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The Wikinews Writing Contest 2010 Newsletter
Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Newsletter compiled and written by Tristan Thomas. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 111 articles.
This Week
Brian McNeil reports on the first week; as the instigator and main organiser of the competition, he has a large interest in its continuing success.
Wikinews' 2010 writing contest got off to a brisk start this week with entrants scheming to have the first post-midnight submission.
A particularly high number of barely-qualifying articles on the first day saw a notable record sent for the most articles published in one day since the introduction of Flagged Revisions.
Tristan Thomas upped the stakes on the second day of competition with an original reporting interview scoring 26 points and moving him near the top of the leaderboard with only one article, as-compared to others prolifically contributing short 3-point articles.
Reviewing is, at the moment, the most problematic issue with the competition. This can be as time-consuming as the actual creation of an article when copyediting for active voice, formatting per the style guide, and reading all cited sources. Competition entrants are strongly advised to ensure their browser supports a spell-checker; beware developing offline with a word processor that uses 'smart quotes' and other nonstandard characters; only cite the sources needed; review all copyedit changes to their articles done during, and after, the review process; and, to ensure they are very familiar with the style guide.
With only thirteen competitors on the scoreboard at the end of the first week, where are all the entrants? Comprehensive and in-depth submissions could easily change the leader positions. The current top five are Tempodivalse, Dendodge, Bencherlite, Pmlineditor and Microchip08.
Newsletter compiled and written by Tristan Thomas. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 145 articles.
This Week
Tempodivalse reports on the second week of the competition. He is the current leader on both points and articles.
Well, we're now about two weeks into the contest. The initial "flurry" of activity has now subsided significantly, and we've settled down to an output of about ten articles per day, down from 25-30 articles in the first few days of the competition. That's less than I had hoped, and a lot of the 31 original sign-ups have yet to write anything, but I can't complain; we've attracted at least half a dozen new contributors to the project, such as Microchip08 and Wizardman, who are doing a great job expanding our coverage.
The point scoring system was designed to encourage in-depth articles, rather than a mass of stubs, and it shows: I estimate our average article size to have increased by several paragraphs, which I believe is good, as it helps encourage casual readers to stay on the site and read more.
I'm in the lead at the moment, and I admit that the gap from first to second place - and especially second to third - is fairly large, but I don't want that to discourage participants (as it appears several people have been). It's not as big a gap as it seems, and two or so in-depth articles would easily bring 50-60 points, placing one well within striking distance. Plus, there are still another ten weeks left, ample time to catch up.
Latest comment: 14 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Remember when I asked you to create that special Wikinews logo for me? Well, I need your help once again. Can you please make the Wikinews Ryan Peteranna logo appear on the following pages:
With all due respect Ryan, is it not possible for you to see what he did last time and do it this time, so that Dendodge doesn't have to? Tris17:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
Many apologies then Ryan; I take my words back and eat them with humble apologies. In all seriousness, sorry for jumping at you like that. Tris22:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
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Latest comment: 14 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
I can write something, yeah. I've not written a single article for at least a week, but I've been paying attention to what's been happening. Do you need it by the end of the day? Δενδοδγετ\c12:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
Newsletter compiled and written by Mikemoral. Any suggestions welcomed.
The contest so far
As of this newsletter, the Writing Contest 2010 participants have collected a total of 173 articles.
This Week
Dendodge comments for this newsletter. He is currently ranked 2nd in the competition.
As we approach the fourth week of the contest, the activity levels have decreased greatly compared to the first few days, and we are now down to between five and ten articles per day. I can't claim to have helped the situation—I haven't written anything for about a week. I'm not complaining, however, as I have somehow managed to stay in second place. While this may make the gaps between competitors seem too large to overcome, it should take only a couple of in-depth articles to overtake me. In fact, with so much time left, I wouldn't even rule out somebody knocking Tempodivalse down into second place!
The articles we are getting are still relatively in-depth, though much shorter than at the beginning of the contest. Remember, in-depth articles mean we can better compete with the mainstream media (and they're worth more points!).
I have also noticed a widening of our geographical and categorical coverage. While we used to cover mainly US and Western Europe, with particular focus on "important" issues such as politics, we have now branched out (probably out of desperation to find more points!)
Finally, I would like to thank everybody for their participation, and wish you all the best of luck.
