The Contest has run over three weeks from midnight March 10 to midnight March 31 Sydney time (9PM on Friday 9 March in London, 8AM on Friday 9 March in New York). Although the period of active editing time has ended, editors can submit material they improved in the three week period below.

• During this period, prizes were awarded to the best article improvement of a large/broad/important article. Improvement will be quantified and compared — in cases of similar levels of improvement, articles in a worse state to begin with will be deemed more valuable, all other parameters being equal. Thus an article that has gone from (say) 10% to 50% sourced with reliable sources, will be valued more highly than one from (say) 50% to 90% sourced.
• As judges reviewed entries, they posted feedback on the improvements and areas still to improve before future Good Article nomination or Featured Article Candidacy.
• Current Featured Articles were not eligible. Good Articles were but one might have a tough time showing radical improvement in one, which might outweigh the massive improvement of a Start-class article. (Note that the Good and Featured Article process are not considered part of this, which is judged independently.)
• The judges weighed up the improvement of the article combined with its "core-ness" to come up with a "best additive encyclopedic value" to Wikipedia. The winners were announced at Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Winners
• Panel of judges consisted of Casliber (talk · contribs), Brianboulton (talk · contribs) and Sue Gardner (talk · contribs).

List here any candidate articles that are in desperate need of improvement, or that you intend improving youself. Remove entries from this list as they are chosen for improvement (see next section). Also list articles you're not sure meet the criteria, or you'd like to discuss anyway. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:18, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Mongol Empire. I've been working (slowly) on bringing this WP:VITAL article up to even GA status, with an eventual goal of getting it to FA. It's a huge topic though and still needs a ton of work. It would be nice to have more help and see if we can get a big burst of activity on it, as part of the core contest. --Elonka 15:59, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes this is the sort of article that'd benefit from a good burst of editing – kind of the whole idea behind this project. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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. An example of how to lay out a sample entry as follows.

Italian unification[edit]

• Nominator – Sapere aude22 (talk · contribs)
• Improvements – See the changes between the revision before my edits and the revision of my last edit. This illustrates the improvement that I have made.
• Comments – The article had two major problems:

1. It was tagged with Template:Cleanup-link rot. Some of the Bare URLs in the article turned out to be dead.
2. It was tagged with Template:More footnotes and Template:Who.

I added citations to the statement which was tagged with Template:Who. In addition, I fixed the link rot problem. Instead of simply completing the bare URLs to full citations, I checked the content of those URLs. Then I thought of the best way to convey the content.

I also added information to the section Secession movements.

Comments by judges[edit]

• Great! nice to see some folks posting. There's still a week to go so you are welcome to keep going on the same article. For instance, if you look at Good and Featured Articles they generally have a lead summarising salient points, so this one can be enlarged a bit. The more paragraphs with inline referencing the better too – the more done the better! Why not throw it up at Peer Review? Look at combining short segments of prose like this. Better still, have a look at User:Tony1/How to improve your writing for fine-tuning prose. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:49, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Wow, this article has been in existence since 18 February 2002, and steadily grown since then, with a burst in 2005. It's quite a busily read article too, with around 1000 hits a day. Italian history isn't my strong point, so anyone more knowledgeable in the area is welcome to comment on completeness/balance etc. The last version before the editing had 15 inline references used once each, of which one was dead and three were bare urls. I estimate that those references reffed less than 10% of the text of the article, which contained 7426 words of prose. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:09, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now the last edited version by Sapere has 7443 words and 15 inline refs, which are now formatted and the deadlink fixed....I'll take a look at content in the morning.... Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sugar[edit]

• Nominator – Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs)

• Improvements – I thought the article missed out a number of topics that I thought should be included so I added new sections on "Types of sugar", "Sugarcane", "Sugar beet", "Refining" and "Forms and uses". I also added some extra references but the article was already pretty well sourced.

• Further improvements – Since the comment below from the judges, I have improved the lead here, added a short history of sugar beet cultivation, melded various paragraphs, rewritten a large number of sentences and added a few additional citations. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:30, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The final version is here. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:35, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by judges[edit]

