These days, we all acknowledge the ideals of quality over quantity and the vital importance of
core topics - yet how many really key articles do we each know of in really poor shape? So often missing references, misleading information, or
Britannica 1911's bias blight our most crucial articles.
So, to improve this situation, a small group of individuals are announcing a two-week-long contest focusing on Wikipedia's most important articles, running from November 25, 2007 to December 9, 2007. Any of those listed here count for the purposes of the contest. After the two-week period, the authors of the five most improved articles, to be selected by a panel of judges, will win $100 each, provided by
Danny.
Danny,
Alison, and
Walkerma will be judging the contest. Entries must be submitted no later than December 9, 2007 at 23:59 UTC. This contest is sponsored privately by a for-profit organization that may use any contributions to generate revenue, as allowed by the
GFDL. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a sponsor of this contest.
Contest entries were listed at
Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Entries, and good luck was wished. On 25 November 2008, the winners were
announced, and congratulations were exclaimed to all.
Submissions
When you list a
core article that, having improved, you're submitting for the contest, please list a specific revision that you're happy with, as well as a link to the revision on which you built your improvements. For example,
this would show improvements I made to the article
Lebensraum.
Only edits made from November 24, 2007 onwards should be included in the diff link.
Suggestions
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.
List here any
candidate articles that are in desperate need of improvement. Remove entries from this list as they are chosen for improvement (see next section).
Poultry is in dire need of improvement, and it would be rather easy to do.
VanTuckytalk 20:12, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
Dictatorship is practically a stub given what the article should summarize.
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.
Incomplete
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.
These are some items which were placed in the below list of entries but from the phrasing they are works in progress. Authors of these comments should read the instructions at the top of this page and remove their items from this section. --
SEWilco 17:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I'm pretty sure
Lech Wasa is actually just
Lech Wałęsa. On the one hand I only created a redirect, but on the other I turned a red link into a B-class article :) –
Gurch 07:38, 25 November 2007 (UTC)reply
Amusing. I guess this relatively common mispelling (just google...) was created by a process of droppoing both letters with Polish diactrics altogether :) -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus |
talk 05:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I'm going to hack away at
Precipitation (meteorology) over the next few days. I will edit this post when I am satisfied with my work.
Trvsdrlng (
talk) 15:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I'm going to work on the primary colors,
red,
yellow, and
blue. I've already done a lot of work with
green and may be able to get it to GA.
Wrad (
talk) 21:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I am working on
Domestic sheep (Sheep redirects to that article, and I assume the list prefers this article rather than the sheep genus article of
Ovis). I will provide a specific diff on the article's talk page by the end date. Thanks,
VanTuckytalk 03:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I actually only worked on
World War II, and that not nearly so much as I would have wished. It's an active enough article that it was difficult to keep the article clean as I worked. Additionally, was hit by RL work, and unable to work at all on the other three articles.
Mr Which??? 22:48, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Universe - I'm all-too-apt to take on more than I can manage, but I'll try to improve the article.
Willow (
talk) 14:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I'm working on
Constantine I right now in my
userspace. I'm hoping to get some books by the end of the week to dress up the citations and make the whole thing comprehensive before moving it to article mainspace.
Geuiwogbil (
Talk) 16:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I am staking my claim to the wonderful
Franco-Prussian War. How lucky I was to find such a great article!!
Monsieurdl (
talk) 04:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I don't wish to be part of the contest (I doubt I can finish in two weeks), but I am working to improve
Emma Goldman (and I don't work well with others) so I'd rather not have someone try and use that as their contest entry. –
Scartol •
Tok 19:33, 30 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I worked on
Allah article and nominated it as a GA article. Over the past week, I also finished working on
Ezra and
Splitting of the moon, after a significant amount of editing, and nominated them as a GA article. These articles are not in the list but I believe they are important. For the next six days, I will be working on
Anger and
Fear articles as much as I can. Both of these articles appear in the list. Cheers, --
Aminz 20:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I've been continuing to expand and improve
Winston Churchill. Ive been rewriting sections, copyediting, adding references I should of added when I added some of the text ages ago, added new sections and added some images
LordHarris 10:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)reply
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.
