Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Entries/AprilMay2023 archive

• See Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Entries/2007 archive and Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Entries/2012 archive for past competitions.

The Contest will run over one month from midnight July 31 to midnight August 31 Sydney time. Once the period of active editing time has ended, editors can still submit material they improved in the one month period below.

Once the contest has concluded, the judges will review the submissions and announce the winners within two weeks. Other editors are welcome to offer comments on the merits of any improvement

The potential article pool includes vital and core articles. Editors are also welcome to improve and nominate an improvement to a broad or important article which lies outside these two lists as long as they can provide a rationale as to why their article should be considered. When you list a core article that, having improved, you're submitting for the contest, please list a specific revision that you're happy with, as well as a link to the revision on which you built your improvements. For example, this would show improvements made to the article Lebensraum.

Only edits made within the contest time period should be included in the diff link.

List of contest entries

List here articles submitted, and the diffs showing the improvement. Multiple segments are allowed to clarify the diffs submitted by a particular editor in a busy article. Co-submissions are allowed. Judges will comment on entries immediately below them, clarify benefits gained and offer feedback on what else needs to be done. Within two weeks of the conclusion, prizewinners will be announced.

Henry VIII of England

• Nominator - Grandiose (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: Article at the start of August
• Comments: Hchc2009 is also working on the article. Not sure how much we're going to get done, but we'll give it some. Referencing is a big issue, and although there's a lot of coverage, some of it is unduely focussed and some bits missing.

Comments by judges

• Interesting choice - has lots of choppy bits that could do with embellishing and smoothing over. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

• I've been looking at the editing work as of 3 August. The classic and best biographies appear to be referenced. Scarisbrick is used overmuch, in my opinion. I think Alison Weir could be cited more often. Jasper Godwin Ridley and John Bowle are in the bibliography but never cited—these books could be borrowed and read. Eric Ives published a book in 2007 which could be used: Henry VIII, Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-921759-5. David G. Newcombe published a fine book 17 years ago titled, Henry VIII and the English Reformation; it could be tapped for facts. The bit about the wave of political executions needs to be fleshed out somewhat: Who was Henry against and why? A number of paragraphs are not referenced at all—these should all have at least one cite. Binksternet (talk) 04:12, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

There's a huge range of scholarship on Henry - pages and pages of high quality works - and I don't think there's any need to pick out particular ones. Scarisbrick is among the best known authors of the modern era on Henry, and whilst it won't be the only source I think it's suitable as an FA-quality backbone to the article. Obviously the content issues are what we're looking to address. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 18:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Please don't take my advice as marching orders or a directive. Certainly, Scarisbrick is the essence of mainstream and therefore quite suitable; he is not wrong on any facts, he is simply kinder than others to Bluff King Hal. Please do as you will with the sources and text. I look forward to your improvement work! Binksternet (talk) 22:42, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Franz Kafka

• Nominator - PumpkinSky (talk · contribs) and Gerda Arendt (talk · contribs)
• State of article before beginning is here; Improvements, coming when August is over
• Comments - listed as a vital article, so far two new articles created as a result of the "KAFKA DRIVE" and both nom'd at DYK: Felice Bauer und auch Ottla Kafka.

Comments by judges

• Good choice of article - lead certainly needs redoing (but best to wait until article more reworked..), Personality subsection needs reffing and possibly rebuttal. Most importantly the Published works section is just a list. There should be greater discussion of most important works etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:58, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Theory of relativity

• Nominator - Braincricket (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: forthcoming
• Comments (anything you think is relevant - what problems the article had and what you've done to make them better):

Comments by judges

• The "further reading" addition of 11 books is a good foundation for future improvement. Ideally, the salient bits from these books will be brought to the article and cited, moving them one by one into the references. An old but very accessible book, free from maths, is The Einstein Theory Of Relativity by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, a contemporary of Einstein. He wrote the book for people who are not physicists, so that they could grasp the basics. Here's a bibliography written by a physics professor. Binksternet (talk) 04:24, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Good choice! Over 1 million hits pa, and on the start/C class border. Since the subject is covered by sub-articles like General relativity, I'd aim to keep this at a simple, clear (!?) introductory level). I look forward to trying to read it. Johnbod (talk) 13:15, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, and I completely agree. I think has the potential to be a nice summary-style overview of the whole subject. It's the top result when I google "relativity", so I'd like to gear the article for the curious and uninitiated. All prose, no lists, no math. Braincricket (talk) 13:48, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes - prose is fragmented into point format etc. Good pick of an article which needs major work....(damn, wrong section but looks silly if I place it above and out of order...) Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Realism (arts)

• Nominator - Johnbod (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: coming
• Comments: The plan at the moment

Comments by judges

• It'd be good to see items in the See also worked into the prose. Ditto the images. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:03, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• Not only could the "Visual arts" section use some references, it could use some expansion! Binksternet (talk) 22:47, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Bow and arrow

• Nominator - Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Improvements - coming
• Comments

Comments by judges

• Oh god, where do we start....what am I saying? Great choice! Massive content-work and reffing needed.... Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
• For a start the article should give some indication to the reader that the bow and arrow were extremely important in warfare for centuries. A sense that the bow and arrow was one of the greatest inventions in human history. The Archery article has much that it can lend to this very clunky article. Binksternet (talk) 18:10, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Information technology

• Nominator - Malleus Fatuorum (talk · contribs)
• Improvements - not sure what time/motivation I'll be able to expend on this, but I could hardly make it any worse
• Comments - level 3 vital article

Comments by judges

• Definitely, the only way is "up" - I don't need to teach Malleus how to suck eggs at this point but later as it develops.....Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:30, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually a few ideas crop up - first is this sentence currently in the aritcle - "This article focuses on the latter of those periods, which began in about 1940." - which leads me to ponder what secondary sources do...by its onw definition that'd be phase 4 or electronic Information technology - so the other areas need to be discussed as according to what sources do. I also wonder whether Information and communications technology needs to be a separate article.