Great article to improve – still needs a lead that summarises the content and various sections are disjointed and need to be melded into paragraphs. Plenty more inlines needed. A couple of days to go so more can be done if you are keen. Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just thought of something else – the Sugar#Health_effects section is essentially medical, so the sources should be Review Articles. Asking at WT:MED might get some pointers. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:46, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Right then, a popular article which gets 2000–3500 hits a day. The last version pre workup had 2864 words and 67 unique inline references of which 8 were used twice and 2 three times. Scanning down this version it looks about 75% inline reffed. final version before submission has 85 unique inline references and a much more substantial 4546 words. A cursory view suggests about 90% of it is inline reffed now. It still looks at this stage to be a bit disjointed with single line paras. Content-wise the Forms and uses section could do with some embellishing and possible merging with the Terminology section. Whenever I look at See also sections I find myself thinking that either the contents can be discussed and linked in the prose already (in which case there's already a link) or if they can't, it raises the question of whether there is enough of a link to justify them being in the see also section anyway. Looking fairly broad in coverage though. Well done! Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NB: Food articles are grossly underrepresented at GA/FA level, which I think is worth noting. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:55, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Casliber. I did have GA in mind when I entered this contest but there is still plenty of work to do on the article before I get to that. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:59, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is difficult as there are several adjacent topics such as sugar cane and sucrose among others, so the question of where to draw the line on subject matter arises. Tricky and well done for taking it on. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:22, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lettuce[edit]

• Nominator: Dana boomer (talk · contribs)
• Improvements: This. Completely re-write of article with more and better sources, updated data, better MOS compliance, etc. Now nominated for GA.

Comments by judges[edit]

• A pretty comprehensive expansion and improvement in virtually every section. Dubious information has been removed, and everything looks appropriately cited to high-quality sources. It could probably do with a run-through copyedit – I found "as well as" twice in a single sentence. I note that it is a GA nominee, and subject to a prose brushup I'd expect it to pass easily. Brianboulton (talk) 00:24, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks Brian. Another user has come through and worked on my prose, so it should be a bit better now. After the GA review I plan to go to FAC (although probably not immediately), so if you have any further comments in that direction I would love to hear them (not asking for a peer review, just general impressions). Dana boomer (talk) 11:32, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NB: As with preceding article, food articles are grossly underrepresented at GA/FA level, which I think is worth noting. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like lettuce gets 1000–1600 hits a day. The pre-worked on version had 4964 B (828 words) readable prose, and had 12 references, two of which were used twice and one thrice and one four times. A quick scan suggests around 50% was inline-referenced but damn it looks slim on widescreen...and the ever-important Description was very slim and unreferenced. History was minimal and little on cuisine. Now the end-of-comp version has double the prose at 10194 B (1677 words), 20 unique inline references, with the text all referenced, and history buffed and more detail on cultivation and info rejigged all over the place. Still lacks a description section and not much on culinary use but nice work overall! Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:55, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NB: I'll add some comments at the GA review as the article has been buffed since then...and I'd like to see it get to FAC...actually I'd like to see all these articles get there really (but this one is at GAN already). Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:00, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Romanticism[edit]

• Nominator: Johnbod (talk · contribs)

Gets ~6,000 hits a day & was mostly complete crap. Emergency roadside repairs to the article ranked 1511 Diff is this. Or from this to this. Whole new sections on English & French literature and the visual arts, and many other changes. Remedial work done on various related article, including this gem. Johnbod (talk) 13:05, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by judges[edit]

It's a little early to assess this, since it is clearly work in progress. Much has been done, but the article is presently full of citation tags and unreferenced statements, and parts still read very POV. There are gaps in the music section (where are the late romantics?). The article's images need some editing down; there are a good few too many at the moment, and three large images in the lead is seriously overdoing it. Having said all that, in terms of the distance that has been covered between the former and present versions, this is a notable achievement, and if we are looking for a core article that could become a GA or FA this could eventually be it. Brianboulton (talk) 00:33, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! The musical Late Romantics (or even many middle ones) I think don't come under "Romanticism", a quirk that is partly explained in the article; why things stopped being Romantic while continuing to be as romantic as ever is a section that needs adding. Being under VA management (before me also), I'm afraid lots of pictures is what you get, although there is some erm discussion on the talk page as to which ones. Johnbod (talk) 01:03, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, the before version has 31 kB (4904 words) readable prose size, 10% inline referenced and a bunch of tags. The after version has 49 kB (7841 words) readable prose size, and (I'd guess) about 60% inline referenced. Music section still has tags in it. Unique inline references have jumped from 37 to 66. Romanticism definitely ain't my forte, but a great tidy-up on preliminary inspection. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:05, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Brothers Grimm[edit]

• Nominator – Truthkeeper88 (talk · contribs)

Varies between 3000 to 6000 daily views. Tidied and expanded from this at approx. 2400 words, to this] at approx. 5000 words. Essentially a top-to-bottom rewrite and expansion with new references and sources, removed pieces copied verbatim from sources, added sections and images, etc. Submitted to pre-FAC peer review. Truthkeeper (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Adding: many subarticles here (a page for each of the brothers, another for the fairy stories, etc.,) so I kept this intentionally rather short and will fill in the other pages with the material I have at hand. Truthkeeper (talk) 12:53, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by judges[edit]

