points on the relative position you're in, but the actual work you're doing, since that's what the cup is presumably about. AryKun (talk) 15:53, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  OK, a different suggestion would simply be to have a 10-month WikiCup without eliminating contestants, something that would also fix Tamzin's problem of having more wikitime early in the year than over the Northern hemisphere summer. —Kusma (talk) 17:28, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

  @AryKun and Kusma: I've added an Option D for pure cumulative scoring, although I personally prefer C or B to it. This preserves a 5-round structure because winning a round is a good incentive for people and it's also easier administratively (I think?); but if someone wants to propose a nonstop round-less approach, feel free to. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 18:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

• We have good participation above but arguably not a quorum given the size of the changes being proposed. Would anyone object to me mass-pinging everyone who's signed up for '25? -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 23:58, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

  Seems like a relevant group to alert. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:48, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  @The C of E, Hey man im josh, Skyshifter, DoctorWhoFan91, Ixtal, Arconning, Kusma, Dylan620, Generalissima, LunaEclipse, BeanieFan11, PCN02WPS, Fritzmann2002, Matthewrb, KEmel49, Vestrian24Bio, Queen of Hearts, Tails Wx, SounderBruce, Voorts, Kline, IntentionallyDense, Wolverine X-eye, LEvalyn, Amir Ghandi, OlifanofmrTennant, Lord Clayton7, Pbritti, Riley1012, Guettarda, Zwerg Nase, TheDoctorWho, History6042, MaranoFan, ActuallyNeverHappened02, Lazman321, and BennyOnTheLoose: Hello! You've all signed up for the 2025 WikiCup. If you're interested in discussing proposed changes to the tournament's format, please see ↑↑ the top of this thread ↑↑. If not, feel free to ignore this ping. Happy editing and/or holidays to all. :) -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 04:59, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

  Apologies to anyone I pinged who'd already commented. All that time wrangling the sign-ups list into one {{re}} with just regex and prayers, and I forgot the last step. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 05:36, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option B or C. I teach, which in America means that I'll kill it with whatever I do during winter break, have no time in February or March, trudge through May, and come out the other side with nothing but time in June. This would give me an opportunity to feel better about reviewing relatively few GANs and FACs during one round while doing quite a few in another. I hope it'll also spare us a massive backlog at GAN next month. ~ Pbritti (talk) 05:11, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support B or C, I'm fine with both. I think it would encourage more participation over a longer period of time. TheDoctorWho (talk) 05:23, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option C is my favorite, since it gets rid of elimination but still assigns some valuable meaning to the rounds themselves. B would be my second choice but definitely could still present some issues with people not wanting to nominate articles "at the wrong time" like Generalissima said, which I also agree is an issue. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 05:55, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support option C and D I'm inclined to go with options C and D, because they work best for me. I think awarding users points based on their positioning is a great idea that should promote more participation, and of course, more competition for the fellas who really want the trophy and those juicy 16² points. Opinion D will be helpful for those who become less active as the year progresses, only picking up at around the time Thanksgiving comes around which, unfortunately, would already be too late. For me personally, I'm most active in Jan–Mar, and least active in Jun & Oct–Nov, so a cumulative result would make the competition somewhat more fair, and that's the bottom line because I said so :) Wolverine X-eye 06:17, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support C. I've never made it out of round 3 - I always plan big, and then life gets in the way. I like the idea of a more forgiving system that allows you to plan your work through the year, instead of just figuring out how to get get the right amount of points in a round, without wasting points in a round where you've already qualified or abandoning your plans for an FA when you realise you'll never make it through the current round. Guettarda (talk) 06:32, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support C. Honestly had a good round before the finals then... This'd probably be better for a lot of competitors. Arconning (talk) 07:08, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• D, C, A, B is my vote on it. Makes more sense to just make it a whole year league rather than encouraging tactical knockout work as happens nowadays. I think the bonus system in C is fine but just seems a little complicated. The C of E God Save the King! (talk) 09:13, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• This is my ranking; A C D B. I absolutely hate the idea of a one round contest but A and C are pretty even for me. History6042 (talk) 14:03, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support C and D, I like that we're trying to move away from a simple elimination-style tournament and into a more sustained "league". C is probably the best way to go to keep the OG Cup idea but option D as a league like The C of E said isn't a bad idea either. Kline • talk • contribs 16:51, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• C > B > D I've participated in a couple of WikiCups where I've had featured content gets stuck. I feel that C is more fair when it comes to issues outside of one's control like featured content processes. ~ Matthewrb 19:23, 7 December 2024 (UTC)
• Support C. Thanks Tamzin for the ping. I think this will certainly make the competition throughout the year much more exciting. — ♠ Ixtal ⁂ Non nobis solum ♠ 19:33, 8 December 2024 (UTC)
• Wondering: what would 2024's results have looked like under option C? (1st, 2nd, 3rd) BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:53, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

