Wikipedia talk:Developing Countries WikiContest

Post-contest reflections

Thanks again to everyone for taking part in this! The coordinators would like to hear how the contest went for you, regardless of your editing experience or level of participation. There are a few starter questions below, but feel free to use § General comments below for other discussions, or start a new section if needed.

1. The contest initially attracted many new editors but largely failed to retain their participation. How could this be improved upon?
2. The format of this contest was based on the WikiCup's. How could modifications to this format be made to better fit the goals of the DCWC? Should an altogether new one be chosen?
3. How could the scoring rules be refined or improved upon?
4. Have you identified any other problems with the contest? If so, how could they be addressed in the future?

We're looking forward to hearing what you think! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:48, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

General comments

Use this space for general discussion. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 18:48, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Could there be a space for editors to submit articles they want to collaborate on? Or would that muddy the waters Kowal2701 (talk) 20:16, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Kowal2701: I'm open to ideas on how we can make the contest a more collaborative endeavor, which is something I've discussed with the other coordinators as well. I don't think it would muddy the waters, since multiple participants can submit the same article if all of them have made substantive contributions to it. If we created a space for open collaboration, how would you want to approach that process? Would it be a request for another editor to collaborate in equivalent capacities (and if so, how would you go about that?) or maybe as a "mentorship" of sorts, where they provide guidance to help you eventually nominate your work? —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 15:37, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@TechnoSquirrel69 Mentorship is a really interesting idea but I'm not sure it's best suited as a feature for this, but as a general feature I think would be great, especially for roles at AfC, Teahouse etc. Idk I struggle to see how that would work in practice since I imagine this is for the more advanced editors

Could people intending to collaborate throughout the tournament together enter as a joint couple and you divide their score by two for the leaderboard?

Say two people collaborated on one article, could the two people agree on a fair allocation of the points, for example 70% : 30%? In the rare case there's disagreement, someone could just swoop in and make a rough binding judgement Kowal2701 (talk) 17:27, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Points are not split between editors for collaborative submissions, each participant receives full credit provided they have done substantive work towards the submission in question. I agree that mentorship is probably not the way to go here; I just wanted to throw some ideas out there that other editors can hopefully expand upon. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:03, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Could there be points for cleanup, or could say 15 articles be handpicked that are in dire need of improvement or creation and bonus points are awarded for those? Kowal2701 (talk) 18:02, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I didn't get to participate as much as I'd have liked (writing can be hard, y'all, and DYK even trickier!), but I made myself an entire list of articles I'd like to create and that I'll be working on throughout the year. Hopefully I'll un-redlink most of them by next year's contest! I also made several articles that likely would have qualified, but I was unable to find a hook for, and that, while hopefully useful to readers, were no-where near comprehensive enough for DYK/GA process. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 21:36, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Coming up with an idea that, it is quite likely, I would only find helpful or interesting- I like the way that the other Wikipedia example of removing systemic bias, WIR, measures its success in terms of articles created. There isn't "points" system per say. Now, I'm not saying get rid of the points system here, so the Wiki-cup editors don't need to panic, but what if there was an alternate system where users could submit new articles creations and expansions, and the group as a whole would attempt to reach certain milestones? Simultaneous with the DYK/GA/Featured content point systems, of course. So instead of the news updates being just "and here's how Generalissima's crushing it", it would be "Here's how Generalissima's crushing it, plus look at the 20 new DRC-related articles members of the drive created this month". Or whatever. This second class of articles wouldn't be for points, of course, so the co-ords wouldn't have to worry as much about people gaming that system.

I know this comment is probably sacrilege to everybody with more than one competitive bone in their body, but I remember when I was a newbie editor, how special it felt to create even the most stub-like biography of a notable woman, and be told that not only I was doing something important and good, I was helping a group of like-minded people do something important and good. But, like I said, possibly only a system I would find helpful and motivating. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 06:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I really like the idea of keeping track of things collectively. It'd be fun if, say, there was a tracker saying "We've worked on articles about X out of 173 developing countries, including Y out of 45 least developed countries," so that people get inspired to bring the number up. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 10:10, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah that’d be cool Kowal2701 (talk) 13:26, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

i like that idea as well! ... sawyer * he/they * talk 13:40, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Question 1: I think we should use an eliminating system every month, like the WikiCup.

Question 2: The contest is already the best it can be.

