User:J Milburn/Signpost update

May sees the beginning of Round 3 of the 2013 WikiCup, with 32 [NOTE: THIS MAY BECOME 33, PENDING THE RESULT OF A DISCUSSION] of the original 127 competitors remaining. The WikiCup is an annual competition on Wikipedia in which competitors are awarded points based on the number of pieces of audited content they can produce during the year; "audited content" here meaning individual featured articles, featured portals, featured lists, featured pictures, featured topics, good articles, good topics, did you knows and in the news items. A small number of points are also awarded for good article reviews. This is the fifth WikiCup held in roughly the current format, which is based on a lower-key competition which had been held for two years prior to that. Though the rules are set before the beginning of the competition, "judges", currently J Milburn and The ed17 coordinate the competition, while others (such as bot-writer Jarry1250) help behind the scenes.

This year's competition sees another step towards a focus on importance. Highly important articles, lists and portals are awarded more points, and importance is judged based primarily on the number of Wikipedias on which the article, list or portal features. For instance, from just the last few days, Sven Manguard was awarded three times the usual points for the featured portal Portal:Sports, while Cwmhiraeth was awarded 7.2 times as many points for her impressive expansion leading to a did you know from sea. Extra points are also awarded for longer did you knows to discourage the mass-production of very short articles and for did you knows of very old articles to encourage expansion of forgotten articles. Despite these changes, the WikiCup is still very different from The Core Contest, which is much shorter, focuses on improvement to core articles exclusively and is judged by a panel, rather than being about the accumulation of points. This year has also seen the WikiCup used as a locus for collaboration, with competitors finding others eager to help write on certain topics.

Big scorers so far this year include Sturmvogel_66 (2010's winner), Miyagawa (a finalist in 2011 and 2012), Casliber (a finalist in 2010, 2011 and 2012) and Hawkeye7 (a newcomer to the WikiCup). Very high scores in Round 2 suggest that this year's competition may prove one of the most competitive yet. 16 will progress to Round 4 at the start of July, while 8 will enter the final in September; this year's winner will be declared at the end of October. Those interested in following the WikiCup's progress can sign up to receive the monthly newsletter.