Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GA Cup/History

This page documents the history of the bi-annual GA Cup, an article improvement event for editors of Wikipedia. The competition began in 2014 as a means to help reduce the backlog of good article nominations. The first ran from October 1, 2014 - March 28, 2015, and had 49 participants at the start of Round 1. A rule change implemented in the middle of this round led the judges to allow all participants who reviewed at least one article to advance to Round 2. The winner of this Cup was Jaguar. The second Cup ran from July 1, 2015 until October 29, 2015, and was expanded to include good article reassessments. The second Cup also had fewer participants than the inaugural contest, with only 35 participants at the start of Round 1. The winner for this Cup was Zwerg Nase. The third Cup ran from March 1, 2016 to June 30, 2016, and had contestants earning more points than ever. The winner for this Cup was Sainsf. Throughout all of these contests, the primary key to success was reviewing older nominations that had been languishing for months on the nominations list. The fourth Cup began November 1, 2016 and ended April 1, 2017. Shearonink took first place. Not only did the review older nominations, but tended to outnumber competitors in the quantity of reviews.

October 2014–February 2015
The inaugural GA Cup. This contest saw a rule change in Round 1 which specified that all reviews must include feedback, and if problems are found the reviewer must allow the nominator time to respond. As a result of the rule change, one editor withdrew, and all contestants who had reviewed at least one article were allowed to move forward. Jaguar managed to enter the final round on just a wild card, but made the best of this opportunity and took the win for the inaugural Cup.

July 2015–October 2015
The second GA Cup, which expanded the scope of the contest to include good article reassessments. The scoring system was also revised, among other changes making it easier for editors to attain points through lengthy, comprehensive reviews of problematic articles. In the Finals, both Zwerg Nase and Sturmvogel 66 tied in the number of articles reviewed, and Sturmvogel 66 was only four points ahead of Zwerg Nase in points awarded for these articles. But, Zwerg Nase was the only editor in the finals to earn points for lengthy article reviews, and these points, combined with a sizable lead in points awarded for article size, enabled them to claim victory for the second GA Cup.

March 2016–July 2016
The third GA Cup, which had more users than ever. From Round 1 all the way to Finals, Sainsf was always the competitor that had the most points. However, in the last few days, both and  became extremely competitive, where one user could be ahead one hour, and the other being ahead the other hour. In the end, both users ended up with 1000+ scores, higher than any other competitors in any prior Cups. Sainsf did eventually finish off with reviewing lengthy articles which led him to him winning the third GA Cup.