Will post my other reflections later. 🍗TheNuggeteer🍗 04:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@TheNuggeteer: My thoughts on eliminations are much the same as they were before the contest — I believe they don't serve the purpose of the DCWC very well. The WikiCup uses eliminations to encourage competitiveness and lets people show off their editing skill when they qualify for the next round, but I look at this contest more through the lens of a backlog drive; any participation contributes towards the end goal of combating systemic bias. It's also worth noting that we were receiving a good number of submissions from people in the middle of the table even towards the end of the contest who probably would have been eliminated at that point if we used the WikiCup format. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 15:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel that there should be other ways to judge article vitality than just whether they are (X) in (Country) articles; maybe vital articles could also get a +50%? Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 13:24, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Generalissima: That's definitely a good point you bring up and, for the record, we received exactly zero "high-level articles" during the contest, which is a pretty clear sign we need to rework that area of the scoring. Using vital articles comes with its own issues, though. VAs largely represent what editors think are important topics, and since most editors come from the Global North, there is a systemic bias inherent to that process. This is not necessarily a problem with VAs, just an observation that their goals are not entirely aligned with the goals of the DCWC. One idea I had was to extend our original definition of high-level articles to include third-level country articles as well — for example, South Africa is a first-level article, Culture of South Africa (a section of the main article) is second-level, and Cuisine of South Africa is third-level. Unlike the first two, we did receive a few submissions in this third level. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 16:02, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@TechnoSquirrel69 could you use the 'Top importance' categories for the WikiProjects of developing countries? And a few more related WikiProjects specific to developing countries Kowal2701 (talk) 17:31, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Using the importance categories has the same issue as vital articles: who decides how important a topic is? With WikiProject importance, it's almost always a single editor — a step down from VAs, which require at least a local discussion and consensus. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

agree with all of the above - i definitely think we should rework the "higher-level" system, which was basically just an experiment on my part, but i'm not sure exactly how. i would be cool with extending down to "third-level" articles as well. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 13:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

This was my first time participating in a points-based contest such as this one. I have participated in WP:The Core Contest a few times, which has quite a different focus, looking at individual article improvement. That may have affected my view, as I did feel a bit disconnected towards the end as the focus on the competition seemed purely about the points rather than the issue the content was meant to be tackling. There are understandable practical reasons for the point system used, which might be tricky to get around, but it feels like treating the means of the competition as the end goal. I don't have an immediate solution on hand, but there is a disconnect between a competition meant to address a specific content issue and progress reports and overall results that make limited mention of said content issue. (Writing too much on this risks repeating GreenLipstickLesbian's thoughts above, which seem to come from a similar place.)

This impersonal and by-numbers design may also be related to the issues with new editors. I know one editor who wasn't sure whether an article they worked on would qualify, and by the time we discussed it, the seven-day rule prevented its addition, so they ended up not participating. It's a very unexpected rule for a competition intending to improve coverage of undercovered areas and feels like an anachronism inherited from WikiCup's focus on point scoring as the goal and its structure of culling competitors each round.

I don't have ideas for scoring (possibly related to my feeling the competition is too focused on score already), but it does feel like there could be a few more awards, or perhaps even progress worth mentioning even if there was no award. A points multiplier was given for "least developed" countries, was there an editor who got the highest multiplier? It has been mentioned above that there were no "Country relation bonus points". This is understandable given how difficult those articles are, with the multiplier in no way making up for the additional effort needed compared to creating 2 less broad articles, and the various "levels" of articles being an unintuitive concept. (The incentivised activity seems to be to find a list of related potential articles of similar structures that can be developed with a short format.) If the idea is to incentivise broader articles, the competition could look at these on their own. Are there contenders for developing the broadest article?

Lastly, one idea that could address some of these questions even for the current competition, why not in addition to the leaderboard, sum up the global results? How many countries had articles submitted in the competition, and which countries stood out as most improved? Were there any particular themes of improvement, such as the Olympics? What was the overall addition of FAs, GAs, DYKs, or other qualitative or quantitative improvements in the "area often underlooked by editors" the competition was set up to tackle? While I was writing this, others proposed similar ideas above, I think they would be a helpful addition to the overall summary of results. CMD (talk) 17:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

(pinging @GreenLipstickLesbian because i'm responding to her comments as well to some extent) i definitely agree with and see your points about the impersonal nature & challenges associated with the WikiCup-style system we used. the main reason we went with this points system based on established venues of content assessment (GAN, FAC, DYK, etc) is because as coords, we simply cannot assess all of those articles' progress ourselves, nor should we be expected to. as much as i'd love to give points for a well-written start-class article without it having to go through DYK, that's just way too subjective and time-consuming for the coordinators to do—it'd be unfair for both the participants and the coords. so, as imperfect as it is, i do not know of a better way to do it. The Core Contest's system works because each editor is only submitting one article, and there is only one winner—very different from the DCWC and WikiCup. also, we certainly can create more specialized awards, but we need ideas for them!