  I crunched the numbers, including the "most (X)" bonuses at the end, because I was interested (including only people who made it to the final round, cause obviously eliminated contestants didnt have the chance to submit content)

  Generalissima: 1189 tp

  Sammi Brie: 1028 tp

  AirshipJungleman29: 788 tp

  Hey man im josh: 777 tp

  BeanieFan11: 666 tp

  BennyOnTheLoose: 475 tp

  Arconning: 406 tp

  AryKun: 350 tp

  Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:28, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

  I guess at least SounderBruce, Skyshifter and perhaps MaranoFan would have beaten some of these when scoring everybody. —Kusma (talk) 07:35, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

  Bonuses for josh??? Well that certainly helps to get me to buy in! Anything to help with my featured-list-only agenda! I also plan on doing just featured lists again this year :P Hey man im josh (talk) 13:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

  Worth noting that I'm the first overall winner to not produce the most content in any category. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:40, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

• Support D, I'm still fundamentally opposed to any contest that determines winners based on relative positions in each round; it sounds like a stupid idea to me tbh. I'm much more partial to a continuous contest, maybe with bonuses based on the positions at the end of each round. AryKun (talk) 14:33, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about really any of these options, I just like participating, but out of curiosity, this is determining the scoring system for 2026 and beyond, right? I strongly believe that for 2025 this is way too short notice. λ NegativeMP1 00:54, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

This is a proposal for 2025, and I think people commenting have read it as such. As discussed above in my exchange with Epicgenius, there's nothing about this that would take a lot of time to set up. Running another year of elimination mode, when essentially everyone to comment has said that one of the three multi-round scoring proposals would be better, wouldn't make much sense to me. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 01:20, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

My concerns aren't necessarily about how hard it would be to set up, just in terms of the entire way the competition works changing to an objectively more complicated system with less than a month leading up to it. Not that I personally have any problems with it. λ NegativeMP1 01:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Well that's why I pinged everyone who'd signed up. If you have ideas of better ways to advertise this, by all means. It's important to stress that, from the individual contestant's point of view in a given round, not much changes here: They're still trying to do as well as possible, using the same scoring system as before. The main change is what doesn't happen, which is them getting eliminated. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 01:31, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@NegativeMP1, I was actually contemplating sending out a mass message about this, since it constitutes a major change to the rules. but that might be both an unnecessary use of the WP:MMS right while also not being particularly relevant to non-competitors. However, Tamzin has already pinged everyone who has signed up. I agree with them that, iff there's a consensus to implement Tournament Points, implement rolling signups, and stop disqualifying people in between rounds, it shouldn't be very hard to do any of these. (In fact, the hardest part might be figuring out what to do with the tables at the end of each round.) – Epicgenius (talk) 01:36, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Any major rule change discussions outside of November/December usually fail because people first want to see the current competition play out to the end. So we need to discuss and implement changes in November/December, just before the contest starts, and we need to ignore any calls to delay implementation because it is so close to the contest. Just see where the discussion is standing in a week or so and then go with the consensus. —Kusma (talk) 08:59, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