List of contest entries
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 did my best to clean up
Marilyn Monroe. Think I listed it right. I added more sources and expanded some sections. Took out repetitive areas and made it look nice. - --
Thegingerone (
talk) 12:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I've created and done most of the work on
Shanta Shelke article. This article remains almost the sole consolidated page on the
marathi poetess. -
Mayuresh 22:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I've done a substantial amount of work on the
Nicaragua article over the past months, as well as create and source many articles relating to it. The page counts with over 100 sources, the majority of which i have added. I am particularly happy with the History section, which up until a couple months ago was almost nonexistent and missing a lot of vital information, and the Demographics section. I started the history section with
this and turned it into what it looks like now. My diffs can be seen at the articles
history page. - LaNicoya •Talk• 23:31, 25 November 2007 (UTC)reply
My first edit to the
Wright Brothers article was March 13, 2006 under IP 4.227.254.28. This is a
linkto the version at that time. After a few more edits, I registered as DonFB, and continued editing under that User Name. About 85 to 90 percent of the article is now my text. The article was upgraded to Good on February 17, 2007, which I feel was the result of my many edits (improvements!) up to that time. I located, cropped, uploaded and initially captioned all the glider photographs, the 1904 Flyer photograph, the 1899 kite drawing, the Patent text image, the Aerodrome photo and the Hawthorn St photo; created the Glider Vital Stats table and added the Lift Equation; also added the 1905 Flyer and Fort Myer crash photos from existing images at Wikipedia. The current version (Nov. 25, 2007) is satisfactory to me, although I intend to improve the Last Years section, and the Footnotes section needs standardizing.
DonFB (
talk) 15:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)reply
So, final tally on Hypatia is
205 edits, including 32 new references, 4 new PD images, two new texts added to Wikisource and a complete overhaul that ends up (probably unique among the contest...) being half its original size :)
Sherurcij(
Speaker for the Dead) 01:39, 10 December 2007 (UTC)reply
The final tally on Barents (not sure if the final rename to "Barentsz" was before the deadline or not?) who was just a copy/paste of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica when I started is
146 edits, including 49 new references, 19 new PD images (5 are only on Commons), and article is 500% larger than when I started.
I will take
Reggae and begin adding citations in the next few days, will update --
Til Eulenspiegel (
talk) 02:25, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I had been wanting to start editing a new article and since
Samoa was on the list, i went for it. I will be making more edits but the first edit can be seen
here. I added many sources and sources are my 1st priority. -- LaNicoya •Talk• 04:38, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
I know I won't get a chance to work on this much before Monday, so
here is the diff of my work to date on the article. It's a good entry as is, but I plan to keep expanding.
ZZClaims~
Evidence 18:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Almost completely rewrote
Anger: Difference between revisions:
[3]; Original version
[4]; Current version
[5].
Worked on
Allah: Difference between revisions:
[6] ; Original version
[7]; Current version
[8] --
Aminz 10:21, 3 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Not a winning entry, but here's what I've been working on:
Wildlife of Brazil. I rewrote the lede
[9], then expanded it in way too many small edits
[10] except
this one where Utcursch fixed the titles of 2 of my refs. Plus added a couple of redirects
Fauna of Brazil,
Flora of Brazil, and added the article to the Brazilian topics template. (Not much, but if you can't find the article easily, what good is it?) I may continue to expand it, and no article is ever finished, so check back later for any further diffs. :-) Mahalo nui loa. --
Ali'i 14:15, 3 December 2007 (UTC)reply
The
Constant article has been completely rewritten and greatly expanded (more than 300 edits). I have added all the pictures and references. A lot of work still has to be done and I'll take it as an encouragement to make a FA out of it if I win. The version I started with is
here and the diff is
here.