i also agree with how unintuitive the "higher-level" articles thing is, and that was something i came up with as an initial rough idea, but never really got much feedback on; that wasn't supposed to be the final form.

we thought about tallying up how many countries were covered in total because that would be a cool thing to be able to analyze, but i'll be honest: going through every single submissions page and trying to count seems really difficult and time-consuming. next year, i think it would be good to keep a running count of the countries covered as vigilantcosmicpenguin suggested above, and maybe create a map or something.

regarding GLL's comparison with WiR, the issue here is similar to what i outlined above: the coordinators will not be able to keep up with assessing article creations, and it will be a subjective and unfair nightmare for us to individually assess whether each new article meets basic criteria. as i said, i would love to reward editors for creating nicely-sourced stubs and starts (especially because the DYK system is so unintuitive & often very backlogged) but we have to balance that with incentivizing mass-creation/translation of crappy, poorly-sourced articles. there has to be some baseline of quality for it to be fair (and actually improve coverage) and we just can't assess all of them them ourselves. that's why we have a compromise of giving points for DYKs, because it involves some quality assessment for new articles without putting a huge overload on the coords. like, if half of those 20 DRC-related articles were five sentence stubs sourced to a blog and a couple of local news sites, that wouldn't reflect very well on the DCWC. in short, we can't be AfC reviewers. however, that said, i do like the idea of having non-points-based measures of progress, and i want to develop that concept further.

i welcome any other concrete suggestions and ideas on how to improve the contest. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 18:06, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I mean, when you're running a contest, you sort of have to trust that nobody's going to go all Lugnuts or Doug Coldwell at it. Wikipedia tends to assume that good faith and a base level of competence, especially when it comes to stuff like WiR, NPP drives, ect. Even if we do find an editor messing up big time in one of those areas, the community tends to blame the editor rather than the system. But it depends what your goals are, really. WiR and similar programs are amazingly effective at reducing systemic bias, the Wikicup is great at encouraging already very good editors to carry on doing what they're doing. But you're going to have to either compromise on quality checks, or really limit who can participate. Or somebody will be really smart and come up with a perfect solution.

That being said, Sawyer, there's nothing I enjoy doing more than spending a Saturday looking through all the submissions pages and seeing what we all did. It's going in a separate post, but I did a break-down in my sandbox if anybody else wants to correct my figures or play with some data. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 22:29, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

i hear you about assuming good faith, but i'm not even talking about a lugnuts or DC situation - just briefly reviewing dozens or even hundreds of new articles that are good would still take up a lot of time and i think it's just out of scope for this event unless we can get enough people to commit to doing that work, or come up with some kind of concrete plan for it. speaking personally, i moved from the US to Ireland and started university during the course of the contest, and was unable to review submissions for a few weeks - can't speak for Ixtal's situation, but it left TS as essentially the sole acting coordinator for a non-insignificant amount of time. if we had been getting submissions of new articles on top of our existing load, it would've probably been entirely dysfunctional. we have to be able to accommodate situations like that for the future as well.
also, wow! thank you for making that sandbox, it's very interesting :) ... sawyer * he/they * talk 22:38, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

As promised, separate post with some super-basic stats! There's some overcount for sure (I am merely human, and didn't put in any effort to split dual-GA nominations and dual-DYK nominations), but here's some basic estimates for everybody to enjoy! (In terms of creations. Sorry, reviewers, the overcount would have gotten too bad if I'd included your activities!)

Overall, members of the drive managed to create or substantially improve content concerning a grand total of 86 different countries. 86! That's pretty impressive - and, coincidentally, the telephone country code for China. A pretty amazing coincidence, considering which country's coverage members of the drive improved the most.