This discussion has stalled, but there seems to be a rough consensus in favor of option C, followed roughly by options B and D (which commenters prefer more-or-less equally). From what I can tell, no one wants A as their first choice. If no one objects in the next 24 hours, I'm going to formally close the discussion and modify the rules at WP:WC/SCO. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:19, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Before I implement the scoring changes, does anyone have any feedback on this draft of the revised scoring page? Also pinging @Tamzin as the proposer. (I extended the signup period only from January 31 to October 1, as I don't know if contestants should be able to sign up with less than a month remaining. This can be fine-tuned later, though.) – Epicgenius (talk) 19:17, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

@Epicgenius: Thanks so much for taking point on this. I'm really excited to see this idea implemented. I generally like the tweaks you've made. My only questions are:

• Would it make more sense to make the Tournament Points table horizontal?
• Does the tabulation need to be on a subpage rather than the main tournament page? Or is the idea that the main page would have just current points and the tabulation page would have the detailed breakdown and the bonus tournament points race?
• Is there a reason you removed the line about what if there's a tie in every round? While unlikely at the end of the tournament, it's still possible, and more importantly it's possible or even likely when only one or two rounds have happened.

-- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 19:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

@Tamzin, no problem. As to your questions:

• It may be possible to make the table horizontal. I'm used to doing vertical tables, which is why I formatted it this way. I will do this soon.
• The tabulation will be transcluded to WP:WikiCup, similar to how Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/History/2024 (which will soon be updated to Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/History/2025 is currently transcluded on the page. I made it a separate page from Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/History/YYYY so the bot won't get confused.
• I deleted the info about ties by accident. I've re-added it.

– Epicgenius (talk) 19:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

@Epicgenius Actually, two more things:

• You changed it so that a 5-point DYK and 10-point DYK would count equally toward winning the vertical. Is that intentional, and if so what's your reasoning?
• We never established a tiebreaker for winning verticals. The two options that come to mind are either making it also about best single round, for that category specifically; or letting it be a true draw. Ping @Generalissima since verticals were her idea.

-- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 23:20, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Tamzin, my responses:

• The removal was intentional, but that was because I wanted to condense the text, not because I wanted 5-point and 10-point DYKs to be counted the same way. Rather, the implication was that the winners in each category would be calculated based on whoever is listed in the bottom row of the "Top Scorers" table here. Since the change was the opposite of what I meant, I've clarified it a bit.
• In case of a tie, we can give the points to whoever scored the most in that category in a single round. If it's still tied, then it will be treated as a draw.

– Epicgenius (talk) 23:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

• Support D Based on conversation above and, honestly, simplicity. It's a positive change for encouraging continuous work and improvement (just by no elimination), minus periodic pressure, and nobody will be confused/asking about points and scoring calculations every two days. Kingsif (talk) 03:55, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Crystallizing what C would look like

This subsection is just for summarizing the emerging consensus above regarding Option C. It's framed in the form of a modified Misplaced Pages:WikiCup/Scoring § Scores. Where ambiguous, "Points" would be changed to "Round Points" elsewhere in that document. The highlighted portion indicates less solid consensus than the rest.

The WikiCup takes place over the course of five rounds, in which entrants compete to get the most Round Points.

<Round Point table goes here>

At the end of each round, those who placed 16th or better are awarded a number of Tournament Points based on their placement, equal to the square of how many places above 17 they were. All other contestants receive 0 points.

<Table of {256, 225, ... 1} goes here>

At the end of the tournament, 128 Bonus Tournament Points are awarded to whoever had the most total Round Points in each submission category across all five rounds. This does not count Bonus Round Points, but does count the differing base points for DYKs. Categories are defined by column, even if the column covers multiple things (e.g. GAR and PR).

Final placement is determined by total Tournament Points.