Randomblue (
talk) 21:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I'm going to take a stab at
NHS. Thanks,
RHB -
Talk 17:15, 27 November 2007 (UTC)reply
Hi. This is probably not very impressive but I tried improving
Telescope and also added an image
diff. Thanks. ~
AH1(
TCU) 00:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I am entering Reproductive system with
[11]. I completely rewrote this unsourced, one paragraph stub (1,088 bytes) into a lengthy summary article (23,803 bytes). This is an article I have been meaning to rewrite for awhile now, this contest just gave me the reason to finally get around to doing it. I have put many hours into this article, I hope others will edit it and make it even better.
Earthdirt (
talk) 03:03, 6 December 2007 (UTC)reply
It's coming down to the wire with
Government(original)(changed)(diff). This article is not finished yet. If I finish in time, it'll be in the nick of time. I'll probably keep working right up until the end, and I'll update the links to show the new changes. Whatever happens, it's for a good cause, and this article really needed fixing.--
Mumia-w-18 (
talk) 06:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)reply
This is what
Simmaren and
Awadewit managed to achieve on
Jane Austen (
diff). It is far from complete, I'm afraid, but it is an improvement. Hopefully in a month or two, it will be even better.
Awadewit |
talk 19:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I have worked on
Golda Meir, though much remains to be done.--
Gilabrand (
talk) 07:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC). Here is the link to the differences (not sure if I'm doing this correctly). [
[12]]--
Gilabrand (
talk) 09:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Yes this core article was non existent and a great surprise seems as it is one of the most important problems facing the planet today. This is just a small example of the articles on major world issues that are missing. I began developing it from scratch and it has reached around 40kb in length although writing an article with the sheer diversity of potential sources which should be compiled to cover all aspects of the subject would require an enormous amount of copy editing to achive a "complete" article. Neverthless I think the article now covers the most important points of this major global problem although I will continue to work at improving it and finding additional references and rewriting sections over the coming weeks. I also found some very useful NASA satellite surveys of deforestation in the region which provide a unique picture of the problem and illustrate it -hopefully this will increase awareness of the reality of the problem.
♦ Sir Blofeld ♦"Talk"? 16:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
After two weeks, 122 additional references, 49 edits, nine gigantic tomes, four more images, and several gray hairs,
Emily Dickinson has been completely rewritten by yours truly, although much improvement is still needed, I admit.
Before --
Diff. María(
habla con
migo) 16:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I didn't have enough time to reference everything in the
universe, but I think it's still an improvement over the earlier version from November 30th. The article was re-written from scratch, albeit with sundry references and external links held over from before. Here is the
original version and here is the
diff. Thanks; it was a lot of fun! :)
Willow (
talk) 17:36, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Helicopter. Trimming the fat, tightening the belt, but it could probably still use some more work. --
Born2flie (
talk) 20:25, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Per note on Danny's talk page
[13], I am nominating
domestic violence. I noticed it was not on the
list, but that list includes
Drug addiction (
609 pages link here) and
Alcoholism.
Domestic violence is of similar importance, as a core article, and is linked
986 times in Wikipedia. That is a critical article, was poor quality.
[14] It used to be much worse than that
[15] before I spent some time on it in June/July. I had put it on hold, as it's a very difficult topic to work on. Someday, I'd like to make it a featured article. For now, the goal is
WP:GA. After some work and cleanup in the past two weeks,
here is the article now. --
Aude (
talk) 21:34, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Technology, one of the "
Elite Eight", is badly in need of work, especially the History section. I'm happy with the Paleolithic section now and will continue all the way to the modern day. I probably got started on this too late for the purposes of the contest, but I'll be finishing the job either way.--
Father Goose (
talk) 22:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
I was only able to make it through the introduction and the "Overview" section of
World War II. I may yet come back to this one.
Here is the diff, such as it is.
Mr Which??? 22:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Constantine IDiff. Yikes! Sorry about missing the dateline by thirty minutes! I thought UTC was one hour ahead of what it really is. I made some modifications to the "Biography" and "Legacy" sections; the earlier parts of the biography have been more thoroughly vetted than the later parts of the biography.
Geuiwogbil (
Talk) 00:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)reply
Reddiff. Started as a pathetic disambig page, and large portions of it are now prosified. Also,
Green (
diff) is now a GA!
Here is what it used to be before I started work on it.
Wrad (
talk) 01:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)reply
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.