The top five most-improved countries were:

1. China, with 1 featured list, 6 GAs, and 13 DYK appearances

2. India, with 1 featured list, 15 GAs, and 1 ITN appearance

3. Philippines, with 5 GAs and 7 DYK appearances

4. North Korea, with 2 GAs and 9 DYK appearances

5. Kiribati , with 10 GAs and 4 DYK appearances

and then, more individually:

By terms of GAs submitted:

1. India with 15

2. China with 6

2. Kiribati with 6

2. Haiti with 6

3. Philippines with 5

By terms of DYKs submitted:

1. China with 13

2. North Korea with 9

3. Philippines with 7

But just because we improved those countries so much, doesn't mean we forgot about the rest. Members of the drive found time to get either a single GA, FA, or DYK for 49 individual countries. Most impressive of those were the two countries that got "only" a featured article: Iraq and Greenland, brought to you by @AirshipJungleman29and @Generalissima. If you haven't already, you should take the time to read both of their articles. They're some of the best that Wikipedia has to offer.

Members of the drive also managed to get 3 important deaths (those of presenter Aparna, wrestler Afa Anoaʻi, and former PM of Lebanon Salim Al-Huss) featured In The News. These appearances were brought to us by two editors in particular: @Vacant0and @Jaguarnik. Everybody else, this is who you have to beat next year!

We also got plenty of lists - 10 in total, covering 8 different countries! (Three of these lists covered Ukraine) To the uninitiated such as myself, the featured list process may appear somewhat strange, but not to editors such as @MPGuy2824, with their impressive 3 FLS and 7 FLRs, @Vanderwaalforces, who wrote Wikipedia's first ever Nigeria-related FL, @Dantheanimator with the 3 Ukraine-related FLs, and @48JCLwith their fascinating List of World Heritage Sites in Botswana.

Let's look at a breakdown by continent:

The continent we worked on the most was easily Africa, with 36 countries represented. Second place was Asia with 19, followed by the Americas with 15. Oceania got 10, and Europe came in last with 7 countries represented. I bet no other Wiki-drive's ever had that result before!

In terms of content, a special shout-out has to go to @Vigilantcosmicpenguinfor their series about Abortion in various African countries- not only did they bring Abortion in Africa through the DYK process, but they brought 11 different country-specific articles through as well. Not content at that, however, they also had to pause and turn Abortion in Sierra Leone into a Good Article too! In terms of eliminating systemic bias, the importance of their contributions cannot be overstated.

And while we're talking about Olympic feats, let's pause and appreciate the efforts of @Arconning. They made 1 Olympic related Featured List, 7 Olympic related good articles, and then went above and beyond to get 3 of those articles through the DYK process as well. Talk about gold medalists!

But speaking of sports, @BeanieFan11saw the need to improve the articles on athletes from developing nations, and they more than rose to the challenge. But in between their GAs on NFL members, and DYKs on various athletes (did you know that Olympian judokan Valentin Houinato, from Benin, is also a journalist?), they also substantially expanded or created articles on three different politicians! One of those politicians being current Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea, Manuel Osa Nsue Nsua.

While we're learning so many cool things, let me tell you all how our coverage of Kiribati improved so much. @Thebiguglyalienis responsible for five of our new Kiribati-themed good articles, and all four of its DYK appearances. And did you know how they got all those DYK appearances in just one hook? Find out for yourself here!

In a similar vein, if India placed so high, it's only because of dedicated writers like @Magentic Manifestations, who made India-related articles about a wide array of topics, from dairy engineers to crocodile trusts, into some Good-capital-G Articles.

And while I may not have focused on reviews too much, I am going to take a minute to highlight the contributions of our most prolific reviewer, @Simongraham. They wrote Good Articles on seven different species and genuses of arthropods (mostly jumping spiders, from what it seems), and two different USSR ships. Those with arachnophobia beware, but those who create species stubs, be even warier, for this is the type of editor we all wish we had more of.

Hopefully all the spider-phobes haven't left by now, because who isn't going to love this next topic? That's right, who wants to read about chocolate? @Yuemanaged to write three articles on chocolate production, chocolate smuggling, and a chocolate manufacturer, and they even made one into a Good Article. But they didn't stop there! Those of you interested in the flags of the world, you need look no further than their new Good Articles on the flags of Togo, North Korea, São Tomé and Príncipe, or Rwanda.

This Wikicup may not have seen many - or, actually, any Good Topics, but one user came close: @Chipmunkdavis! They wrote five Good Articles about fisheries in the Philippines, after finding out just how lacking we were. Generalissima's been prodding them to turn the entire thing into a Good Topic. And who knows, hopefully she'll have convinced them by next year? No pressure or anything, but all eyes are on you now, Chipmunkdavis!