=== Tiebreaking ===

If two contestants receive the same number of Round Points, they tie in placement and both get the corresponding number of Tournament Points. Placement is based on the number of contestants ahead of a person, so a three-way tie for first means that all get 256 and the next person places fourth, not second. Ties may cause more than 16 people to receive points, but in no circumstance may someone with a lower placement than 16th win points.

If two contestants have the same number of Tournament Points, the tie is broken by comparing contestants' best single-round scores. If still tied, their second-best rounds are compared, etc. If still tied, this is treated as a true draw, resolved in the same manner as Round-Point ties, although by the fifth round this is very unlikely to occur.

-- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷). Last edited 18:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC).

Sounds like a good start if option C is implemented. I'm going to ping my co-judges, @Cwmhiraeth and @Frostly, for their thoughts on this. – Epicgenius (talk) 03:05, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't really get why FA's would be excluded from the "most in category" thing, but I like it otherwise. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:34, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Should be fine to include FA, especially if it the "round total" does not include bonus points. —Kusma (talk) 14:27, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, excluding bonus points should be standard for all "most in category" counts. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:42, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Hadn't even thought of that, but I agree. The only reason it says most Round Points, and not most submissions, was to concisely get around the question of 5-point versus 10-point DYKs. As to FAs, no strong feeling here, it's just that @Guerillero suggested they not get their own Bonus Tournament Points, and no one had argued against that when I wrote the above. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 23:53, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Personally I think most FAs is still a topic worthy of bonuses, especially if it's not taking into account bonuses. I think taking the base DYK points including the 5 points bonus (should be viewable on the submission pages right?) would be good though.

My only question: should FACRs, FLCRs, GANRs, and PRs all count as separate bonuses? I think we oughta reward reviewing whenever possible, so that could encourage different people to focus on different areas. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:01, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

My only question: should FACRs, FLCRs, GANRs, and PRs all count as separate bonuses? – Keep it as is in my opinion, in that, FACR/FACL are grouped together while GAR/PR are grouped together. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:57, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Generalissima and Hey man im josh: Okay, I think the above should now reflect what we've discussed here. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 18:58, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the last sentence of that paragraph is even needed. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:55, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Increase points for GA reviews

There's been some discussions over the past year about raising the score for GA reviews. For one, GA reviews require a large amount of time and effort from a single individual, not quite on the level of writing the article, but enough that such a low score fundamentally disincentivises WikiCup participants from reviewing GA nominations. This creates a problem for the GA process, which is already facing a constant struggle trying to incentivise reviews; the GA backlog regularly sits at hundreds of articles, which sometimes have to wait for up to a year for a review.

I think, given the strain that the GAN project has been under for a while, it would be very much appreciated if the WikiCup could encourage reviews more. As such, I would like to propose that the scoring for a completed GA review be raised to 10 or 15 points, with bonus points for longer and more in-depth reviews. Keeping it lower than half the score for a GA would prevent gaming of the system, as 2 reviews for every nomination helps reduce the backlog, while bonus points would encourage people to engage thoroughly with the review process. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:29, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Recent discussions: Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup/Archive/2024/1#GAN reviewer points and Misplaced Pages talk:WikiCup/Archive/2024/3#Should reviews be worth more?. The main problem is that if we give many points, we need to ensure some review quality, especially with bonus points, but we should not ask judges to do significantly more work than they do now (or pay them twice as much as now). —Kusma (talk) 13:41, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm still all for a flat increase to 7 points for all types of reviews just to encourage and reward reviewing more than we currently do. Perhaps if we wanted to evaluate the quality of GA reviews we could add 2 additional coords next year and implement it then. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:25, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

In my personal experience, GA reviewing is usually more time effort than PR or FAC reviewing, so I would prefer it if GA reviews were worth more than other types of reviews. (Also, PR and FAC reviews can be done and then immediately claimed at any time, while with GA reviews you typically need to wait for the reviewer to respond, which slows down scoring). —Kusma (talk) 15:13, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