Wow, interesting and good choice of article! Comments to follow...Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:00, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Older version was (I guess) about 50% inline-referenced with 37 unique footnotes (with about 5 of those needing some formatting). Older version lacking in analysis and legacy. newer version is about 95% + inlined and has 45 unique footnotes and further reading section eliminated/subsumed. Best is that analysis and legacy sections have been added (A big plus for these literature-related articles!). Looking good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:08, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not to quibble, but the older version had footnotes removed because of a., quality and b., issues with close paraphrasing. Also, the manner in which the notes are formatted seems to show about 45, but there are well over a hundred refs now. I suppose I could have formatted differently. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:30, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, thanks for alerting me...there is ....erm...alot to read on these pages :P Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:37, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a top-to-bottom rewrite, with about two sentences of the original page still in place. So, about 3000 or more words were cut, and then it was rebuilt. But I don't envy you this task. Certainly it's been a very successful contest. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:55, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Middle Ages[edit]

• Nominator – Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)
• Improvements – This was what it was like before I started, this is how I finished off. There were a couple of minor minor edits by others in between (I think someone zapped a doubled up word and fixed a couple of spellings). It's a top down, rework, rewrite and citing of everything in the article along with a good dose of removal of cruft and undue weight. I've also culled the external links and further reading, upgraded the referencing and standardized it, and added a bunch of pictures.
• Comments – Page averages about 6000 or so page views a day, and is ranked 1364 in terms of traffic. I haven't yet nominated it for GA status, but I will be shortly. I might as well go for FA status too.. .yikes!

Comments by judges[edit]

• It's a long read, but looks pretty impressive. The first section looks to need further work (citation tags, single-line paragraphs etc.) but that is minor stuff. I'd need to spend a bit more time on the article to assess it fully, but at first sight this looks a top-class retrieval job on a vitally important article. Brianboulton (talk) 00:19, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Yeah, well, I had a different first section that was all cited but I had an ... issue... with someone who had previously edited the article reverting totally back to their version of the first section. It's being discussed on the talk page and if you'd like to see the version that was finished up ... it's here (after some wonderful copyediting by Ceoil and Malleus). I suppose it could lose the subheadings, but it's much less diffuse than what's there currently. Ealdgyth – Talk 00:36, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• I've done a bit more cleanup etc and compromising so it's no longer got any cn tags and no single sentence paragraphs. Next time I decide to edit on vital articles, don't let me do two at the same time – Middle Ages and William the Conqueror at the same time was a bit much to bite off.... Ealdgyth – Talk 02:07, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• OK, looking at older version, it had 51 kB (8301 words) readable prose size and 46 inline references and a bunch of other stuff at the bottom (I doubt those texts really are primary sources????) HArd to say for sure, but I'd estimate about 30% of it was inline-referenced. Now the submission version has 51 kB (8471 words) of readable prose, with a whopping 159 unique footnotes and romped along to achieve something like 95% inline referencing. And is heading towards GA/FA nomination. Also is a level 3 vital article (duh). Wow. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:20, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Not to toot my own horn, but it had a pretty hefty rewrite and removal of undue weight – I probably stripped out 2000 to 3000 words of undue weight and other cruft and replaced it with relevant text (there was a severe overweight on Hungarian politics, for instance). Johnbod's helped with the art history greatly just recently – he's been a great help with that, even though it's after the deadline .. don't want his efforts forgotten. Ealdgyth – Talk 22:48, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amphibian[edit]

• Nominator – Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs)
• Improvements – Considerably expanded from this to its present state here (37,975 bytes to its present 52,855 bytes). Much copyediting and many clarifications made as well as many inline citations added.

Comments by judges[edit]

• Ok, this version had 18 footnotes, several of which were not formatted and not great-quality web sources, hefty further reading and external links sections, and 22 kB (3489 words) readable prose size. It had about 10% of its prose reffed with inline references. The last version was increased to 31 kB (5023 words) prose size and had 36 footnotes (some still unformatted) and had (I'd guess) about 35% of its prose reffed with inline references. Will look at sections in a bit. Nice work on such a core article. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:21, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm surprised you think that only about 35% of the prose has inline references. When I write articles where there is a single source for a whole paragraph, I normally just put a reference at the end of the paragraph, as I did in the section that I wrote, "Defense mechanisms", and various other paragraphs. Also, when editing "Amphibian", and also "Sugar", I was reluctant to eradicate whole chunks of other editors' work and basically, in my entries, I have been trying to improve what is already there rather than write a "perfect" article on the subject from scratch. What would you do with the "Further reading" and "External links" sections? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, sorry, it can be very tricky to estimate those at first glance. Was going to read to fine-tune later. With external links, we have a EL policy – I often end up pruning them to ones which add things we don't have already in an article, such as movies or images that are otherwise copyright or something. Many links do not add anything extra and can be pruned. With further reading sections, I wonder that if a book or journal is worth listing here, then oftentimes we maybe should be using it as a reference for segments of the article. If not, then is it truly adding anything special that can't be gleaned from the article itself. There are exceptions but often, one can end up pruning alot of these as well. Will add more feedback soon. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:32, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok some specifics – older version lacked a Characteristics section, which is a really important bit to have been added. Diet section tighten up and rewritten nicely. Voice and Defense mechanisms sections important additions too. Still needs work on history of taxonomy and understanding of amphibians over the past 300 years, and Evolution or Classification could do with some more material on some of the prehistoric amphibians such as Eryops and predator ones. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ecosystem[edit]