@Di (they-them) did what they do best and told us all about the time "that German officials exiled the Samoan king from his own kingdom". In light of the recent Olympics, @Riley1012 helped to expand our coverage of artistic gymnasts from around the world. @TheNuggeteer brought you coverage of Philippines storms, @Averageuntitleduser wrote Good Articles on important Haitian women, and @Cambalachero proved that you can write a Good Article on pop-culture topics after all! @PerfectSoundWhatever introduced us to the life and works of Kenyan musician KMRU, @Noorullah21wrote an impressive 1k+ word GA on the Khalji Revolution, and @Skyshifter got meta and treated us to hoax article! As in, a good article about a hoax article. You'll just have to read it for yourself. @Fritzmann2002 specialised in article and list reviews, but took the time to write some good articles on plants from Syria and Turkey.

Some of us were busy during the contest, however- but in a drive such as this, literally every attempt counts. With that in mind, let's take some time to appreciate @Sohom Datta's review of a GA about voting in India, @TappyTurtle's review of the article about the Wikipedia hoax, @Zanahary review of an article about an Indian god of war, @SunTunnels's article about a South African speed-climber, and @Queen of Hearts's article on a crab named after a League of Legends character.

I'd also like to say thank you to our lovely co-ordinators, Sawyer777, Ixtal, and TechnoSquirrel69. It may sound cheesy, but it's true- none of this would have happened without your ideas and dedication. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 22:52, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

haven't actually finished reading it all yet but this is wonderful - i've got a signpost draft at User:Sawyer777/DCWC signpost - would you mind if i paste this in as a section and add your name? ... sawyer * he/they * talk 22:54, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

@Sawyer777 If you get to the end and still feel that way, then feel free! I enjoyed looking through everybody's articles and writing it. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 23:09, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

• Don't have time right now to give any thorough reply but two quick suggestions about the contest: 1. expand/eliminate the "nomination window" (maybe have it that participants have to submit their nominations by the end of the month that their nomination is passed/promoted/posted/etc.?) & 2. as a optional thing, which I feel like is a good incentive, but make it that participants with the most submissions for a specific country get that country's barnstar (e.g. a barnstar should be given for every country with at least one submission in the contest). Just some thoughts... thanks again all for the fun contest! :) Dan the Animator 00:05, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  i support doing away with the nomination window, as that also removes one extra consideration for the coords & makes things a bit easier on everyone. & i also like your second suggestion, and would add that we could keep our current most-submissions-for-any-one-country as just an extra special edition of the award, so to speak ... sawyer * he/they * talk 00:09, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  make it that participants with the most submissions for a specific country get that country's barnstar (e.g. a barnstar should be given for every country with at least one submission in the contest) – well, FWIW that would have meant I would've received at least 34 different country barnstars :) BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:19, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  true... your talk page got enough bother the other day as it is! ... sawyer * he/they * talk 00:21, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  I actually thought that "a barnstar should be given for every country with at least one submission in the contest" was the existing plan, I read "the most submissions for any one country will receive a themed barnstar for that country" as applying to each "one country", not overall for all countries. CMD (talk) 01:50, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  it seems like a lot of people thought that, as i remember there being confusion about it before the contest started. however, i still really don't know how the special award could've been reworded to make it clearer that we were only planning on doing it for one country.... anywho, we've got awhile to figure that out now ... sawyer * he/they * talk 13:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe every unique country submission receives a themed barnstar? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:28, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  Then I'd get 25 barnstars instead of 34! :) BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

• I don't know if this was covered above, but the bonus points for what were called "higher-level" articles were way off the mark. Upgrading a country-level article probably requires at least 15x more effort than your average article, not 2x. I think one possible solution would be using the importance scales of WikiProjects—say 10x for top-importance, and 5x/2x for the lower levels? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:40, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  agreed about the bonus points scaling. the issue, imo, with wikiproject importance is that it's usually decided by one random person adding the wikiproject template and can be extremely subjective - there's no real standardization for that, unlike vital articles (which also have their own problems as mentioned above) ... sawyer * he/they * talk 14:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  How subjective can it really get? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  We can't use Wikiproject importance rankings, they're meaningless. I'm unaware of any country Wikiproject doing something functional with them. CMD (talk) 15:18, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  Looking at WikiProjecy Myanmar importance as an example, State Seal of Myanmar is listed as top importance alongside the country itself, Wa State is listed as low importance while the Wa Self-Administered Division is listed as mid importance, and there are more unrated Myanmar articles than Top, High, and Mid combined. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:35, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

  thank you for providing those examples lol. for what it's worth, i've reassessed Wa State as high-importance & the state seal as mid-importance ... sawyer * he/they * talk 17:55, 6 October 2024 (UTC)