@Kusma, just as a quick note, GAN reviews and peer reviews are currently tabulated together; contestants submit PRs under the "Good article nomination review or peer review" section of their submissions page. There can be a separate discussion if we want to instead tabulate peer reviews with FAC reviews, or if we want to tabulate peer reviews on their own. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:47, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

If we have different scores for different types of reviews, I would suggest to put PR together with FAC reviews, as FAC/PR are more similar to each other than to GA reviews (in a FAC or PR you can just concentrate on parts of the article or parts of the criteria, while for GA you need to do everything, plus the difference in when you can score them). Having PR as a separate category would give another bonus under Tamzin's scoring, which may or may not be a good idea. —Kusma (talk) 18:49, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

A specific bonus for peer reviews might not be a bad thing if it encourages more activity there. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

@Kusma: That may be so in some cases, but that also depends on the quality of the reviews as we know. For instance, when I do source reviews at FLC I imagine it takes longer than some GA reviews.

Never the less, I believe that whether we want to make GANRs worth more or not, both deserve a bump, and that's a quick improvement that can encourage reviews. I don't think bumping GAs up to 10/15 points and doing nothing for featured content reviews is something we should do either. After all, our biggest bottleneck does seem to be having people actually review things, and I more or less viewed it as a bandaid suggestion for improvement while a more thorough approach for evaluating GANRs can be crafted.

I guess I'm just not confident we can get the GANR scoring system that's been suggested down pat for the upcoming drive, and I'd prefer we move the needle in the right direction at least somewhat as opposed to not at all for the upcoming cup. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:08, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

If we just uniformly bump all types of reviews, I would suggest not to bump by too much. I can live with 7, but I would oppose 15 as too high (even though I would probably benefit from this, as I usually review more than I nominate). Some PR and some FAC prose reviews can be done very quickly while thorough source spotchecks can take a very long time. —Kusma (talk) 18:53, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I actually raised the exact same point here just today. A bump up to 7 points (or even higher) sounds good, but we should also incentivize harder reviews more with bonus points-maybe based on how vital or large the article being reviewed is- say 0.2x bonus for every 1000 words, capped at 1.5. As for evaluating GANR quality- I assume they are already given a cursory glance, so basing it on an objective criteria wouldn't make it harder. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:28, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Agree that the overall amount for reviews, whether GANs or overall, should be raised. Seven to ten points sounds like a reasonable range. I'd also be okay with stricter enforcement of GAN review quality. Reviews that are just a few bullet points or solely focus on style/grammar issues rather than the full criteria might be worth scrutinizing. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I think most GANRs are good- usually bad reviews happen bcs someone is trying to game the system. That can be done with a cursory glance I think, on the size of the review page and a general glance on what it's checking. Even GAN backlog drives do not give points for reviews under 1000 bytes, so maybe something like can that can used. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 20:14, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

IMO 10 points for GANRs and 7 points for PRs/FLCRs/FACRs sounds like a reasonable proposal. I think a GANR is about equal in difficulty and time investment to writing a 10 pt DYK worthy article (albeit a different skill set). Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:54, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I second Generalissima's opinion here. λ NegativeMP1 22:35, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

