The entry pages are only for those who are formally competing to win the prizes. If not "competing" for prizes just list your article in the article achievements section only at the bottom of the page. For contestants: Please submit an article under the most relevant country or subtopic (choose which one is most relevant). Remember that there are $ amount here worth prizes for both the most articles created for each country/topic as well as a general $ amount here prize fund for most articles created in total and an additional $ amount here bonus for anybody who creates an article on xxx. There is also a further xxx worth of prizes to be won for work of consistent quality.
(If this section gets too long split into main page linked above)
There is a prize of $amount here being offered, funded by ??.
$xxx - top prizes for most articles created during the contest (no cookie cutter style article or PD text is allowed, all articles have to demonstrate original prose, meet notability and BLP requirements and show no signs of cut and paste) - $xxx 1st, $xxx 2nd, $xxx 3rd, $xxx 4th, 4 x $xx 5th-10th place.
$xxx - most countries or subtopics (choose most relevant) done during the contest, minimum of one entry per country or subtopic- one prize only, only if multiple people pull off the same amount will the sum by divided and shared.
$xxx - for the editors who produce the most consistently high quality work and take great effort to research each new entry. This will be more difficult to assess who gets what and there are no winners, so just produce great work and hope for the best!
$xxx - $xxx prizes for most articles done for each field of occupation/subtopic. $xxx 1st, $xxx 2nd, $xxx 3rd, $xxx 4th, $xxx 5th.
$xxx of prizes for whoever manages to produce or improve an article on xxxx (pick a prize idea here)
$xxx of prizes - Whoever reviews the most articles during the contest, includes playing a role with judging/double checking entries, copyediting for quality, reviewing Good articles if needs be etc.
$xxx for helping add a lot of missing articles to the missing article banks in preparation for the contest.
(If there are additional prizes being offered from bodies other than WMF list below):
Please read the rules very carefully before the contest begins.
(Split this section and paste the following into your main rules page linked above).
Articles must be in the mainspace by the end of the competition period. Contestants are welcome to work on articles in AFC, draft space, their sandboxes or off-wiki in advance but the new articles have to be in the mainspace during the duration of the contest.
The minimum requirement of readable prose for new articles is 1000 characters or 1kB. Though this is still a stub, as long as the articles have a number of sourced facts this is permitable. Try to make the articles at least 1500 characters or 1.5kB and effectively start class entries if there are plenty of sources. The minimum requirement is intended more for those developing world bios where subjects might be notable but suffer from a lack of sources due to the infrastructure of the countries.
All entries are expected to be fully sourced, no unsourced claims or poorly formatted sources such as bare URL links or missing publisher information. Try to make the formatting consistent with dates and layout, clean, useful new entries are what the contest is about.
It is important that before starting new entries you take the time to ensure that articles meet Wikipedia:Notability guidelines and have the adequate coverage in Wikipedia:Reliable sources needed to be acceptable on Wikipedia. We don't want the contest to generate non notable articles or cause WP:BLP issues. Leading up to the start of the contest there are prizes for editors who help build and refine the missing article lists for the contest with articles which are notable and make it easier for editors to select suitable articles during the contest.
Take extra care to avoid paraphrasing and copyright. If producing a lot of content it is sometimes difficult to avoid sentences at times which don't resemble something in a source but it is important that the articles are without problems and will stick around on Wikipedia for a long time to come. If editors are found to create successive articles with paraphrasing or quality issues or of dubious notability and continue to do so after being alerted of a problem, they may be disqualified from further contributing to the contest. It is very important that care is taken to avoid copyright issues and ensure that articles meet notability and content requirements as if they don't they may cause a potential nightmare for the contest and editors at a later date.
Cookie-cutter style articles which show signs of minimal text writing and simply quickly changing some facts to mass generate a lot of articles on the same subject or entries which show signs of cheating may be discounted. Though articles on the same subject (such as women athletes) may often have a similar format and facts, the articles submitted must demonstrate original text and that some time has been taken to write them. If using public domain sources this must be rewritten to comply at least if you're competing in the contest.
No automated, semi-automated tools, scripts or manual templates to mass generate content are permitted for the contest. Any indication that editors are cheating by using a cookie-cutter template or script to mass generate through lists may lead to disqualification.