• Nominator – Guettarda (talk · contribs)
• Improvements – Re-wrote most of the article (ran out of time, but I plan to finish the rest of it), trimmed almost as much as I added. It started as this, and it's currently here. There are a few intervening edits by other people, but I don't believe any of them are in the final version (mostly vandalism and reverts). I've roughly doubled the readable prose – taken it from 1800 to 3600 words – but what's more important, I think, was the re-write that turned a collection of disjointed text into a fairly coherent whole (at least the parts I got to).

The article is listed as a vital-3 article and is on the core list.

Comments by judges[edit]

I don't normally get on too well with science articles (wasn't my forte at school) but subject to a few remaining rough edges I found this article absorbing and accessible, with just a little difficulty coping with some of the scientific terms. Overall, this is a great expansion thus far, and when finished should achieve your objective of a coherent explanation. Would it be possible to give a rough figure for the number of ecosystems on the planet – thousands? – tens of thousands? – more? Brianboulton (talk) 23:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! There's no better praise to me than "absorbing and accessible" :) As for the number of ecosystems – it depends on how you define them, but I will try my best to find an answer, or rather, a set of answers. Guettarda (talk) 00:32, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is exactly the sort of cleanup I was hoping for, a relic of an article which someone has overhauled. Just reading through now...the prior version has 25 inline refs of which 6 are pretty bare. Maybe 15% of text is inlined and the article is piecemeal. In newer version, function/processes/dynamics massively overhauled and expanded and now has 37 refs. Still has further reading section and overview (Overview seems rather nebulous as a section definition and wondering if there is a more exact title. Also wonder if see also items can be more incorporated into body. Anyway, big topic.... Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I should have just merged the overview into the lead, shouldn't I? Would also solve the problem of a somewhat light-weight lead. It was a somewhat daunting task to start, so I started with the overview, one bite at a time...didn't have a vision for the whole article until much later. Just for information's sake, I have merged much of the 'See also' into the article sections, and still thinking about how to trim it down to no more than 10 items. Contest aside, I would appreciate any tips on what else needs to be done before GAN. Guettarda (talk) 21:19, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Horse[edit]

• Nominator – Dana boomer (talk · contribs), Ealdgyth (talk · contribs), Montanabw (talk · contribs)
• Improvements – Article was already a GA, so we decided to use this as an opportunity for an FA push. These are the changes made during the contest. More work will be ongoing, but this is what we accomplished during the specified time frame. Dana boomer (talk) 13:21, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by judges[edit]

• Interesting – article fine-tuning with some encompassing statements to give the prose some structure. Agree this would be terrific if it gets to FA. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:17, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

World Health Organization[edit]

• Nominator – Grandiose (talk · contribs)
• Improvements – complete overhaul, although some fell outside the contest period unfortunately. This was March's work, about 25 more references and a further 25 filled out completely; structure and balance improved; text wikified in several regards; lead enlarged. Article is on the VITAL-3 and of obvious international interest. I would say now around, maybe just shy of, GA level (hard to tell exactly with a unique article). Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:34, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Insofar as I can, I'd like to withdraw: to me it's clear that the improvement – done as it was after some considerable improvement by me – just doesn't stand up to the improvements made on other articles. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:05, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by judges[edit]

Agree it can be tricky to tell when an article is ready for GA if you don't have a boilerplate handy....Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:47, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay, so this is preexisting version which had a small lead, was about 80% referenced with 71 refs and had 20 kB (3154 words) readable prose size. The last version at two minutes before midnight my time had a larger lead, 20 kB (3172 words) readable prose size, 96 references, and is almost fully referenced. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I had a mental note that ten articles was a benchmark/tidal line showing sufficient participation to make it viable, so I am loth to delete the nomination as such. As much as anything it is an educational experiment to see who is interested in submitting what. Will try to give more detailed feedback over time to see which can be improved to GA easily. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:40, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]