At the upper limit of effort for either, I agree. But the lower limit for GANRs is much lower than for a 10-point DYK, IMO. I received credit for Talk:Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque/GA1. The rules allow scoring detailed quickfails like that one, and I think that's a good thing, but I also don't think it took me anywhere near the effort of Ray cat, probably my easiest 10-point DYK. One solution, then, might be making the review categories "5 or 10" or "5 or 7" based on length. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 22:52, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Length of the article or length of the review? Because if it's the latter, that would probably just encourage unhelpful comments like "place a comma here" or "add ISSNs to your references". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:46, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Length of the review. I see your point, but we do already have As a rough guide, no review shorter than 1000 bytes will be considered, though the judges reserve the right to decline other short reviews, so that incentive already exists with a 5-point differential, just 0-to-5 not 5-to-10. There's also the standing warning about disqualifications for gaming GANR in particular. Maybe making 1,000 to 2,000B of substantive review the 5-point range would work? For context, my Farias review was 2,016B, of which 1,769 was substantive review (i.e. not the salutation or valediction). -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 00:04, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I think length of the article would be better- there are ways to game a review: copy-editing is by far the biggest section, and if the reviewer decides to just do it themself- can reduce the review by like half. A full review for any article would always take time and effort, and the hardness might not be seen in the length of the review: a 5000+ word article with no typos might get a shorter review than a 1000+ one with many typos, especially if the nom for the latter one is more combative, even though it takes around 4-5 times more work to review the bigger one. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 06:46, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps we could count lists of typos against the word count so reviewers will stop creating additional work for themselves and for the nominator by listing them out and describing them one at a time. Only joking. Mostly. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:16, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure that additional points are necessary given that we've significantly reviewed more GANs that we've submitted for many years now, often by large numbers. This year it was by a nearly 40% margin. The backlog at GAN is systemic due to people's desire to collect all the shinies and disinclination to review as many as they nominate. I appreciate editors' desires to help reduce the backlog, but that's not necessarily the task of the Cup. Just pointing this out, I'm not opposed to increasing the points; it's a laudable goal.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 09:20, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I think the Cup does have a responsibility to be considerate of its effects on various Misplaced Pages processes. I guess the place where we are most contributing to the backlog but not helping to reduce it is Did You Know. More volunteer prep builders and queuers would be most welcome there. —Kusma (talk) 14:11, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I've toyed with suggesting a way for people to "sacrifice" DYK QPQs for points, something like you get 1 point for committing to not use 5 otherwise eligible QPQs toward any future DYK review. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 16:35, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately that would still not help with the bottleneck at WP:DYKQ. —Kusma (talk) 17:17, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Unless two active judges can be found before the cup starts (see below), I wouldn't be in favour of any changes that require judges to adjudicate on each of 693 reviews. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:36, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I would just like clarification on a point: don't the judges also give a cursory glance to the reviews already, and if they don't, will that need to change with this? A points bump definitely doesn't, and if we associate any points with say the size of the article, then it's 2-3 quick clicks to check the size of an article- more work, but only a min per review at most. I mean I would assume they are already failing quickfails and <1000 bytes GANR like the scoring page says. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 20:05, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

They do give cursory reviews, and they actually made a point of contacting me last year (my first year in the cup) and letting me know that I basically had to show my work for some of my featured list reviews. They may recognize that I likely do appropriate work in said reviews, but I was not able to collect points on a couple of reviews because of that. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:25, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

So, any changes to the review points that do not greatly increase the work already been done by the judges should be fine, right? DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 13:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Theoretically, yes, that's my take as simply a participant and non-judge. I think the idea of multipliers for GANRs is a good one, but I think it needs to be ironed out and needs the appropriate support from judges in order to function properly. That's why I'm in favor of a band-aid bump to 7 points for all reviews for now, with a reevaluation and implementation of a more thorough system with the proper support for the 2026 cup. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:51, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

don't the judges also give a cursory glance to the reviews already
@DoctorWhoFan91, yes, we do. Any review that isn't long enough and doesn't address the WP:GACR, WP:FACR, or WP:FLCR criteria is ineligible for points. GAN quick fails are almost always ineligible because they don't fully address the criteria. However, in some cases, there have been "quick" GAN fails that are long enough and detailed enough to count as a full review (and are not really quick fails); they're probably only counted as quick fails because these GANs were failed immediately. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Good to know, I already assumed that would happening. Question- if a consensus gets formed on giving bonus points for reviews based on say the length of the article (as that is probably a good criteria a GANR was, having to read through it all), would that greatly increase the work done by the judges, (as word count is easily available through the article history) or would that be miniscule? Also, thank you to you and the other judges, for your work handling the WikiCup. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 16:27, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

