Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-11-02/Article contest

After ten months of near-constant content creation, the 2009 WikiCup drew to a close on October 31, with Durova claiming the ultimate prize. Throughout the competition she alone managed the remarkable total of 3,705 points, made up of several different categories of featured content.

Durova fought past 59 other users in total in the contest, which began as a group stage in January 2009. Around 1,500 pieces of featured, good, or Did you know? content were created by contestants over the course of the competition as a whole, including nearly 40 featured articles, over 200 featured pictures and over 300 good articles.

The competition, the format of which was originally based on an association football contest, began humbly in 2007 with 12 competitors and was based primarily on edit counts and unique page edits. This was won by after a win against  in the final. The 2008 contest had a slightly more healthy competitor count at 24, and the format was still heavily edit count based. This was won by, again beating Sunderland06 in the final round.

However, the format of this year's competition was changed significantly before and, often controversially, during the contest. The focus was shifted from edit counts to content creation, offering substantially fewer points for mainspace edits than for audited content. As well as the familiar featured articles, lists and pictures, along with good articles, In the News and Did You Know?, points were awarded for lesser known areas of Wikipedia's audited content; featured and good topics, featured sounds and featured portals. This change drew the contest away from merely an edit count and encouraged higher quality contributions. Edits outside of the article (and, later, portal) space counted for nothing, and edits made with automatic tools such as Twinkle, Huggle and AutoWikiBrowser were ignored.

The WikiCup will be held again next year, and editors may sign up now by adding their username and a choice of flag (which must represent a real location) of their choice to the sign-up list. The contest's format is to remain similar to this year's, with a strong possibility of minor changes preceding the start. Due to heavy interest, the initial round is planned to include one large pool, before the winning editors are split into more conventional pools in round two.