Back onto main article, Information technology - it should mention job growth/industry and epicentres round the world (India, Silicon Valley mention somewhere) - Information ethics needs a summary (and the daughter article could be expanded...)

I think looking at how books discuss it will give more ideas as well. Bloody hell, could be massive......Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:52, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Secondary sources do pretty much the same, but they ignore the idea that information has been stored, retrieved and manipulated for thousands of years. As for ICT, well, least said soonest mended. Suffice to say that it provides some teachers with jobs. Malleus Fatuorum 04:02, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Indeed! Another great choice - over 2 million hits pa, which by my calculation is over 1,000 hits per word (my new metric). Johnbod (talk) 01:50, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Tree

• Nominator - Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs)
• Improvements - I have completely rewritten this article. The start version is here and the improved version here.
• Comments - I think the original article was inadequate and way off topic.
  • Unfortunately since I entered this article in the Core Contest it has been reverted to its previous state and edit warring has been taking place. I am merely observing from the sidelines. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:11, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• What to do now....hmmmm....I think more could be added on evolution of tree-type organisms. I recall reading Colin Tudge who found it hard to believe that the tree structure (as per conifers and angiosperms presumably) could have evolved convergently. Glossopterids are another ancient class of trees. The records section would be good to prosify somehow into a para. Not sure how....Also the See also section is pretty big. I'd have a look at them and see if any needed to be discussed in the text. If they are then they can be omitted here. Fantastic work so far overall! Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Impressive, but if more can be usefully said summarizing taxonomic groups of trees that would be good; perhaps that overlaps with Cas's point above. How many classes or Orders include trees? Or is that a silly question? The point that "Trees are not a taxonomic group but are a number of plant species that have independently adopted a woody trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants in full sunlight" could probably be expanded and expressed/repeated more clearly for a general audience. It seems to me that "plant" could be substituted for "tree" at very many places in the article - I'm not sure how much of a problem this is. Johnbod (talk) 15:46, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

• Cwmhiraeth, if a hybrid/improved article incorporating the best of both comes out of this, this would be a Very Good Thing. If the sources are scrutinised and corrected now, it beats doing it halfway through an FAC. I can understand if you walk away but alot of work's been done and I am sure both of you have good points - I've suggested a way forward so maybe comparing segments and discussing and adding is a way to go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

• Wow, very exciting flurry of action. I think it is good that discussion is underway. Certainly the article has room for improvement, so that's still on the table. Binksternet (talk) 17:23, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by others

• Wow. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:43, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
• My comments are on talk:Tree, where they'll be useful for more than a length of a contest. ☺ The person who reverted the improvements made quite a number of editorial points, some of which turn out, upon inspection, to be valid. Whilst the structural changes are good, there are problems with the information in the article, some of which is contradicted by the sources that apparently support it; with clarity over what content is supported by what source; and with the vagueness of some of the citations. (One citation points to an entire dictionary. I had to guess "tree" as the article in the dictionary, but the content that it purported to support was in fact talking about shrubs. The dictionary didn't actually support what was written in the article, either.) Uncle G (talk) 14:28, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Mineral

• Nominator - Maxim (talk · contribs)
• Improvements - Starting version: [1]
• Comments - Core topic. Starting version seems to be deficient... in very many places.

Comments by judges

• Agree it's very listy and fragmented. There needs to be alot more encompassing material added. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:06, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Indian subcontinent

• Nominator - ayanosh (talk · contribs)
• Improvements - coming ;Starting version
• Comments - Going with a Level 4 vital article.

Comments by judges

• Fascinating choice and major work needed - climate springs to mind, governance historically (nations ancient to modern), as well as a summary and discussion of the indian continental plate. There is alot of overlap with South Asia, yet the above material should help as some is quite subcontinent-specific Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:39, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Alps

• Nominator - Truthkeeper88 (talk · contribs)
• Before beginning, state of the article on August 3rd: [2]
• Comments - listed as a vital article. Limited time but will do what I can. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:30, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Aaaah, articles with tags atop them...always a good choice. Lots of choppy and rudimentary sections to buff - the fauna section is just a gallery...Tourism, Geology and orogeny and climate sections entirely unreferenced...Geology and orogeny needs a good working up too.Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:56, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Language

• Nominator - Maunus (talk · contribs)
• Before beginning, state of the article on July 27th: [3]
• Comments - listed as a tier 1 vital article. Limited time but will do what I can, mostly adding content and sources - no time for copyediting or other niceties. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:45, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments by judges

• Great choice! More comments to follow...Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:18, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
• Lots of paragraphs without any citation! A fine opportunity for improvement. Binksternet (talk) 21:44, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Duns Scotus

• Nominator - Quisquiliae (talk · contribs)
• State of the article on July 31st : [4]
• Comments – Should be a tier 3 vital article. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy both agree that Scotus is up there with Aquinas and Ockham as the three most important philosophers of the High Scholastic period (c. 1200-1350). The article is in a deplorable state, having suffered from a recent spate of vandalism. Some of the claims are incorrect or misleading. The section on his life needs some work, the sections on his thinking need a wholesale overhaul, plus considerable expansion to justify his notability and importance. The two encyclopedias mentioned above, as well as Britannica, devote proportionately far more space to Scotus than Wikipedia. I have begun by correcting the dates, and by replacing the citation tag around the legend that he was buried alive [5]. More to come, including the premature burial legend, which is purely that. Quisquiliae (talk) 18:04, 9 August 2012 (UTC)