To be eligible to win prizes for quantity, all articles are expected to be of a high quality, even if short. It cannot simply be "whoever produces the most articles, regardless of prose quality is the winner". All of the entries have to be satisfactory to read and be reliably sourced/reliable new entries. If English isn't your native language, consider recruiting a few experienced editors to help copyedit your work.
All contestants are free to work on any or all the countries or any occupation they wish. If you're not interested in the prize money but just want to contribute you may submit articles directly on the main page list which will be created at the bottom like The Africa Destubathon list was and avoid the contest entry pages. If not competing then you may submit articles of any length about women including destubbed entries and treat it as an editathon, but it's only new articles which will be eligible for prizes.
(Depending on the context of the contest and whether it's organized by country or subtopic). If competing, submit the article you created under your username against the appropriate country/topic on one of the entries pages and sign your name. You may only list an entry under one country/topic but on the special claims page you can also make a claim on entries for a given occupation towards the end of the contest. In cases where it is difficult to decide on one country (think sportspeople who might have been born somewhere but represented a different county), country of birth should have the strongest precedent.
Please make sure that your article is listed in the Article achievements section of the main page as that list is intended to be the sum of all work created for the contest and editathon if not competing.
Some tips for how to judge the contest: (This section may be split into sub page linked above.)
The contest will kick off on date here. Though a bot has been programmed to auto check new entries for readable prose count, judges may (whatever you do is optional but the largest rewards will go to those who reasonably consistently make an effort throughout the month on a range of areas):
a] Perform random/casual checks of articles, double check for length/referencing. Sign your names after the bot for those which have been double checked. Make sure that your comments are on ** double bullet new lines underneath what the what has done to avoid conflict with the bot.
b] Read random articles and copyedit where necessary.
c] Perform random checks for copyright or paraphrasing.
d] Help editors who might have language barrier issues or questions. Some editors may have difficulty writing proficiently in English when it isn't their native tongue. Show patience towards those editors and help copyedit their articles where possible.
e] Deal with editors who may produce problematic content and offer advice or make the decision to either help or ban an editor from submitting if one warning isn't sufficient.
f] Check that articles do meet notability guidelines, particularly BLPs.
g] Help to gather entries submitted for the contest on the main article achievements list if people forget., and to maintain the percentage tables and scoreboard if applicable.
h] Report errors by the bot, or recurrent glitches or problems to bot operator.
i] Run new page patrols for editors creating articles and try to recruit new editors to adding their articles to our contest
You can check your entries using this tool before submitting here. The article readable prose, excluding sources and lists will have to be strictly minimum 1000 bytes (1 KB) to comply with the contest.
What would make it easier on this is if everybody programs their common.js in their preferences to contain:
Go into your preferences, click on the "Appearances" tab
Where it says "Shared CSS/JavaScript for all skins:", click "custom javascript
Paste the command given above into that and save.
Now approach an article and look in the tools section on the left. You should see "Page size". Click that for each article and you'll quickly get a reading without having to paste text all of the time and look externally.
Look out for where it says, for example: "Prose size (text only): 1310 B (xxx words) "readable prose size" ". That's what we're looking for on this, that has to read over 1000 B when finished.
see Article progression for daily output (monitoring daily article creation or improvement.
Daily target percentage progress (anybody feel free to update)
10%
(Beginning the day on xx articles, aim to reach xx by end of the day. Simply enter the number of articles done today in 'done' )
Enter the daily article target for the contest where 10 is and update the daily figure where 1 is. Archive to the article progression page after each day .
Overall contest progress to the new target of xx (anybody feel free to update):
10%
(Simply enter the current article figure in 'done', all that is needed)
Set an article target for the entire contest where 10 is and update regularly 1 is.
Only place entries created during contest here. Enter the flag of the country, the article and your name and place the article at the bottom of the list. If not competing for prizes simply list here and ignore the contest entry pages as the rules won't apply but try to ensure that they are minimum 1 kb and have adequate sourcing. If competing please try to enter your article on the relevant continent entry page as well as here. Expansions and improvements are welcome here from anybody though they won't count for the prizes. Collaborations are also permitted for both contestants and non contestants.
Create your own contest navigation template below copying and modifying this example.