The numbers support your point @Sturmvogel 66, the cup does result in more reviews than successful GA promotions. I do suspect it might be a tad bit skewed based on the most active reviewers, which I don't have the numbers for. I will however note that, in 2021, The Rambling Man had 324 of the 650 GANR/PRs. With that said, I do still think that, in the interest of improving content overall on the site, and based on the time it takes to perform various reviews, an increase of some sort does make sense. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:23, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Call for new judges

If anyone is interested, I'd like to bring on one or two more judges for the 2025 contest. Given the above discussion about changing the points system, it looks like a rough consensus is forming for option C (permanent link), which entails the following:

1. Allow people to sign up for the Cup on a rolling basis, rather than only allowing people to sign up from November to January
2. Discontinue the elimination of the lowest-scoring competitors in each round; instead, all competitors will be allowed to compete in rounds 1-5, unless they withdraw.
3. Introduce a "Tournament Points" system, separate from the current round-points system, that will be used to determine the highest-scoring contestants at the end of round 5. The top 16 in each round get a number of tournament points as outlined above by @Tamzin. The round points will still be cleared at the end of each round (the same as the current system), but the tournament points will carry over between rounds.

This will likely result in a substantial increase in submissions during later rounds, compared with the current system. During the past year, I've handled perhaps two-thirds of the work of running the Cup. However, I won't be able to do this as much in 2025, so additional help would be appreciated.

I'm also pinging my current co-judges, @Cwmhiraeth and @Frostly, for their thoughts. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:47, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Worth noting that Frostly and Cwmhiraeth are semi-inactive—their last 250 edits go back to July and October 2023 respectively, whereas Epicgenius's go back to three or four days ago. One active judge is not exactly what you want when the role they play is expected to greatly expand. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:33, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for crunching the numbers, Airship. I actually forgot to mention this earlier, but I most likely won't have any access to my computer for a few weeks in mid-2025 (if not longer), as I'll be on vacation during that time. I won't be able to review submissions, add new contestants, review/clear scores, or send out the round 3 newsletter during these weeks. This is not to mention that I will have less time on WP in 2025 due to real-life commitments.Unless we add another judge or two, I'm not sure that the existing judges can review all these submissions in a timely manner. If no one responds in the next two weeks, I will also send out a call for judges in the next newsletter. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:08, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Is there a good way to crowdsource the reviews of the submissions to the judges only have to intervene in cases of conflict? —Kusma (talk) 19:20, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

On paper, I think the community should always be double checking reviews. The problems arising from this are: one, any sort of challenge will cause drama and a stigma against doing so, and two, I have particular ideas about what a review should look like. I used to try to catch quickpasses at GAN when I saw them, but it becomes such a problem for the reporter that now I just pretend I don't see them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:41, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I have no plans on joining next year's competition, and would be happy to help out with judging the competition. Lee Vilenski 19:38, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski, given your experience, I'd love having you on as a judge. I have to do some house cleaning right now, but tomorrow, I'll send you an email about what the judges' duties entail. – Epicgenius (talk) 19:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Sure thing. Given I wouldn't enter, I'd love to be able to support this competition. Lee Vilenski 21:11, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I was hoping some former competitors would step up and lend a hand. A 2x winner and 2x runner up is an excellent person to have lending a hand with judging in any capacity they're available for. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:27, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I can help -- Guerillero 15:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

@Guerillero, I'd love to have you on as well. After I get off work, I can send you an email about what the judges' duties entail, similar to what I told Lee yesterday. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:00, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

It looks like we have our two new judges. Welcome to the team, @Lee Vilenski and @Guerillero, and thank you very much for graciously offering to help out. – Epicgenius (talk) 21:18, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Welcome @Lee Vilenski and @Guerillero, and thank you to @Epicgenius for stepping up to take this on! While I’ve had some real-life commitments in 2024, I'm looking forward to contributing much more to the Cup in 2025. Best, — Frostly (talk) 23:41, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Questioning whether my position is a conflict

Last year, during the WikiCup, I was approached to become a delegate for WP:Featured list candidates and was subsequently accepted by the community and appointed as such. For those unaware, in that role I help to evaluate and promote featured list candidates to featured list status. I was mildly concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interests in this role and how that might be viewed by my fellow competitors in the cup.

I wanted to bring up my position there because I am still concerned about this, and I want to be as transparent as possible. It's one thing to get the position midway through the competition, it's another to join it from the start. If others feel it's inappropriate for me to act in that capacity and participate in the cup, I will bow out. Last year I took every effort to review as many nominations and promote where appropriate, regardless of how it would affect my standings because I truly care about working to promote more content as opposed to my personal performance in the cup. I believe I did a good job of being impartial in that capacity last year, and I want to compete again this year, but I'd remiss if I didn't get feedback about it first. If others view it as acceptable for me to participate, and they later change their minds, I more than welcome an assessment of my actions and will bow out mid way through if appropriate. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:48, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

As long as you do not promote articles that you have reviewed or nominated, I do not see a conflict. Gog the Mild competed in the cup while FAC coordinator and it did not cause any issues as far as I recall. If I looked long enough I could probably find other examples of coordinators competing with no issues. Z1720 (talk) 16:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

@Z1720: For what it's worth, I do often promote articles that I have performed a source review for because we often lack source reviewers, so I do it to avoid us having a larger backlog of nominations. This has not come up as an issue in the past, but I have never done so for articles that I have nominated. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:23, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Does it really matter either way though? It's not like you get points when an article you review gets promoted, its upon review. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

So long as you aren't promoting things you are claiming points for, I don't see an issue. Lee Vilenski 21:25, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Adding that I have no issue with this whatsoever. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

I said this off-wiki, but as long as you aren't promoting your own nominations, or opposing other competitors' FLCs and then archiving them, then it should be fine. (I don't think supporting and promoting other competitors' FLCs should be an issue, since you're not giving an undue advantage to yourself. It might be strange if you consistently promoted a certain person's FLCs to the detriment of other editors, or if you were promoting FLCs that didn't have enough reviews or didn't meet the criteria, but that would be a wider-ranging issue that is not within the Cup's purview.) – Epicgenius (talk) 23:25, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely. As I mentioned in the Discord, I aim to consistency review nominations for others who review for other nominators, regardless of their involvement in the cup. I view it as an effort to promote the process and, frankly, I don't personally like reviewing for nominators who do not make an effort to review for others (unless they're new to the process).

I would welcome any criticism or tips for improvement, and I would do everything I can to be as transparent as possible. I do not typically review anything that I do not have access to, and I make the effort to promote nominations as soon as possible. I want the process to be as healthy and active as possible, and if I was ever interpreter as doing anything that could harm that process, I would absolutely want to be called out regarding it.

No one had brought this up as an issue to me before this post, but it's specifically because I care that I wanted to make this post. I'm a huge advocate and encourager for the process, and I know I will never win the cup (I was/am curious how far I can to on FLs and reviews alone). I care far more about the integrity of WP:FLC and the betterment/activity there than I do about my own personal success in the cup.

Anyways, I just want to be as transparent and clear as possible. I've also felt promoting the noms of others in the cup to be sort of "shooting myself in the foot", but FLC is my priority over my placements here. My hope is always to get more long term contributors there :) Hey man im josh (talk) 00:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

A few days left...

As we approach the beginning of the wikicup 2025 I wish to bring attention to a few useful tools for the contest.

• Misplaced Pages:Good article review circles You get a review and review another in exchange, a very simple way to get atleast 40 points.
• Misplaced Pages:Former featured and good topics Picking up a topic and restoring it shouldn't take too long depending on what you pick.
• Misplaced Pages:Reward board Provides other incentives to produce quality content

While most May find this redundant I hope atleast one person benefits from any of these. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 11:22, 28 December 2024 (UTC)